On-Site Operations

Turning a large account into an on-site operation is not based on the size of the property or the amount of revenue it brings in, according to Dan Foley.

As president of D. Foley Landscape, Walpole, Mass., and one who has successfully provided an on-site maintenance service at his company since 1994, Foley should know. Although Foley has only four main on-site properties, the work amounts to 47 percent of the company’s total maintenance revenues.

"We were becoming more and more successful with our larger clients and adding this service just played into our strengths as a company," Foley enthused.

If contractors have customers who have special needs, desire a vast amount of services or have many acres of landscape that need to be maintained and detailed, they could be candidates for on-site service. Before rushing out to sell on-site work, however, contractors needs to look at all areas of their company and the pros and cons of on-site maintenance.

WHO QUALIFIES? A client needs to have certain characteristics to warrant on-site service.

"Our on-site operations are full five- to six- day endeavors," Foley explained. "We have site managers that report directly to the site 38 to 39 weeks out of the year. The sites are set up with trucks and maintenance equipment that are custom-tailored to the site’s needs."

Foley’s four on-site clients include one college and three large condominium properties. He said he tries to reach two different markets when selling his on-site maintenance service: properties that already have an in-house grounds crew and have trouble managing it and clients where work is getting busier and the property manager isn’t handling it well. These types of clients include commercial and industrial clients, condominiums and apartments and private colleges and high schools.

Commercial clients are the best targets to sell on-site service to because they have the acreage necessary to warrant the daily attention – at least 12 acres of turf, Foley said, mentioning his smallest on-site client’s property size.

"If there’s not enough acreage to mow, then the employees can get lost in the detail work and get bored," Foley said.

SELLING ON-SITE WORK. When selling on-site work, contractors need to communicate and put to contract an agreement of exactly what is expected of them and what services are included in their on-site service.

Jeff Sousa, president, Sousa’s Landscape Management Co., Bermuda, has two large resorts as on-site clients. The Coral Beach Resort, the larger of the two at 75-acres, requires three people five days per week and an arboriculturist and an assistant arboriculturist two days per week due to the amount of trees located on the property. The Elbow Beach Resort is a 55-acre property (about 30 acres maintained), yet there is more detail work required on the property, including seasonal color, hardscaping and interiorscaping. Therefore, this site requires four employees who report there seven days per week.

For Sousa, selling these services was simple. When he was 18 years old, Sousa worked with the grounds crew at Elbow Beach Resort. When he was ready to sell his on-site service, he simply called up his old manager and asked if he could come in and offer him a proposal. He knew from keeping in touch with the resort that the manager was disappointed in his current in-house staff because, as Sousa explained, they had become "complacent, unionized and lacked professionalism ."

"We went in and cleaned the place up," Sousa enthused. "The resort next door – The Coral Beach Resort – noticed our work and soon after became another one of our on-site clients."

Now, Sousa said that 30 to 40 percent of his full-service landscape company’s revenues come from his on-site work with just these two resorts.

Key points Sousa brings up while selling his on-site service include having professional and knowledgeable people, including certified arboriculturists and horticulturists, on staff; the use of professional, commercial equipment and new products, including zero-turn mowers, growth regulators, the latest pesticides, etc.; daily, uniformed visibility; and a price that is comparable to what potential clients were paying their in-house staff, yet without the hassle of daily employee management or picking out and purchasing equipment for them.

"The larger resorts are sold on outsourcing their landscaping work because they don’t have to worry about things like equipment," Sousa pointed out. "We go to the general managers at large resorts and tell them we can do the job better and more economically. We guarantee our physical presence and we become an ‘in-house’ team with pagers and cellular telephones so that the customer knows how to get a hold of these employees and gets to know who they are working with."

Foley, on the other hand, manages his four on-site properties a little bit differently. All four sites have one site manager who takes care of everything in the contract and has direct contact with the customer. In the spring, when things get a little busier, the site manager doesn’t do all of the work by himself, but he or she is responsible for dispatching a crew from the home office to assist with different spring tasks. Two of the four sites, which are larger in size, warrant a site manager and site assistant manager based on need and schedule at different times of the year.

According to Foley, he is one of only three landscape contractors who do on-site work in Massachusetts. So, a challenge of selling on-site work for him is educating his customers on what an on-site service constitutes, and then getting them past the disbelief that only one or two people can do all the work. That’s when selling the use of professional commercial equipment can be beneficial, Foley said.

EQUIPMENT & ON-SITE STORAGE. A natural part of on-site work is being able to store equipment on the property. Foley said a part of figuring out whether a client is a good candidate for on-site work is finding out if they have storage space for contractor use or can provide space on the landscape for a ground-level storage container.

"At our college site, they have a facilities garage and they gave us one of six bays," Foley pointed out as an example.

Sousa’s crew was provided with the existing grounds crew’s storage area with electricity. The area holds all his equipment for the site, such as chippers, shredders and backhoes. There is also space for a trailer on-site and room to store trucks.

"We keep the basic equipment on-site and then bring in other stuff as needed, such as a crane," Sousa said.

Both Sousa and Foley buy new equipment to suit the specific needs of the on-site client, whether it be investing in walk-behind mowers for a condominium’s small, tight areas or large zero-turn riding mowers for open areas on a college campus.

Foley said he can usually save money on the trucks used exclusively for on-site properties.

"We’ll either buy a used truck or retire one from our mobile fleet with high mileage," Foley explained. "Trucks that are getting up there in miles will last longer on an on-site property because they are only driving maybe 2,000 miles per year because they’re remaining on one site. The same works for some equipment as well. If an on-site property warrants a walk-behind for tight areas, yet I know it will only get about two hours of use per week, I’ll retire one from my mobile fleet and replace it with a new one there instead of buying new for the on-site property."

Buying new equipment can get costly, but Foley said with on-site work, it’s not a problem.

"The job will work out if it is large enough and it is priced right," he advised.

Having the on-site client provide telephone access is also helpful, Foley said. If not, cell phones, pagers and two-way radios can also be used for communication.

"Our college site gave the site manager an extension on campus with voicemail so we keep in touch with him that way," Foley noted. "Soon, they may also give us a computer with email access."

CHOOSING YOUR WORKFORCE. All on-site properties need a site manager, according to Foley and Sousa.

"My experience is that there’s a greater chance that detail work may go unnoticed when you send out a two- or three-person crew," Foley said. "One site manager will take a higher ownership of the property and a higher level of accountability. "

The disadvantage to having strictly on-site employees is that a contractor may be sacrificing some of his or her all-stars because those are the people who are being promoted to site manager positions, Foley said.

While Foley rotates site managers into different positions every three years to keep them from getting "stale," Sousa doesn’t have a limit on how long the site managers stay on a property because of the relationship already built with the client, but he does rotate the rest of the site staff every three months so they don’t become complacent or feel separated from the company.

The site manager position, Foley pointed out, isn’t for everyone. The right candidate should have structure and organization.

"Site managers need to be confident enough to do the work on their own," Foley explained. "People who can’t function without daily camaraderie are not good site manager candidates."

The main difficulty with expanding on-site services, according to Foley and Sousa, is the lack of good employees.

"You always need to get the people first and then sell the work while they are in training – not the other way around," Sousa stated. "Before we expand our on-site work, we need to find more good people."

The author is Assistant Editor at Lawn & Landscape magazine.

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