Holiday Lighting: Scheduling Logistics

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – Scheduling holiday lighting work can be challenging, pointed out Plantscape at their Christmas Decorator’s Workshop May 30 through June 1. In order to be effective, scheduling must:

• Be done early
• Be followed up continuously
• Be taken seriously
• Consider many uncertain variables
• Involve advance contingency planning
• Permit flexibility
• Adequately consider equipment, vehicles, supplies, type/numbers of manpower needed
• Involve good/frequent communication

Many factors can negatively affect scheduling, whether controllable or uncontrollable. Plantscape reminded contractors that it’s very important to anticipate what things/circumstances can detrimentally affect Christmas scheduling. Contractors should try to adequately prevent or minimize the effects of these problems, since any significant problems will directly affect a company’s operating costs and reduce profit. Some problems that can arise include weather, personnel, equipment/supplies, communications, coordination, clients and errors.

Finally, Plantscape looked at scheduling basics that can help contractors stay on track throughout the season. These include:

• Before scheduling begins, appoint one full-time leader to be in charge and have overall responsibility for al paperwork, phone calls, scheduling, vehicles and staff. This person should be available the whole season, be well organized, have a strong background with running crews and leading others and be committed to working long hours.
• A full-time assistant coordinator is recommended if there is a large volume of work to avoid burning out the person in charge.
• Early in September or October, post large, monthly wall calendars in your sales department for the months of November, December and January. A maximum number of available man-hours should be chosen and posted on these calendars for each day of the week and weekend.
• Try to sell and coordinate installation of as many Holiday jobs before Thanksgiving as possible to make it easier on your crews.
• Once a client accepts a job, assign it a tracking number and then log it on the wall calendar with chosen date and projected man-hours. Immediately close days that reach their assigned daily limit.
• The Christmas coordinator will work from the tentative posted schedule made by the salespeople and make necessary adjustments and decisions to formulate a final schedule on a weekly basis.
• Subdivide the daily work geographically (north, south, east, west). Group jobs together to minimize travel time. After this, decide on the total number of crews needed each day, crew sizes/mix and assign crew leaders.
• Once a weekly formal/final schedule is developed, it should be posted in a central location. Copies should be distributed to all key people/groups involved.
• Once the final weekly schedule is developed, the next step is to prepare the paperwork packages needed by each crew. Have separate file folders for each crew’s daily paperwork and important photos.
• Make sure only the Christmas coordinator and crew leaders have access to the job files. Without this limitation there is no way to properly control paperwork without the danger of something being lost or misplaced.

The author is Managing Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at nwisniewski@lawnandlandscape.com.