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An Easy Winter? A Fallacy in the World of the Landscaper

Surely one could say that it has been a different sort of winter thus far: only a couple of salt applications; merely one plowable snow-fall; record-braking Christmas Day high temperatures; and a bunch of confused vegetation that does not know whether to stay asleep or start blooming again. If nothing else, it is a sign that the way in which we approach our winter maintenance practices each year changes. As year-round landscape maintenance contractors, we must keep up with the changing times in order to ensure that we are always providing value to our clientele.

Long-gone are the “like clock-work” times when November 15th would hit and the fall clean-ups would instantly end… the weather and the season changes are just not that predictable. Unfortunately, we do not get to communicate with Mother Nature to reconcile the calendar dates with the reality of what she is actually going to do!

As much as the thought of the winter season gives the majority of us the chills, the reality for folks in our business is that we actually do want it to happen like clock-work. It is very complicated to manage seasons that bleed into one another. The majority of condominium maintenance contracts are all-inclusive and all-season. In other words, condominiums typically pay us the same monthly landscape maintenance rate every month. As pleasant as it may be to still see bare ground in December, there is a costly reality for us… continuous fall clean-ups that do not end! As conscientious landscape maintenance providers, we do not stop our weekly site visits until we are actually settled into the winter season – typically after a considerable snowfall blankets the ground. Can you imagine a landscape company that did not make regularly scheduled weekly visits in the summer months? That negligence would be grounds for dismissal with cause. Despite that our contracts outline that the winter season begins November 15th, we are always conscientious of the perception of things. A mild November 15th, like the one we had this year, is perceived as too early to stop regularly scheduled weekly visits. So for that reason, we continue to treat it as if it were like any other part of the regular season. And because fall clean-ups are expensive (labour intensive, fuel intensive, and costly disposal fees all add-up quickly), fall clean-ups that are dragged out longer than they should be can cause significant damage to the bottom-line.

In order to continually outperform our competition, we work hard to retain the best and most reliable staff in the industry. The only way to do this from our experience is to pay staff a consistent, competitive, and most importantly reliable salary to be on-call – this ensures that staff who may not be physically working a full work-week throughout the winter months have a base pay that they can rely on to put food on their families’ tables and enjoy a quality of life that they deserve. So continuing on the topic of costs associated with a never-ending fall season, it is a financial burden to pay hourly staff to clean-up leaves while also paying winter salaries – all the while at no cost increase to the monthly landscape rate.

In addition to the financial challenges, there are also logistical ones. During these seasons that cannot make-up their minds, it is not uncommon to be cleaning leaves one morning and then plowing and salting the very same evening. To take a rig that is set-up to be cleaning and transporting leaves and transform that into one that is meant to manage snow\ice maintenance, is no easy feat. This process is very thorough and time-consuming if you want to ensure that it is done properly. Our full-time in-house mechanics feel the stress of the inconsistent season changes just as much as the rest of the organization does.

With all of the above said, we are consistently reminding ourselves that condominium owners are paying maintenance fees and deserve value for their hard earned money. If we had a nickel for every time we overheard dialogue that included: “I pay maintenance fees, and for what?”, we could cover all of our clients’ maintenance fees and then-some! Anyone without insight into the behind-the-scenes would probably agree with the sentiment that they are paying for nothing. We take these sentiments as our responsibility to demonstrate to our clients that our costs are very justified and there is a great deal of work happening behind-the-scenes although it may not snow on exactly the first day of the winter contract. As such, it is important to think of your landscape maintenance fees as an annual payment, broken into equal instalments. This may help to calm the nerves when one is concerned that they are not getting their “daily” value from their maintenance fees because we are not physically plowing the snow every single day.

Any good winter landscape maintenance contractor is putting the fees that you pay them to good use… remember that equipment is rented for the entire season, not just for each storm; reliable personnel are paid for the entire season, not just for each day and night that they physically shovel snow. Good contractors also site check daily to ensure that isolated areas are not freezing-up. Another thing to remember is that you pay us to assume your liability – it is in our best interests to ensure that we are doing our jobs to limit the potential liability from slips and\or falls on your properties.

Please enjoy a safe and happy winter season.

This article was featured in the Condo Confidential Magazine Winter 2016 Issue

“An Easy Winter? A Fallacy in the World of the Landscaper” by Jon Agg & Adam Watson, Pristine Property

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The NITTY and the GRITTY about SNOW

From the PRISTINE PROPERTY MAINTENANCE TEAM

Snow maintenance is a tough business.  Let’s face it, most folks hate the cold, the snow, and the ice!  It is not that people typically hate the idea of a serene picture perfect winter landscape: a beautiful fresh blanket of fluffy white snow; a secluded country side; and the comfort of a cozy chair and a warming fireplace. However, this is not our typical winter day. Winter’s agitation comes from the more common reality: awaking at six in the morning to prepare for the already stressful day ahead; looking out the front window and seeing ten centimeters of snow on the car and driveway; bundling up the kids and yourself for the negative twenty degree weather and wind-chill; running outside in your PJs to warm up the car that does not want to start; realizing that you have not yet put the snow tires on and should have done that last weekend; and a commute that takes four times as long as it should. Does this sound relaxing to anyone?  This is where the very thought of the “snow plow guys” make people cringe – we are to what a lot of people actually associate winter.

Pristine Property Maintenance Limited, has been servicing the condominium market since 2005. During this time, Pristine has grown from servicing one single condo townhouse development to well over one-hundred-and-fifty.  Oh the stories we could share about the roads (sometimes bumpy) we have plowed! Throughout our history, we have hit several milestones worthy of celebration – and many lessons have been learned along the way.  Today, we are a stronger company for the simple reason that we are committed to never making the same mistake twice.

The most important lesson of all has been the importance of preparation – a fundamental that we drive into everything we do as a leader in our industry. As such, snow and ice has become our business and it is something that we take very seriously.  The logistical challenges of managing an operation this size is one that does not get a lot of consideration from people outside of our realm. What many people fail to realize is the time that goes into preparing for a Canadian winter. The equipment necessary to handle the amount of snow and ice we experience each year requires a lengthy preparation process.  One cannot simply walk into a dealership on the first day of November and say “hey, some contracts came in and now I need ten snowplows and ten trucks and I need them by Friday.”  This caliber of equipment takes months to order and often comes from different countries across the globe.  Once the equipment lands in our shop, there are numerous considerations that still need to be made, such as up-fitting (including installing plows, salters, dump inserts, GPS systems, truck bed liners, safety lights and beacons, and reverse cameras). These additional considerations can often add-on several additional weeks and as such, we typically need to make these arrangements in July or August in order to be prepared for mid-November.

Part of our success in the snow and ice business is due in part to “our commitment to our clients through our commitment to our equipment”. We have a very rigorous maintenance schedule and a very thorough program to ensure that our equipment is the best, the most reliable, and the safest on the road. We have a very specialized formula that we use for ordering, maintaining, and retiring equipment – this is a system which we have heavily invested in perfecting through some impressive and uniquely specialized asset management hardware and software.  The logistics of such a program means that we must be prepared – more than six months in advance.  Lacking proper preparation and lacking the foresight of such, is a road that we have been down in our earlier years and a lesson from which we have learned an incredible amount.  We are a large and successful provider because we are prepared and therefore experience little downtime thus putting us in a much better standing ahead of our competition.

Toronto / GTA

381 Westney Rd S
Ajax, ON
L1S 6M6, Canada

Phone: 416-737-8978

Kawarthas

1622 Hwy 7
Lindsay, Ontario
K9V 4R1

Phone: 705-879-8409

Testimonials

I have worked with Pristine for several years and they are very responsive. They do excellent work. Anytime that I have needed them, they are always easy to reach and are very good at communicating.