Maximizing Efficiencies In Maintenance Routing

Each year Landscape Maintenance contractors go through planning their weekly cutting routes. Hopefully, renewal rates are high, and all staff return from the previous season. However, we all know that there is turnover in both clients and staff.
If you believe reducing time that is unbillable to clients, then you also understand that you must measure this time. Like the phrase would suggest, “Measure what you Treasure”. So how do we drive the non-billable time out of our businesses?

Here are my top tips on how to maximize maintenance route efficiency and reducing non-billable time:
1. Geography (keeping a crew within a smaller work area so their travel time is minimal between sites)
  - Having crews work in tight clusters allows us to minimize travel downtime between sites
  - The tighter you build the routes, the more profit you will make
  - This also allows us to focus on garbage days and avoid or service the property after garbage pick up so that we can ensure property is clean of left over debris/garbage that may have been blown around
2. Quoted Weekly Hours (put days together with a 10 hour work day in mind for whatever size the crew will be)
  - Crew size would dictate how many hours in the day, whether that requires 2, 3 or 4 man crews to accommodate amount of work required on properties
3. Client Type/Tenure (placing clients appropriately in schedule based on type/tenure)
  - Placing industrials on Monday so they look good for the week and allows for flexibility when holiday Monday’s occur
  - High rises/condos begin servicing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
  - Longer tenured clients (condos) and estate residentials Friday to look good for the weekend
4. Crew Leader Experience
  - More experienced crew leaders to be working on larger sites (managing more people) or more complex property
If you are would like to discuss how to maximize efficiencies in maintenance routing for your company, you can contact me at nathan@southbrookmc.com.