Soft FM staff hours calculator free interactive tool for cleaning, security, grounds, waste and catering contracts
How many hours does a 2,500 m² office clean? How many for a 24/7 guard post? Plug the site into the calculator and get weekly hours, annual hours, FTE equivalent, and an indicative labour cost. Sector benchmarks behind every number.
Pick the sector
Each sector uses its own productivity rates.
Cleaning inputs
ISSA-style productivity rates: m² cleaned per labour hour, by building type.
Loaded labour rate
Hourly cost including wages, NI, pension, holiday cover, training. UK soft FM blended is £15 to £18.
Live estimate
Weekly hours
44.6 hrs
1.28 full-time equivalents · 2321 hrs/year
Weekly labour cost
£692
Annual labour cost
£35,982
| Productivity rate | 280 m²/hour (Offices) |
| Hours per visit | 8.9 hrs |
| Visits per week | 5 |
Combine these hours with TUPE to build the full bid cost.
Estimate TUPE costsWhat the calculator uses
Sector benchmarks, not gut feel.
Each sector has its own established productivity convention. The calculator picks the right one when you pick the sector.
ISSA m²/hour
Cleaning
Productivity by building type. Offices 280 m²/hr at the top, healthcare clinical 100 at the bottom. Frequency multiplier on top.
Posts × hours
Security
Manned guarding totals all post-hours per week. Mobile patrol totals visit-hours. 24/7 single post = 168 hours / week.
Hours per hectare
Grounds
Intensity ladder: light (mowing only) at 0.5 hrs/ha, full (mow + edges + litter + hedge) at 2.5 hrs/ha. Visits per year drives weekly average.
Minutes per bin
Waste
240L wheelies at 0.5 min, 1100L bulks at 1.5 min, compactors at 6 min. Multiplied by collections per week.
Meals per cook-hour
Catering
Basic single-menu sites at 40 meals/cook-hour, mixed menus at 30, allergen-strict (Natasha's Law) at 22. Plus a 1.5x overhead for prep, wash-up and admin.
£15 to £18 / hr
Loaded rate
Wages plus on-costs (NI, pension, holiday, sick, training, margin). Adjustable in the calculator. Default is £15.50.
Why bid teams under-cost hours
Three numbers that move the bid by 20%.
The calculator gives you a defensible starting hours figure. Then three multipliers decide whether the bid is profitable or a disaster.
- Holiday relief. A 50-hour-per-week site needs 56 hours budgeted to cover 28 days of statutory holiday. Most bid teams forget this multiplier and lose 4 weeks of margin per worker per year.
- Sickness contingency. Soft FM averages 5 to 8 sick days per worker per year. Add 2% to weekly hours as a sick reserve, or budget paid relief.
- Specification creep. Sites grow. Buyers add tasks mid-contract through "reasonable adjustments" clauses. Build a 5 to 10% buffer into the hours figure or refuse the clause at SQ stage.
Questions, answered.
How do you calculate cleaning hours from square metres?
Industry standard: cleaned area divided by a productivity rate measured in m²/hour, then multiplied by visit frequency. ISSA-derived rates: offices 280 m²/hr, schools 220, healthcare general 180, healthcare clinical 100, retail 250, industrial 170, leisure 200. A 2,500 m² office cleaned five times a week = (2500 / 280) × 5 = ~45 hours per week.
What productivity rates does the calculator use?
Cleaning: ISSA-style m²/hour benchmarks. Security: posts × hours × days for manned, visits × duration for patrols (BSIA conventions). Grounds: hours per hectare per visit by intensity (BALI conventions, 0.5 to 2.5 hrs/ha). Waste: 0.5 to 6 minutes per bin handling depending on size. Catering: meals per cook-hour by menu complexity, plus a 1.5x overhead for prep, wash-up and admin.
What does FTE mean?
Full-Time Equivalent. We divide annual hours by 1,820 (35 hours per week × 52 weeks). A 50-hour-per-week site = 0.71 FTE. Useful for staffing rota math: a 1.4 FTE contract needs at least two part-timers or one full plus one half-time, with cover for holiday and sick.
Should I use these numbers in my actual bid?
Use them as a sanity check, not a replacement for site survey. Every buyer spec has its own quirks: split-shift requirements, contractor exclusions, equipment constraints, access windows. The calculator gets you to a defensible starting point in 30 seconds. The site survey calibrates from there.
What's a loaded hourly rate?
Hourly cost including wages, employer NI (13.8% above £9,100), pension auto-enrolment (3% minimum), holiday cover, training, and a margin for sick cover. UK soft FM blended runs £15 to £18 per hour at the time of writing. National Living Wage workers without uplift sit closer to £14. Specialist or shift-loaded crews push £20+.
How do I cost a 24/7 manned guard post?
24/7 cover = 168 hours per week. At £15.50 loaded, that's £2,604 per week or £135,408 per year for a single post. Realistically you need 4.5 FTEs to cover a single 24/7 post once you account for holiday, sick, training, and the 35-hour working week limit. Most SMEs under-budget guard relief by 15 to 20%.
Why is healthcare clinical cleaning so much slower?
Infection control protocols. Two-bucket method, colour-coded equipment, dwell times for surface disinfectants, post-isolation deep cleans, NHS National Standards of Cleanliness 2025 audit requirements. Clinical areas run at roughly 100 m²/hour vs 280 for offices. Bid teams that miss this difference price themselves into delivery losses.
Build the full bid cost in one workflow.
Hours × loaded rate + TUPE + on-costs + margin. CleanTender Pro feeds these into bid drafts on every live UK soft FM tender.
Read next