Crew Concerns

Running a landscape maintenance business is easy work, right? You sell the work, you buy some mowers, put a couple of guys in a truck and tell them where to go cut grass. What could be simpler than that?

Unfortunately, many landscape maintenance companies are born because mowing seems so simple. But the reality is that being in the business and succeeding in the business are two vastly different objectives. And success requires a great deal more thought, planning and management than simply selling a service. And that’s even true for something as seemingly simple as mowing someone’s lawn.

Send the right crew with the wrong equipment or the wrong people with the right machines and money goes down the toilet because, at the end of the day, landscape maintenance companies sell their time. Wasted time equals wasted money, and inefficient crew setup tops the list of such offenders for maintenance companies.

THE NUMBERS GAME. Every crew starts with one person. And in an ideal world, Mike Mitchell’s mowing crews wouldn’t include any more people than that one. “I can’t figure out why you wouldn’t want to have crews be as small as people,” related the vice president of operations at Signature Landscape, Olathe, Kan. “A one-man crew is as efficient as you can get, and we’d go with all one-man crews if we could afford the equipment costs.”

Since the equipment expenses would be prohibitive for a slew of one-man crews, Mitchell resigns himself to adding people, but he’s quick to point out that more people doesn’t necessarily equal faster crews. “We’ve noticed through time studies a three-man crew really isn’t any more productive than a two-man crew,” he pointed out, adding that Signature Landscape focuses primarily on commercial properties. “Some of the efficiency issue has to do with downtime or windshield time. Plus, at the site, a well-organized two-person crew doing the different tasks in a specific order lets you divide the work easier.”

Of course, some jobs call for more manpower than a two- or three-man attack. Such larger properties – typically commercial facilities or homeowners’ associations –where a crew spends most or all of its day, may require teams as large as five or six people. And that brings up new concerns.

“The challenge with a big crew is finding a crew leader who can keep people focused and efficient and then get work done himself,” explained Mitchell, adding that crew-cab trucks are a must to tackle larger jobs without spending too much on equipment.

Greg Servello, owner, Servello & Son, Orange City, Fla., witnessed the power of a one-man crew himself last year, and now he’s a believer. “Our one-man crew was really productive last year,” noted Servello, whose company primarily mows small commercial properties and apartment complexes. “He got to know his properties really well, which made him even more productive. But the key is knowing your people. You have to put the right kind of person in this situation – someone who likes working alone and manages himself really well.”

Such task focus is a must for all crews, agreed Mitchell. “Getting the maintenance crews to do anything else is suicide,” he noted.

Nature’s Expressions created its first mowing crews this year to meet customers’ requests for the primarily design/build company to maintain their properties as well. David Miller, one of three partners at the Nicholasville, Ky.-based firm, said the company typically runs two-person crews, but he sees benefits to adding a third crew members. “We go with two people right now because we’re able to get the necessary amount of work done in the allotted time with two people, but the third person can help with customer service issues that need to be addressed or any sales opportunities with the next-door neighbors,” he remarked. “In those instances, it’s nice to have someone who can get off their mower for awhile and talk to them.”

CREW COMPOSITION. Figuring out how many people to put on a crew certainly doesn’t end these deliberations, however. Assigning responsibilities to each crew member ensures that everyone understands his or her specific role and knows who is ultimately in charge.

“You have to have someone who is clearly in charge every time the crew goes to a property,” maintained Mitchell. “First off, that means they’re responsible for driving the vehicle and getting all of the paperwork turned in accurately and on time. But you also want this person to be someone who has some judgment ability so they can decide how to organize the crew on the job. Then we try to leave as much responsibility in their hands as we can.”

In addition, the crew leader is typically the most competent or responsible employee on the crew, and that’s a valuable role in certain instances. “I think you need to have the crew members changing their responsibilities from job to job so they don’t get too bored, but sometimes you need that crew leader to handle particular areas on a property because they’re points of interest or the client is sensitive to them.”

“We have crew leaders and then gardeners or crew members on each crew,” added Servello. “We also try to have two guys with a driver’s license on each truck – one who is the crew leader and one who is learning to be a crew leader. That protects us in case one guy calls in sick.”

Servello encouraged contractors to do whatever necessary to keep a crew together all year for maximum efficiency. “You don’t want to deal with the learning curve of putting new people on a crew in July or August,” he noted. “We all get enough turnover with our employees, so why make it worse by moving people around?”

A key component of crew setup at Servello & Son is getting the most out of the company’s equipment, which led Servello to set up his crews in a manner he never saw until he moved from Massachusetts to Florida. He splits up the maintenance responsibilities between two crews – one does nothing but mow while the other handles all of the additional maintenance work on the job.

“We have a lot of mileage between jobs down here, and on a typical apartment complex we used to send three men out there with two mowers,” he shared. “Those guys would mow for four hours and the equipment would just sit on the trailer for the rest of the time while they trim, edge, blow and so forth. I wanted to get those mowers on more jobs, so we went to a dedicated mowing crew and a detail crew.”

Now, Servello routes his crews so the mowing crew gets started first each day. That crew arrives on the job, mows the areas it can handle with the riding mowers and then moves on to the next job. The second crew follows the same route as the mowing crew and shows up on the job to finish up the work. “We had to add some more men, but our total man-hours are the same and we were able to pick up some more work without adding any extra equipment,” Servello related.

Mitchell said he has seen other companies take this approach, and he suggests they pay particular attention to specifying each crew’s duties. “I would worry about such a setup from an accountability standpoint,” he shared. “If something is wrong, I want to know who is responsible and I don’t want to worry about two crews pointing fingers at each other.”

One lesson that Servello learned about this approach is that you have to be sensitive to how the crews react to the repetitive nature of the work. He also pays attention to the types of jobs they work on. “Two people is the most productive detail crew, but they can get beat up and develop a ‘can’t do it’ attitude on larger, commercial properties,” he explained. “We had one crew assigned to just our biggest jobs last year, but this really beat them up because they were outside all day and they didn’t get those little breaks that come from driving from job to job, which is especially important down here (Florida) in July and August. We’re trying to mix that up more this year.”

Of course, being sensitive to your clients’ needs makes a lot of sense when scheduling crews as well. Miller explained that Nature’s Expressions strives to take care of its residential mowing on Thursdays. “That way we’re mowing later in the week so people can enjoy a freshly cut lawn on the weekend, but we’ve still got Friday in case it rains” he pointed out. “Our residential customers, especially the high-end ones, don’t want to see us in their yard, so they don’t want us there late in the evenings or on the weekends when they’re home.”

The author is Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.