It's a beautiful spring morning, sometime between 5:30 and 5:45 am. The managers and the area leaders are arriving just ahead of the crews who will report at 6:00am. Gates, doors and key access are all unlocked. Employees are arriving and heading to the classroom/scheduling area in the warehouse for the morning meeting. In the meeting, discussion centers around safety, customer feedback is shared, exceptional performance is recognized, the Tex Lawn way is reinforced, and questions are answered. Fifteen minutes later …….
GENTLEMAN START YOUR ENGINES
Yes it is kind of like that. Once the meeting ends at 6:15, there is a mass exodus from the building to the fleet of trucks. Almost simultaneously the engines roar to life. Lawn maintenance trucks, landscape crew trucks, turf care trucks, irrigation trucks, crew leader trucks, all ready to head to the gate. It really resembles pit road at the beginning of a NASCAR race, and the trucks are numbered. There is only one sponsor decal though… AA Tex Lawn.
I LOVE A PARADE
Okay at 6:20 in the morning, there are no crowd-lined streets, no smell of popcorn, no clowns, and no bands. But the AA Tex Lawn parade has begun. Along Matthews Indian Trail Road, there is a parade of white trucks with orange and yellow logos, one behind the other. The parade begins to thin out as trucks make their way as far north as Mooresville and as far south as Lake Wylie.
YOU HAVE ARRIVED
As the trucks reach their first stops, a choreographed dance, of sort, begins. First, truck location is crucial. The truck needs to be in an area that is as non-intrusive as possible, a safe area, and a convenient area from which crew members can work. There is already a plan of attack worked out for each property including: what type mowers goes to what area of the property, where does the weed eater, the stick edger, etc start, which direction do we work, who finishes first and starts weed spray, who begins blowing, who's picking up debris, etc. It is all thought through and planned before we step on a property. The plan helps us to move through efficiently and end together. This also is crucial to quality. If we are skipping around the property and running over each other, something will get missed, or done wrong. And of course, with the economy the way it is, productivity is more important than ever. The same issues hold true for crews, such as landscape installers. While they do not necessarily do the same task every day, they have a plan before hitting the property, usually developed with the person who sold the job.
SECOND VERSE SAME AS THE FIRST
While we have a myriad of different properties of different types and sizes, the same preparedness holds true for all. Some of our properties may require one or more crews to be on site all day, while some crews may do 5 or more in a day. The size of the property doesn't matter. Each property has a sort of dance that applies to that property. We may have 6 employees on property, or 2. The dance still applies.
LET'S EAT IN TODAY
Lunch time is 11:30, and we eat in. Our crews bring their lunch and eat at the property they are on at that time. There are a few reasons for this. Number one is safety. Have you ever seen a convenience store parking lot at lunch time? What better place to have an accident. Number 2 is productivity. Leaving the property would require loading the equipment, getting off the property, driving in lunch time traffic, and wading through the convenience store congestion, and doing all that in reverse. It is just better to stay put, relax and enjoy your lunch.
THINKING AHEAD
The route is done; it's time to go back to the shop. Are we done? Not yet. As the trucks arrive at the shop, the crew leader has one more duty for the day, get ready for tomorrow. Check the inventory on the truck. Do you need edger blades, weed eater string, trash bags? Do you need to go to the premixed roundup tank to fill your sprayers? Looking at the schedule for tomorrow do you have the right equipment on your truck? Is there a problem with any of the equipment on your truck that needs to go to the mechanic which means you need a loaner piece? Once all that is resolved, the next stop is the gas pump. The truck is fueled if needed; all the equipment is fueled, including gas cans filled with mix gas for the blowers' weed eaters etc. The truck is now ready to go for the following day.
AM I DONE?
Not quite. It's now time to go over what we did today with an area manager or the operations manager. We talk about the time sheet. We go over any notes made at the property. We verify that everything extra was completed. once that is done we hand off paperwork for tomorrow including the schedule, the property notes (every crew has a set of property notes for each property they maintain that contains special instructions, locations of items that need special attention, and customer request), and any task above the normal that need to be completed(customer requests, etc). After clarifications are made to the operations manager, the day is complete. See you tomorrow to start all over again.
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE?
While the above is a simplified version of a day, there are a lot of other things going on at our offices. The production manager is working in his shop doing preventative maintenance, repairs etc. He is making sure all our equipment is in good working order and most importantly… safe. The operations manager and the area managers are on the job sites working with the crews, inspecting quality, planning for tomorrow, and working with client services to insure the customer needs are being met. The client services person is working with customers on issues, making suggestions for improvement, and communicating with the different parties to make sure the customer needs and request are being handled. Our point person in the office is handling the communications, checking the time sheets, making sure proper information is entered in our tracking systems, assisting with proposals, and making sure we are coordinated. Our office manager is overseeing all the above and working on the accounting aspect, contracts, reporting, and assisting the owners. Our project manager is making sure the information is getting out to the customer, (like this blog), handling website and IT issues, and creating print publications. Our owners are overseeing it all, sharing their vision, setting direction, and most importantly… leading. Don't forget our lawn turf techs who is providing turf care, the irrigation techs, and landscaping tech, all handling their respective duties.
Like any other profession, there is a lot going on in the day of a landscaper. There is a lot of support for our operations, which is all geared toward our most important job, serving our clients to make your experience with AA Tex Lawn a great one!
