Efficiency Experts

Many contractors know that finding ways to save money can mean looking no further than work orders, schedules and the occasional map. The best plans for saving money are often right under the noses of the account managers who route and schedule maintenance jobs.

But there’s more than one way to route and schedule maintenance crews. While every strategy will not work for everyone, a little time, effort and basic logic can reveal inefficiencies that can be corrected, thereby eliminating extra costs and unnecessary travel time. The key is examining how things are done vs. what could be done, especially with regard to crew size, management, geographical location and expertise. With that information, any contractor can resolve minor time-wasting hiccups that could add up to major savings.

BEST PRACTICES. A majority of contractors use specific practices to ensure efficient routing. These include crew structure, superior employee training and empowerment, and job organization.

Before a crew can be routed to a job, that crew needs to be organized with foresight. Putting a crew together might seem like the easiest thing a contractor will do all day, but those who throw together crews without considering optimal efficiency may be wasting a significant amount of time and money.

Crew Size. Brad Coolidge, account manager, Servello & Son, Orange City, Fla., finds that it’s best to not commit to a standard crew size when the demands of jobs vary from account to account. "The size of the property determines the size of our crews," he says, adding that Servello & Son services properties from 11,000 square-foot residential sites to 88-acre condominium complexes. Therefore, the size of his 21 maintenance crews can fluctuate from two to six members. "The bigger the property, the more people we use."

Mike Lueders, president, Leuder’s Cos., Medfield, Mass., keeps his 10 crews between one and three people, dependant on the job type. "We have a plan for what different types of properties require and the size of crew a particular operation needs," he says. "Highly physical projects with large shade tree pruning or landscaping require a three-person crew. Our fussier jobs, like detailed ornamental pruning usually take a two-person crew."

Two-person crews also work best for Mike Russo, owner, Russo Lawn & Landscape, Windsor Locks, Conn. "We try to keep it down to two technicians, because it’s the most efficient way for us," he says. "That way, each crewmember does half the work."

The two-person team size is popular among many contractors because of its proven efficiency. A recent Lawn & Landscape poll indicates that approximately 55 percent of contractors rely on the two-person crew structure (three-person crews are a distant second at 28 percent). Among the numerous reasons cited for using two-person crews are that it allows for an easier division of work and helps relieve labor-shortage issues by providing multiple small teams rather than fewer large teams. Little evidence is available to support the fact that adding a third person to a crew significantly increases productivity.

Dan Standley, president, Dan’s Landscaping & Lawn Care, Terrytown, La., uses two-person crews and cites the teamwork that evolves from having a dynamic duo take on a job.

In Standley’s crew structure, one worker and one foreman team up for most jobs. "A crew foreman supervises the crews and a crew supervisor oversees all of the crews and goes around to check on them," he explains. "We've learned through consultants and from personally being out in the field doing time management studies, two-person teams give us a synergism and a feeling of teamwork."

Scott Olden, president, The Lawn Mowgul, Dallas, Texas, also uses two-person crews, but says his reasons boil down to simple mathematics. "Three people can do more work than two people on one job, but percentage-wise, two-person crews work out better," he says, adding that with a two-person crew companies save money on labor and still get the job done in an amount of time comparable to a three-person crew. "It makes more sense to have four trucks out with two workers in them than three trucks with three workers because you’re able to hit more jobs in one day with more crews."

Managing Crews. For most contractors, crew size is very important but means little if the crews are poorly managed. For this reason, many contractors find that the best practice involves using an account manager structure to help make the most of manpower. Account manager roles can vary between companies, but the majority of contractors employ them to keep tabs on each property’s specifications and to plot a job’s placement on the routing schedule in the most cost- and labor-efficient way.

Many companies also utilize account managers as liaisons between labor crews and the customer contact. This allows crew leaders and foreman to focus their attention on the job itself – from gathering the proper equipment beforehand to monitoring quality control to keeping other crew members on task and in the range of hours budgeted for the project.

Lueders relates that each of his crews has an account manager assigned to it. In this management structure the account manager becomes an important part of the big efficiency picture because, without an employee dedicated to the task of organizing crews and accounts in a systematic and practical way, money would be lost on "windshield time" as crews spend unnecessary minutes in the truck moving from job to job.

"The account managers start out each week by scheduling one week ahead so every crew knows what they’ll be doing each day," Leuders says. "The schedules will detail where they’ll be working by properties, what types of things they’ll be doing, what major trucks and equipment they’ll be taking and who the crew members will be."

Coolidge acts as one of two of Servello & Son's account managers. "We run the gig as far as all the regular day-to-day operations go," he says. As an account manager, Coolidge and his co-manager decide how many men to put on a crew and where to send that crew.

At Servello & Son, foremen, who also serve as crewmembers, are in charge of site work, but the innovation of the field supervisor ties the company’s entire workday together. "Our field supervisors float from property to property and act as quality control and help us stay efficient," Coolidge says. "We have four field supervisors and they’re assigned anywhere between four and nine stops to oversee each day."

Not all contractors employ a field supervisor, so in many cases it is up to a crew’s foreman to oversee job efficiency. But the amount of responsibility given to a foreman can vary in degree depending on the contractor. For example, Olden says that his crew foremen are almost completely in charge of their job sites and crews. "There’s a general manager who supervises the crews, but, ultimately, we put a lot of responsibility on the driver of the truck," he explains. "Each crew has one foreman and one worker. The foreman tracks complaints and deals with them directly. The next step up in our chain of command is the general manager. Basically, they’re the liaison between the office and the crew."

Russo says that foremen for Russo Lawn & Landscape are also given complete responsibility of their crews and job sites. He adds that they receive little help from management in dealing with day-to-day job trials. "If they need extra fuel mix for two-cycle equipment because they’re going to be using a lot of hedge trimmers, I’m not going to tell them that," Russo says. "It’s the foreman's responsibility. They’re in charge of the site's condition and making sure the job is staying within the budgeted hours," he says.

Routing Right. Even though productivity can be increased in numerous ways, picking up the pace on a job can only do so much if a crew’s schedule has it routed across gaping expanses. Therefore, it’s the scheduling and routing of a crew that can make or break a company’s day-to-day efficiency.

Olden plots his crews’ routes geographically using a map of the city and an eight-zone structure that’s split between commercial and residential. "We have the city divided up into eight zones and each crew is responsible for one zone," he says adding that one strategy that keeps labor hours on budget is that the same crews handle the same areas week after week. He explains that residential jobs are usually left for the latter part of the week so that homes look good for the weekend, while commercial jobs are knocked out on Mondays and Tuesdays so that businesses can look good for the workweek ahead. One benefit of this strategy is that it adheres to most customers' preferences anyway. This means less compromise over scheduling and fewer instances of conflict between customer and account manager.

"We have more zones than we have crews so there are some days that we’re not in certain areas," Olden says, adding that he’s also careful not to over-sell any of the zones. This means closely monitoring the quality and time spent on a particular zone to assure that the energy, labor and man-hours being expended there are worth the time and effort.

Crews at Leuders also are routed geographically, but only after they’ve first been sorted by job type. Because similar application jobs usually require much of the same equipment and supplies, grouping by type can help eliminate the time-wasting process of loading and unloading trucks between jobs.

Lueders also explains that crews are routed in an arrangement that starts them at the job furthest from the shop and works them back in toward the main office, so that as they progress through the schedule, they are incrementally moving back toward home base. This eliminates the largest block of driving early in the day and shortens the distance a crew needs to travel should they need to restock their trucks.

When customers specify what day of the week the require service, Lueders planning strategy allows the routing schedule to be accommodating. A weekly scheduling meeting of account managers recognizes these requests and groups those jobs with other, similar accounts. "Those are our field planning meetings," Lueders says. "They happen on Thursday for the coming week and they’re critical."

An alternative to grouping similar jobs is scheduling according to expertise. Coolidge explains why this works for Servello & Son: "You’ve got people who are stronger than others in some areas. So we first have to define what our employees’ capabilities are," he says, adding that smaller commercial jobs are good for employees who excel in detail-oriented edging and trimming, while the larger commercial accounts also require attention to detail, but an eye for the big picture that is less a priority on smaller jobs.

"I don’t want to take people who are used to taking care of small commercial jobs like a bank, and stick them out in a 480-unit, 50-acre apartment complex," he says. "We like to keep them in the same niche – so maybe we’ll have four or five different bank properties. We’ll group those jobs together and route them so they have the least amount of windshield time possible."

One benefit of this technique, Coolidge says, is that it encourages the development of an expertise in crewmembers. That way, when a new account is added to the schedule, it’s easy to decide who will get it, based on the type of job it is. "We like our people to be specialized in the different types of properties that we service," he says.

Russo explains that, like Leuders, his far-away jobs (between 15 and 20 miles away) are routed so that his crews move back toward the office gradually, stop-by-stop.

ADVANCED TECHNIQUES. Once a crew arrives on the scene to perform its service for a customer, management must rely on the tenacity of its workers to be efficient. However, some contractors explore strategies beyond the basic best practices to help drive efficiency.

High-tech industry innovations like the use of global positioning satellite (GPS) systems or routing software have made quantum leaps in their evolution during the last few years. Many contractors have found that scheduling software can eliminate the frustration of routing by doing a lot of the number crunching and planning for them, while GPS systems improve a manager’s ability to keep tabs on crews with less driving between jobs.

Even though Dan’s Landscaping uses scheduling software to plot its routes, it still employs the decidedly low-tech dry-erase approach to one aspect of crew management, Standley says. "Instead of buying the little dry erase boards that are super expensive, we’ve bought a whole sheet of the stuff, that is almost like paneling," he explains. "We divide it up like a database sheet with a roll-out line maker." Standley then designates a column for each crew, listing their jobs, by day, through the end of that week. It includes their time in and time out on a job, as well as the budgeted time and actual time spent on site. "The key is that we use different colored markers. Green means that you were within budget and red means you were over budget."

It’s a strategy that provides Standley with a fair indicator on which to base raises and bonuses. "I can point to it and say, ‘Well look, you’ve done a great job here.’ It gives them a benchmark and helps them keep track of how they’re doing," he says.

The use of a dry erase scheduling board is common among contractors because it makes color-coding a snap, and charts written in dry-erase ink are easily changeable. The other intrinsic benefit of posting performance evaluations in this way is that it provides a competitive incentive among crew members to step up their efficiency while keeping a keen focus on quality control.

Leuders also knows the power of employee efficiency incentives that don’t cost the customer the quality they expect. "It can be a double-edged sword," he says. "The workers all have a financial reward incentive tied to how well they perform relative to budgeted time, but at the same time they also have a responsibility to call-backs tied into that plan."

In addition to incentives, Lueders has also made use of a satellite office, off the main company site was established by Lueders to help eliminate down time between jobs that are further out in the field and provide a sort of bridge for crews between home-base and some of the more remote properties. "We service jobs as far as 50 miles away from our headquarters, so we installed a satellite office about 30 miles out," he says. "All of the administration stuff still works out of the main office," Leuders explains. "The satellite is similar to a branch. It’s a location where materials are stock-piled and delivered to and there’s a lead person in the field who works out of the satellite daily, handling the paperwork of any crew that is working from the satellite or working in a region the satellite serves."

The author is assistant editor for Lawn & Landscape magazine and can be reached at wnepper@lawnandlandscape.com.