Scheduling & Routing Quick Tricks

Contractors offer tips for scheduling and routing crews effectively.

Lauren Spiers

Published May 14, 2003

Properly scheduling and routing crews can often be a complicated, mind-bending exercise.

Ensuring that every crewmember receives his or her required hours per week, creating efficient routes for crews to follow, contending with weather issues or crewmembers who need to take a sick day – it all spells R-O-L-A-I-D-S for operations managers and company presidents trying to make everything fit together.

Creating efficient and effective routes and schedules really is like putting a puzzle together, and finding those helpful edge and corner pieces first can make the process easier. Here are a few tips contractors offered to help ensure the rest of the pieces all fit nicely.

  • Work one step at a time. “The more [crews] you have, the more difficult it is to route and schedule, but if you just break everything up into little pieces and try not to schedule everybody at once, it’s much easier,” assured John Luznicky, general manager, Createscape Landscaping Service, Mukwonago, Wis. When working on schedules, Luznicky breaks his maintenance division into small “chunks” and does the same with construction, and then schedules one chunk at a time until the whole calendar is filled in properly. “When you’re doing that, you might see that you have to move one block to make room for another, but when you’re going on group at a time it’s easier to make those kind of adjustments.”

  • Keep in touch with clients. “We try to pre-call and notify the client in advance of what our anticipated time is,” mentioned Andrew Morse, operations manager, Belknap Landscape, Gilford, N.H. “They like to get a call from us and know our game plan, and they love it if we’re running behind and we call them to say, ‘We thought we’d be there today but it looks like tomorrow, mid-morning – we’re running a little behind.’” Keeping clients apprised of situations concerning their properties lets them know their account is important to the company and also frees up part of their day since they won’t have to wait around for the landscape crew to arrive.
    Morse also has his crew leaders call account managers at least one hour before they expect to finish work on the job site. This provides account managers with enough time to drive to that site and inspect the work before the crew moves on to the next job. If problems are discovered, the crew can fix them immediately without having to backtrack or go out of its way to get back to the site.

  • Time your routes to increase efficiency. “One way we keep up our efficiency is that we do time studies,” noted Jim Burns, president, Berns Landscape Services, Warren, Mich. “About four times per year, one of our managers will drive the route to make sure we’re doing everything as efficiently as we can and that we’re being profitable on those jobs. We’ll also run the routes if modifications have been made because of new jobs being added.

  • Make sure crews have all necessary equipment. “It’s really helpful to over-equip your crews,” Morse shared. “If they’re going out to do a pruning job, have them bring an extra set of head shears, bring an extra backpack blower, or an extra set of pruners because if something happens to the equipment you have, you’ll have a back-up ready.” Sending a crewmember back to the shop or having someone at the shop bring replacement equipment to the job site can have a huge impact on the efficiency of a given job, and wasted time means lost profits.

  • Don’t overcomplicate the process. Though many landscape and lawn care companies use computer programs to streamline their routing and scheduling processes, others choose to use simple, easy-to-read dry erase boards for their approach. But what happens if weather delays all crews’ work for a day?

    • “When the weather backs everyone up for a day, on a computer program it might be easy just to roll things ahead,” Luznicky acknowledged. “But on a wipe-off board, when you’re off by a day, rather than rewriting everything that’s on the board, just change your dates across the top to get everything updated.”

    With these handy tips, tricks and shortcuts, contractors will surely be able to fill in their scheduling and routing calendars quicker and easier, turning that 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle into child’s play.

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

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