Predictably unpredictable

As you can imagine, the 2015-16 snow season was not the same from one part of the country to the next. Looking back at the past season and forward to the next, contractors had a mixed bag of weather and expect more of the same once snow begins to fall again.

Across the country.

For Gary Benson, owner of Dreamscapes Landscaping in the Buffalo, New York, area, the day-to-day conditions were tough to predict.

“This season was very unusual,” Benson says. “It was, by all records, one of western New York’s mildest seasons yet, and despite the light winter, it was difficult to really predict and manage events when they happened. For example, a storm that starts as rain flash freezes, changes to snow and sleet, and by the next day, it’s back to 50-degree temperatures.”

Doug O’Bryan, owner of O’Bryan Grounds Maintenance in Stow, Ohio, saw a rather quiet season.

“This winter had far less snowfall than maybe even the last 20 years, for us,” O’Bryan says. “We look at our total times we service and less about total inches. Really, being a company focused on snow, it’s nice to have a small break every three or four years.”

In the Pacific Northwest, the weather is greatly influenced by the ocean, as well as the mountains. Drastic elevation changes can see one city get pounded by snow, while neighboring cities remain relatively unscathed. Tony Fisher, general manager at Senske Services sees this firsthand and notes that the 2015-16 season differed across the company’s portfolio from Washington to Utah.

“Snow is one of the unpredictable natures of our business. We prepare for the worst and see what Mother Nature delivers.” Tony Fisher, general manager at Senske Services

Overall, based on the snow in Senske’s Spokane, Washington; Coeur D’ Alene, Idaho and Salt Lake City markets, the company’s seasonal numbers finished slightly up, from a business perspective.

For Dreamscapes, myriad factors played into a successful season that could have been even better with a typical Buffalo winter. “We have a mix of contract types and that helps balance the extreme ups and downs,” Benson says. “We also signed a number of new contracts. So, in turn, our numbers were way up – almost 60 percent over last year – but had it been a normal or heavy season, that growth would have easily been another 15 percent.”

O’Bryan foresaw a milder winter, which helped him avoid a big financial hit. “For us this year, the numbers were down a little bit, but only because we took on some extra work … thinking that it may be an average-to-light wintertime workload,” he says. “If we never grew our numbers, (it) would have been way down.”

Managing clients.

Meeting customer expectations, whether it’s a no-snow, light-snow or heavy-snow season, is often a struggle.

Fisher notes that this season’s manageable snowfall made pleasing clients “more attainable.” For Benson, relationships with current customers also were not generally affected, though the recipe for strife was present.

“There was one event that started right around morning rush hour and ran throughout the entire day,” he says. “One inch at a time. It was a pain in the rear-end.

“Customers in those conditions seem to have a missed sense of reality. They don’t understand what we do at night while they sleep, so when those activities are happening real time during the day, they don’t comprehend the ideas of timing and the ability (or inability) to move snow when there are cars and pedestrians moving about. During the day, everything takes five times longer.”

The per-push versus seasonal conundrum came into play for some of O’Bryan’s customers, so communication was key to their happy relationships.

“Some seasonal customers feel they paid a lot for the work we did – or lack thereof – this season, but we always remind them that we base our seasonal (contracts) on an average number of events and not a total. So in the heavy years they aren’t paying a higher amount either.”

Even in the service areas without a lot of snowfall, there was no lack of work for Senske’s staff, Fisher says. “We do Christmas (decorations) as well and kept most, if not all, employees on staff and working. With the low snow in some markets, it made hanging lights much more enjoyable.”

A unique and generous program at Dreamscapes keeps Benson’s employees happy whether they’re logging copious amounts of hours or not.

“We pay our employees a special rate when they are not working to help supplement their earnings,” he says. “These are on-the-books taxable wages, so they – and we – are not negatively impacted by this.”

Crystal ball.

Considering his company’s business model, O’Bryan used this past light snow season to his advantage by looking ahead to the next.

“We are primarily a snow company,” he says. “Probably three-fourths of our business is snow, so these types of years we plan for and use to our advantage by doing work on equipment in the shop and completing tasks that many years we don’t have the time for.”

Out West, Fisher thinks his region is in for an active 2016-17 season based on Senske Services owner Chris Senske’s thoughts.

“We will continue to sell snow work in all markets and look forward to the uprise in snow,” Fisher says, adding that Senske notes that in years of neutral El Niño to La Niña transition, they have large snowfalls in Spokane and Coeur d’ Alene. He’s predicting 60 to 80 inches of snow in the next season.

O’Bryan says his team will look at 2016-17 much like they did this past season.

“We plan for the worst and expect the least,” he says. “We have our long history of data and we do plan for light years in all areas of operations.”

Likewise, Fisher and Senske Services will take a familiar approach: plan big and adjust accordingly. “Snow is one of the unpredictable natures of our business,” Fisher says. “We prepare for the worst and see what Mother Nature delivers.

“You do the best you can. Have equipment ready, have good, trained employees on staff and prepare for the worst. Always build service routes for worst-case scenarios and never for low snowfall. That is when you get caught.”

Slight modifications from one season to the next aren’t uncommon for Benson’s staff. It’s standard operating procedure in their quest for peak efficiency. “We will likely make some small adjustments, mainly on an equipment standpoint,” Benson says. “But in reality, we are constantly tweaking our systems and procedures to make sure we are running 100 percent.”

Without the benefit of a time machine, successfully planning for the unpredictability of winter weather is like shooting at a moving target. Like all snow professionals, Benson wishes he had all the answers.

“If I knew, I would be a millionaire,” he says. “We use just about every tool known to man to help us plan for an event, or those that we are uncertain of.

“I don’t think there are any crystal balls in making the snow industry run without some type of last-minute change or some event that throws everything off course. But we plan and practice, not only for those events we have visibility of, but also for those situations that could come out of nowhere and catch you off guard.”

In the end, preparing for the worst, hoping for the best and managing what happens is a recipe for success, regardless of what Mother Nature offers.