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.