When to Bid Out Your Commercial Landscape Contract in Flower Mound
If you manage a commercial property in Flower Mound and your landscape contract runs on the calendar year, September is when you should start thinking about it. Not December. Not January, after the current agreement has already rolled over for another twelve months.
I get calls every spring from property managers who are frustrated with how their grounds look and want to make a change. By then the window has mostly closed. They are stuck for another season, or they switch contractors in April and spend the whole growing season watching a new crew learn a property they should have learned in January.
The good news is that the timeline is not complicated. It just has to start early.
The timeline that actually works
Across the industry, year-round grounds contracts are usually put out for bid in October or January, while seasonal-only agreements tend to go out in February and March. If you want a January 1 start, October is your month to issue, which means September is your month to prepare.
Here is how I would lay it out:
September. Walk the property yourself. Decide whether you are renewing, renegotiating, or rebidding. Make notes on what has bothered you all year, because those notes become your scope.
October. Issue the RFP. Give bidders enough context to price the same job.
Late October into November. Site walks. Any contractor bidding a property they have not physically walked is guessing, and you will feel that guess later in change orders.
November into December. Compare the bids, ask your follow-up questions, award the contract.
January 1. New crew starts.
Why a January start matters more here than people think
North Texas gives you a real dormant season, and it is short. Bermuda comes out of dormancy fast, and by April you are on a weekly mow with everything else stacked on top of it.
A contractor who starts January 1 has roughly three months to find every irrigation zone, locate the controller, figure out where the property drains badly after a hard rain, get the shrubs cut back before the spring flush, and learn which beds the tenants actually look at. That is the difference between a property that looks sharp in April and one that spends April catching up.
A contractor who starts in April is behind on day one, and no amount of extra crews fixes that.
Write a scope that makes the bids comparable
The single most common problem I see is a property manager holding four proposals that are really four different jobs. One includes seasonal color, one does not. One includes irrigation repairs, one bills them separately. Then the cheapest number wins and the extras show up in month three.
You do not need a fifty page document. You need to walk the property and name the parts:
Turf areas, with mow frequency broken out by growing season and dormant season
Shrub beds, pruning approach, and how often
Seasonal color, if you want it, and how many rotations per year
Tree work, and whether anything above a certain height is excluded
Irrigation, which deserves its own section below
Litter and debris, including how often and what counts
Hardscape edging, entry features, dumpster enclosures
Any tenant frontage held to a higher standard than the rest of the site
That last one matters in Flower Mound specifically. A retail frontage at Lakeside DFW and a warehouse elevation off Lakeside Parkway are not the same job, and they should not be priced or scoped like they are.
The questions worth asking before you sign
Here's a few questions we suggest you ask anyone looking to provide commercial landscaping service for your business or office space.
Who is responsible for irrigation, exactly?
This is where most commercial landscape contracts get fuzzy and most budgets get surprised. Ask specifically who handles seasonal startup, who handles shutdown, who inspects and how often, who programs the controller, who pays for repairs, and at what dollar threshold a repair needs your approval.
Get the answer in writing. On a large commercial site, irrigation is usually the biggest single line of unplanned spend in a year, and it is the one most often left vague. Our irrigation work is a big part of what we bring to commercial properties for exactly that reason.
Who handles backflow testing?
Commercial irrigation systems in Texas require annual backflow assembly testing by a licensed tester. Confirm whether that is inside the base contract or billed as an extra, and confirm the contractor can actually perform it rather than subbing it out and marking it up.
What is specifically excluded?
Ask for the exclusions list, not just the inclusions list. Everything not named is going to be a change order.
Is the contractor licensed and insured for this work?
In Texas, irrigation work requires a licensed irrigator. Ask for general liability and workers' compensation certificates, and confirm the license numbers rather than taking the letterhead at face value.
Who is actually showing up?
Ask whether the same crew services your property each week or whether it rotates. Consistency is most of what separates a property that looks maintained from one that looks mowed.
How do enhancements get approved?
There should be a clear line between recurring maintenance, repairs, and improvements, and a process for approving anything outside the base scope before work starts.
What is different about Flower Mound
Flower Mound has no shortage of commercial space.
The Lakeside Business District itself covers roughly 1,500 acres and is home to more than 100 businesses, accounting for about half of the town's taxable commercial value.
That is a lot of commercial ground in a fairly concentrated footprint, and it runs the full range:
Class A office, retail and restaurant frontage right on the water at Lakeside DFW, light industrial and distribution space, and a steady pipeline of new development still coming online.
Those properties do not need the same program. A lakefront restaurant row is judged on how it looks at six on a Friday evening. A distribution facility is judged on whether the entrance is clean and nothing is overgrown into the drive aisles. Scoping them the same way means you are either overpaying on one or underserving the other.
The other thing worth naming is the soil. We are on heavy clay here, which affects drainage, compaction in high-traffic turf, and how irrigation has to be scheduled.
Clay does not absorb water quickly, so a system running long cycles is mostly making runoff across your parking lot. Cycle-and-soak scheduling handles it, but only if whoever manages your controller knows to set it up that way.
If you are starting the process now
We handle commercial grounds maintenance for properties across Flower Mound and the surrounding cities, and we are happy to walk a property and put together a proposal, whether or not you end up going with us.
Even if you just want a second set of eyes on a scope before you send it out, that is a call worth having.
If you are getting ready to bid for a January start, reach out and let's set up a walkthrough. September and October fill up fast.
Rob Dilts
Owner
RD Services
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