Summer strikes- how to control the planning of grounds maintenance?

The summer holidays are almost over and that can mean one of two things: you need to work extra hard because you’re lagging behind in various tasks due to the holidays, or you can continue with the planning as it was before. This blog is for the work planners who fall under the first category. To prevent you from losing your grip on the quality of the execution of grounds maintenance during the holidays, we’ve come up with some valuable tips which we’ll share with you in this blog.

Different working methods

Holiday planning for public space works mainly affect the long cyclical working method. The short cyclical working method is often easier to transfer to colleagues who don’t know the area or have less experience with the tasks that have to be performed. However, with the long cyclical working method, the holiday planning can become a problem. In this case, you have to deal with delays if the work is not completed or not finished in time.

Let’s fix this, shall we?

How to stay in control of the execution of long cyclical work

If you don’t properly maintain weed growth between paving stones, it will continue to grow (simple but true). This means that you have twice the work after the summer holiday period to get back to the required picture. To ensure that tasks such as weed control are properly executed, the supervisor will prepare a plan of action before their vacation. This will contain an estimation of the work per week, written down in a way that all colleagues can understand. This costs them extra time before their vacation, but it does prevent additional work later on in the process. There are roughly two ways to do this:

• One: the work is described in a Word document or simply with pen and paper. Then, on the (paper) map, the planner indicates where the work needs to be performed and what the points of attention are for each area. Risks: losing the documents or not describing the work clearly enough, leaving workers in the dark of the jobs to be done.
• Two: using smart software, the foreman/supervisor registers the tasks that need to be performed. The daily tasks appear on a tablet and it’s clear to workers what needs to be done. For each task, they can also indicate when they’re done, so that at the end of a day (and vacation period), it’s clear whether all tasks have been performed or not. During the working days, workers can estimate whether they’re able to complete all the tasks, as they have an insight into the tasks that still need to be done that day. Thanks to this method, a foreman/supervisor immediately has a clear overview of the completed tasks after they’ve come back from their vacation.

No more summer struggles

Thanks to smart work planning (and the help of associated software), you can make sure you avoid the well-known summer struggles. In addition, taking over work from colleagues becomes a lot easier, as thanks to tablets, it’s much clearer what the tasks entail. This way, you stay in control of the implementation while doing your colleagues a favour. Are you curious how smart software plays a role in the today’s grounds maintenance? Then download the e-book below.

How did you tackle your vacation planning last summer? And how are you going about the planning now? Share your experiences in a comment.