Public sector

Four bands decide how a New Jersey public building buys its cleaning, and only one of them is a sealed bid.

This is written for a purchasing agent, a school business administrator, or a facilities director at a county or an authority — people who already know the procurement rules better than any vendor page will tell them. So it is organised around the four spending bands, the two statutes that stop agreeing once you look closely, and the handful of points vendors habitually get wrong. Read this part before the rest: Robo Facility Services LLC has not bid on, won or performed a public contract, and holds no bid bond, no performance bond and no Public Works Contractor Registration. The government buildings in the owner's fifteen years are his own work, done for other people, before this company existed. Every statute, rule and notice below was read at the source on 7 September 2026, and where a source is stale or contested that is said in print rather than left to be found.

The number

What number the building in front of you is working to.

There is no single New Jersey bid threshold, and the figure that applies depends on which statute governs the buyer and whether it has appointed a qualified purchasing agent. All four rows below took effect on 1 July 2025 under Local Finance Notice 2025-08.

A municipality, county or authority without a qualified purchasing agent: $17,500 to bid · $2,625 to quoteThe one figure that did not move. The State Treasurer's memo of 1 July 2025 footnotes it as not subject to the Governor's adjustment. Local Public Contracts Law, N.J.S.A. 40A:11-3.
A school district without a qualified purchasing agent: $39,000 to bid · $5,850 to quoteRaised from $32,000 effective 1 July 2025 by Local Finance Notice 2025-08. Public School Contracts Law, N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-3. A district without a purchasing agent therefore buys more than twice as much cleaning before it has to advertise as the borough next door does.
Either one, with a qualified purchasing agent: $53,000 to bid · $7,950 to quoteRaised from $44,000 on the same date. The appointment is made by resolution of the governing body under N.J.A.C. 5:32-4.3; renewal costs $35 and takes 25 continuing-education contact hours for cycles commencing on or after 1 August 2022.
Whatever number that unit's own resolution still says: Check it before assumingThe most useful row here. Local Finance Notice 2025-08 warns that where a unit adopted fixed dollar amounts — including where the resolution appointing a qualified purchasing agent used fixed amounts — the governing body has to act again for the new figures to apply. A unit may also set a lower threshold than the statute allows, and some have.

Only the dollar amounts move: the quotation threshold is fixed at fifteen percent of the bid threshold by N.J.S.A. 40A:11-6.1(a) and 18A:18A-37(a), and adjustment runs on a five-year cycle under 40A:11-3(c) and 18A:18A-3(b), next due around 1 July 2030. A separate two-year schedule governs road, student-transportation and college thresholds, which a building-services contract never touches. One warning worth more than the figures themselves: the Rutgers and Division of Local Government Services Reference Guide, version 2.1 of April 2024, is hosted on nj.gov and is the first authoritative-looking result most searches return — and its Appendix A still prints $44,000, $32,000, $6,600 and $4,800, every one of which was superseded on 1 July 2025. Its statutory text is sound. Its dollar figures are not.

The four bands

Which door the work comes through, and the one that is bolted shut.

01
Below fifteen percent of the threshold
No quotations are required at all, where the contracting unit has authorised that by resolution or ordinance — N.J.S.A. 40A:11-6.1(c) for a local unit, 18A:18A-37(c) for a district. That is under $2,625, $5,850 or $7,950 depending on which row above applies.
02
The quotation band, and the one worth reading twice
From fifteen percent of the threshold up to the threshold, the unit must seek at least two competitive quotations, if practicable — two, not the three that circulates as folklore from State-level practice. Award goes to the quotation most advantageous, price and other factors considered, and the record is filed with the payment voucher. That standard is not lowest price, and it is the one band where a bidder without a public past can be selected on something else. Under N.J.S.A. 40A:11-3(a)(2) a contract above $17,500 but below the threshold may be awarded by the qualified purchasing agent; Local Finance Notice 2025-08 describes that delegation as something to incorporate into the appointing resolution, so read your own.
03
Above the threshold: advertise, and award to the lowest responsible bidder
By resolution of the governing body, after public advertising — N.J.S.A. 40A:11-4(a). Responsible is a defined term, and the definition at N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-2 is the honest frame for any bidder: experience, moral integrity, operating capacity, financial capacity, credit, and the availability of workforce, equipment and facilities. A unit may also disqualify for prior negative experience — an adjudicated failure to perform, a default that required another contractor to finish, a default that sent the unit to the surety, or State debarment at the time of award.
04
The door that is bolted shut for cleaning
Both statutes carry an above-threshold route for extraordinary unspecifiable services on a written determination of impracticability — 40A:11-6.1(b) and 18A:18A-37(b). For a local unit it is closed to this work by N.J.S.A. 40A:11-4.1, which lists Maintenance, custodial, and groundskeeping services at (l) and then closes: any purpose included in the section shall not be considered by a contracting unit as an extraordinary unspecifiable service. That list runs a. through s. and has been amended repeatedly. For a school district there is no equivalent closing sentence in the statute; the bar is regulatory, at N.J.A.C. 5:34-2.2(c), which presumes continuous ongoing services are not extraordinary where written specifications can be prepared, and says that where they can be, they shall be so written.

Two things are commonly said about this and both are wrong: that above the threshold there is no route other than a sealed low bid, and that school cleaning goes to sealed bid full stop. The extraordinary-unspecifiable route exists in both statutes; it is simply closed to this work, and closed by different instruments on each side. How long the resulting contract may run, and what happens when a unit wants to extend one while it rebids, is set out on our page about cancelling a cleaning contract rather than repeated here.

Two statutes

Where the local law and the school law stop agreeing.

Under the Local Public Contracts Law

$17,500 to bid, or $53,000 with a qualified purchasing agent — both effective 1 July 2025 under Local Finance Notice 2025-08.
Custodial services are named at N.J.S.A. 40A:11-4.1(l) and are therefore barred from the extraordinary-unspecifiable route by the section’s own closing sentence.
Prevailing wage, where it attaches, at $19,375 for a contract awarded by a municipal governing body.
Named expressly in the amended definition of a fair and open process at N.J.S.A. 19:44A-20.7.
No statutory ninety-day notice before soliciting bids.

Under the Public School Contracts Law

$39,000 to bid, or $53,000 with a qualified purchasing agent — same notice, same date.
No custodial item in N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-4.1 and no closing bar, so the constraint is the regulation rather than the statute — N.J.A.C. 5:34-2.2(c).
Prevailing wage at $2,000, because a board of education is another contracting unit rather than a municipal governing body.
Not named in that amended fair-and-open definition, which is reported here and not resolved.
The ninety-day notice to the majority representative and to the Public Employment Relations Commission applies.

One boundary and one caveat. Pupil transportation is carved out of the Public School Contracts Law entirely by N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-49.1 and sits at its own threshold under 18A:39-3, so nothing above reaches it. And the two negatives in the right-hand column — no custodial item, no closing bar — are quoted from the Division of Local Government Services’ own compilation of the Public School Contracts Law, which is headed current as of 7 June 2007, while the parallel local section has been amended five times since. That is the weakest load-bearing claim on this page and it is flagged here rather than buried in the sources.

Paperwork

What a bidder has to hold, and the moment each one is due.

Most of what vendors treat as a checklist is conditional, and the conditions are where bids are actually lost. Three of the four rows below turn on something other than the bidder: what the specification asked for, what the contract is worth, and when in the sequence the document is owed.

Business registration: Due before award, not at bid openingN.J.S.A. 52:32-44, as amended by P.L.2009, c.315. The duty attaches where a single contract exceeds fifteen percent of the agency's bid threshold, or where a year's contracts together do — $2,625, $5,850 or $7,950 today. It is due before a contract, purchase order or other contracting document is awarded or authorised. It stopped being a mandatory bid item when P.L.2009, c.315 deleted subsection f from 40A:11-23.2. In an emergent situation the proof follows within two weeks of execution, and no payment is made until it arrives. The aggregate limb is the trap: a vendor doing repeated small jobs for one town can cross the line without any single job crossing it.
The five mandatory bid items: When required by the bid plans and specificationsThat opening condition is part of the rule and belongs in the same sentence as the list. N.J.S.A. 40A:11-23.2 names a bid guarantee, a certificate from a surety company, a statement of corporate ownership, a listing of subcontractors, and an acknowledgement of addenda. Proof of business registration was a sixth item until 2009. An item is a fatal defect when the specification called for it, and not otherwise.
Bid security and bonding: For services, a specification choice rather than a commandN.J.S.A. 40A:11-21 makes a guarantee mandatory only for work on a building or structure over $100,000; for any other advertised contract a contracting unit may provide that a bidder furnish one, at ten percent of the bid, capped at $20,000, at the bidder's option by certified check, cashier's check or bid bond. N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-24 is permissive on its face for every contract. The sharp edge is 18A:18A-25: where the specifications call for a surety bond, a certificate from a surety company is due at bid time — so the surety relationship has to exist before the bid, not after the award.
Affirmative action and equal employment opportunity: Three documents, after notification of award and before executionN.J.A.C. 17:27-3.5(a)1 sets the requirement and the timing; 17:27-4.3(b) directs the agency to rescind the award on failure. Read 17:27-4.5's four-or-fewer-employee exemption carefully — it runs to subcontractors, while 17:27-4.1 says all vendors, so a prime bidder with one employee has no exemption. The fee and the validity period are at 17:27-4.6, not 4.5. This chapter text was adopted 4 August 2017 and the chapter was readopted in 2024, so check the current Register before relying on the fee.

What a certificate of insurance, a licence and a bond each actually prove — and the six checks anyone can run on a bidder without asking the bidder’s permission — are set out on our credentials page. The company completed its New Jersey business registration with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services on 27 August 2026, under DLN I0000249172. The Business Registration Certificate itself — the separate document N.J.S.A. 52:32-44 has a contracting agency collect before it awards — is not yet in hand and is not claimed here.

Wages

Cleaning a public building is not public work, and the definition says why.

Cleaning a public building is not, by itself, public work

The Prevailing Wage Act defines public work at N.J.S.A. 34:11-56.26(5) as construction, reconstruction, demolition, alteration, custom fabrication, repair work, maintenance work, painting and duct cleaning done under contract and paid for from public funds. Routine janitorial service is not on that list. The Legislature had to name one narrow cleaning activity — duct cleaning — to reach it, which is a good indication of how narrowly the list is read.

Maintenance work has two limbs, and the second one is the one to watch

The same section defines maintenance work as the repair of existing facilities where the size, type or extent is not thereby changed or increased, and also as work on a maintenance-related project that exceeds in-house capability, requires the solicitation of bids, and has an aggregate value exceeding $50,000. A specification that bundles floor refinishing, painting or repair into a project of that shape can reach the definition even though the routine cleaning would not.

The registration follows the work, not the buyer

The Public Works Contractor Registration Act attaches at N.J.S.A. 34:11-56.51 to a contract for public work, or for work where prevailing wage is required by any other provision of law, and the labour department describes it as applying to construction-related public works. Registration costs $500 for one year, or $750 for two where the contractor has been continuously registered for the two preceding consecutive years without violations. The $300 and $500 figures still circulating, including on the department's own form MW-20, were superseded on 18 January 2022.

Two edges this page leaves open rather than answers

Whether the any other provision of law tail in 34:11-56.51 reaches a State building services contract was not resolved by anything read for this page. Neither was the point at which a bundled janitorial specification becomes a maintenance-related project. Both are questions to put to the awarding agency and to the labour department before bidding, not to a website. Separately: where prevailing wage does attach to a local contract the threshold is $19,375 for one awarded by a municipal governing body and $2,000 for every other public body, which puts a board of education on the lower figure.

A different statute reaches State-owned and State-leased buildings specifically, sets wage floors for building services there, and defines those services by name. It is the State Building Service Contracts Act, and it is set out on our Bergen County commercial page rather than repeated here. Nothing in this section should be read as saying no wage law applies to a local janitorial contract: the minimum wage, the Wage Payment Law and the Wage and Hour Law all operate, and anything beyond them is whatever the awarding unit writes into its own specification.

Contributions

Pay-to-play, and the town ordinances that no longer exist.

An advertised bid is a fair and open process, and the paperwork does not attach

The Elections Transparency Act, P.L.2023, c.30, approved 3 April 2023 with its own section 38 setting the effective date at 1 January 2023, rewrote this area. The prohibition at N.J.S.A. 19:44A-20.5 excepts a contract awarded pursuant to a fair and open process, and section 13 makes public bidding or competitive contracting under the Local Public Contracts Law a fair and open process expressly. The disclosure at 19:44A-20.26 likewise excepts a contract required by law to be publicly advertised for bids, and does not apply where a public emergency requires immediate delivery. The statute also closes with its own sentence: the decision of a public entity as to what constitutes a fair and open process shall be final.

A gap on the face of the amendment, reported rather than resolved

That fair and open definition names the Local Public Contracts Law. It does not name the Public School Contracts Law. What follows for a district is not settled by anything read here, and it is set out this way rather than answered in either direction.

The town ordinance in the bid package may no longer exist

Section 25 of the same act expired local pay-to-play ordinances and section 37 repealed N.J.S.A. 40A:11-51. Many are still posted on municipal websites and still bound into bid packages. The window where the disclosure genuinely bites is a contract above $17,500 awarded without a fair and open process — which is a real window wherever a unit has a qualified purchasing agent and a $53,000 threshold.

Finding it

How the work becomes visible, and how far ahead.

In a newspaper, ten days ahead, and not on a Monday

N.J.S.A. 40A:11-23(a) requires advertisement in the official newspaper of the contracting unit — a paper the unit designates, per the definition at 40A:11-2(28) — not less than ten days before the bid date, and the bid may not be received on a Monday or on the day directly after a State or federal holiday. The school rule is at 18A:18A-21(a) in identical terms, with non-construction addenda published no later than seven days before, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays excepted, under 18A:18A-21(c)(1). There is no website-posting requirement in that section.

The single searchable database the statute ordered was never built

N.J.S.A. 40A:11-23.4 directs the Division of Local Government Services to establish one searchable database of procurement opportunities. The Division's own reference guide prints the section with an editor's note stating that its provisions have never been implemented. So there is no one place to watch, and the practical answer is the official newspaper of each unit plus each unit's own site.

Cooperative purchasing is a real route, and its own contracts are bid

A district can buy cleaning three ways: its own bid, a State contract under N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-10, or a cooperative or joint agreement. A place on a cooperative's master contract is itself won by sealed bid, so it is a route in rather than a way around one. Worth knowing that it is supervised: in January 2026 the Office of the State Comptroller directed the Educational Services Commission of New Jersey not to renew or extend two cooperative pricing contracts past their 31 March 2026 expiry, and not to reprocure them by a similar process without approval, having found the solicitations impermissibly sought to award multiple contracts to multiple vendors through a single low-bid solicitation. One of the two was for custodial supplies — goods, not cleaning labour.

Why school custodial work is visible more than a quarter ahead

A school district, educational services commission or county college cannot subcontract work done by a represented unit during the term of a collective bargaining agreement at all, and afterwards only with written notice to the majority representative and to the Public Employment Relations Commission not less than ninety days before the employer requests bids or solicits proposals, together with an offer to meet, consult and negotiate over the impact — N.J.S.A. 34:13A-45 and -46, added by L.2020, c.79 effective 11 September 2020. No equivalent statute governs a municipality. That clock is why a district's custodial solicitation is visible so far ahead, and why supplemental and event work is the realistic first opening for a firm without a public past.

Schools only

What a school building adds that a borough hall does not.

Criminal history review runs through the district, not through the vendor

N.J.S.A. 18A:6-7.1 names custodian and school maintenance worker among the covered positions, and approval is per individual through the Department of Education's Office of Student Protection. For contractors and vendors who have not been assigned codes by that office, the educational facility processes the individuals, and the applicant pays the fees — the employing facility or vendor may reimburse. There is no company-level clearance to hold, and none is claimed here.

Who employs the person in the building is a separate question with its own answer

New Jersey applies the ABC test to the contractor rather than to the building, and the consequences of getting it wrong land on the property. That test, the 2026 rulemaking and the department's stop-work powers are set out on our page about the ABC test rather than restated here.

The classification question behind that second point — the ABC test, the regulations that became operative in October 2026, and what a stop-work order does to a building mid-contract — is on our ABC test page.

Questions

What a purchasing agent asks a bidder they have never heard of.

Do you have a Business Registration Certificate?

Not yet, and the distinction matters enough to answer precisely. New Jersey business registration was completed with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services on 27 August 2026 under DLN I0000249172. The Business Registration Certificate is a separate document obtained from that registration, and it is what N.J.S.A. 52:32-44 has an agency collect before it awards — before award, rather than at bid opening. It is not in hand and it is not claimed anywhere on this site.

Can you post a bid bond?

No. There is no bid bond and no performance bond. What decides whether that ends the conversation is the specification rather than the statute: for services, N.J.S.A. 40A:11-21 and 18A:18A-24 leave security to the contracting unit, and 40A:11-21 makes a guarantee mandatory only for work on a building or structure over $100,000. Where specifications do call for a surety bond, 18A:18A-25 wants a certificate from a surety company with the bid, which means the relationship has to exist beforehand.

Is this contract prevailing wage?

Usually not, and the definition is why. Public work at N.J.S.A. 34:11-56.26(5) is construction, reconstruction, demolition, alteration, custom fabrication, repair, maintenance work, painting and duct cleaning. Routine janitorial service is absent from that list. It changes where a specification bundles refinishing, painting or repair into a maintenance-related project over $50,000 that requires bids. Where prevailing wage does attach locally, the threshold is $19,375 for a contract awarded by a municipal governing body and $2,000 for every other public body.

Do we need pay-to-play forms from you?

Not on an advertised bid. N.J.S.A. 19:44A-20.26 excepts a contract required by law to be publicly advertised for bids, and section 13 of P.L.2023, c.30 makes Local Public Contracts Law bidding a fair and open process expressly. The disclosure bites above $17,500 where an award is made without a fair and open process. If the package still contains a local pay-to-play certification, note that section 25 of the same act expired local ordinances and section 37 repealed N.J.S.A. 40A:11-51.

Are your people cleared to work in a school?

There is nobody to clear yet, and there would be no company-level clearance to hold in any event. Approval under N.J.S.A. 18A:6-7.1 is per individual through the Office of Student Protection, and where a vendor has not been assigned codes the educational facility processes the individuals. Anyone assigned to a school building would go through that before a first shift.

You have never done a public job. Why would we take the risk?

That is the right question and it deserves the statute rather than a reassurance. Responsible is defined at N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-2 as experience, moral integrity, operating capacity, financial capacity, credit, and the availability of workforce, equipment and facilities — and a unit may disqualify for prior negative experience, of which there is none here in either direction. In the quotation band the standard is the quotation most advantageous, price and other factors considered, which is where a unit has the most room to weigh those things. Above the threshold it is lowest responsible bidder, and responsible is the word doing the work.

This company

The company behind this page, and what it cannot do yet.

Robo Facility Services LLC was formed in New Jersey on 26 August 2026, entity 0451519106, and is run from Bergen County. The company is taking on its first accounts now. Everyone who works on a site will be a W-2 employee of this company; no part of the work is subcontracted. General liability, workers' compensation and the bond are bound before the first shift.

Public contracts bid, won or performed: NoneNot one, at any level of government, under this entity. That is stated here rather than left for a purchasing agent to discover at reference-check.
Bid bond, performance bond, Public Works Contractor Registration: None heldWhere a specification requires any of them, this company cannot meet it today, and says so before anyone spends time on a package.
New Jersey business registration: Completed 27 August 2026DLN I0000249172, with the Division of Revenue and Enterprise Services. The Business Registration Certificate itself is a separate document from that registration and is not yet in hand.
Insurance and bonding: Not yet boundThere is a general liability quote whose own text says it is not a final quote nor an offer of insurance, and whose classification covers commercial offices only. Nothing on this site describes coverage as in force.
The owner's years, which are his and not the company's: More than fifteenAcross offices, medical and dental suites, warehouses and distribution centres, post-construction work, homes and government buildings, all of it done for other people before this company existed. No client, building or reference from that work is named here, because none of it belongs to this company.

Sources

Every statute, notice and rule, and where it was read.

Citations are given so each point can be checked rather than trusted. Two of the entries below exist because the most convenient source for this material is out of date, and a page written for procurement officers is judged on whether it says so.

The thresholds.Division of Local Government Services, Local Finance Notice 2025-08, issued 7 July 2025, read in full; and the Treasury Division of Purchase and Property memo “Adjustment To Public Bidding Thresholds — 5 Year Schedule” of 1 July 2025 for the amounts. Disclosed: that Treasury table cites the local non-agent row to N.J.S.A. 40A:11-32, which is not the bid-threshold provision; the figures here are cited to 40A:11-3 and 18A:18A-3 instead.
The Local Public Contracts Law and its rules. N.J.S.A. 40A:11-2, -3, -4, -4.1, -6.1, -21, -23, -23.2 and -23.4, with N.J.A.C. 5:34-2.2 and 5:32-4, read as printed in the Rutgers and DLGS Reference Guide, version 2.1, April 2024, on nj.gov. Disclosed: that guide is used here for statutory and regulatory text only. Its Appendix A is headed as of 1 July 2023 and every dollar figure in it was superseded on 1 July 2025.
Chapter laws, on the Legislature’s own site.P.L.2023, c.252 s.6 rewriting 40A:11-3; P.L.2009, c.315 amending 40A:11-23.2 and 52:32-44; P.L.2023, c.30, the Elections Transparency Act, read in full including its section 38 effective date and its sections 13, 25 and 37; and P.L.2015, c.95 s.25 for the amendment to 40A:11-4.1(l).
The Public School Contracts Law.N.J.S.A. 18A:18A-2, -3, -4, -4.1, -10, -21, -24, -25, -37 and -49.1, read from the Division of Local Government Services’ compilation, which is headed current as of June 7, 2007. The two negatives drawn from 18A:18A-4.1 — no custodial item, no closing bar on the extraordinary-unspecifiable exemption — rest on that snapshot, while the parallel local section has been amended in 2009, 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2022.
Affirmative action. N.J.A.C. 17:27 as published by the Division of Purchase and Property, chapter text adopted 4 August 2017 and readopted in 2024. The readoption notice was not read in primary form, so the fee and validity period should be checked against the current New Jersey Register. The chapter carries its own cross-reference error at 17:27-4.2(a)2, which points at 4.5 for a certificate provision that sits at 4.6.
Wages and public works.N.J.S.A. 34:11-56.26(5) from the Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s Prevailing Wage Act material; prevailing-wage thresholds from Local Finance Notice 2025-08 at page 5, which attributes them to Local Finance Notice 2024-18 current as of 1 July 2024. N.J.S.A. 34:11-56.51 was read through a commercial republisher marked current as of 1 January 2024 and is cited as such; registration fees come from the department.
The school-side statutes.N.J.S.A. 34:13A-44 to -46 read from the Public Employment Relations Commission’s own publication with its L.2020, c.79 credit line. N.J.S.A. 18A:6-7.1 read through a commercial republisher current as of 1 January 2024, with the Office of Student Protection’s own guidance read live.
The Comptroller’s letter. Office of the State Comptroller, letter to the Educational Services Commission of New Jersey on non-compliance with public contracting laws, posted 16 January 2026, file numbers 25-258 (custodial supplies) and 25-271 (modular buildings). Both contracts were directed to end at their 31 March 2026 expiry, a date now past.
What is not asserted here.Whether the “any other provision of law” tail in 34:11-56.51 reaches a State building services contract was not resolved by any source read. Neither was the point at which a bundled janitorial specification becomes a maintenance-related project. The pay-to-play gap — that the amended fair-and-open definition names the local law and not the school law — is reported as it stands and resolved in neither direction. Robo Facility Services LLC has not bid on, won or performed a public contract, and holds no bid bond, no performance bond and no Public Works Contractor Registration. The government buildings in the owner's fifteen years are his own work, done for other people, before this company existed.
This company’s own documents.Certificate of Formation, certificate number 4333272906, 26 August 2026; and the New Jersey business registration confirmation filing, DLN I0000249172, 27 August 2026 — which is the filing receipt and not the Business Registration Certificate. Both are held and produced on request rather than published here, because they carry personal identifiers.

Read on 7 September 2026. Everything above is what the statutes, rules and notices below say. It is not legal advice, and it is not advice about any solicitation, none of which anybody here has read. Two source-age problems are worth stating plainly rather than leaving in a footnote: the most authoritative single compilation of the local law prints thresholds that are two years out of date, and the only available compilation of the school law is eighteen years old.