Three signs suggest it is time for a review. First, if service quality has visibly dropped: cleaning has become superficial, gardening only covers the visible areas, the lift company responds ever more slowly to fault reports. Second, if a significant gap has opened between market prices and the contracted fee: a cleaning contract signed three or four years ago is often far below what a competitive offer would cost today, but the opposite can also be true. Third, building insurance: if the sum insured has not followed construction cost inflation, a claim can bring an unpleasant surprise because the cover is not enough to rebuild.
The review itself is simple but time consuming: list every active contract with its expiry date and notice period, then request two or three parallel offers for identical technical content. It is essential that the comparison covers genuinely identical service content, because a cheaper cleaning offer often hides lower frequency or fewer common areas, visible only in the fine print.
It is best to run the review once a year, ideally alongside the annual report, when the building's full cost structure is reviewed anyway. That is the moment when it becomes clear to the supervisory committee which items have grown disproportionately.
One often forgotten detail is the chain of notice periods: if a contract expires in December with a 60 day notice period, the decision must be made by October at the latest, otherwise the building is automatically locked into the old terms for another year.
Merbo reviews the active contracts of every managed building annually and makes concrete, figure based recommendations on where renegotiation or a change of supplier is worthwhile, backed by itemised value comparisons.