When Level Green landscaping crews show up on your property, you don’t want them to miss a thing.
You want the job done well and done fast.
Meet job mapping — an organizational system that makes all of that happen as efficiently as possible.
How does it work? Why should customers care?
Paul Wisniewski, Level Green Landscaping division manager, maps it out.
Level Green uses the term job mapping to describe the task of figuring out the most efficient way to maintain a property, from the time it takes crews to accomplish each task to how many crew members are needed to exactly how they flow through the property to get the job done right.
Their main tools are a stopwatch and a
Gantt chart, a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule.
The chart lists the tasks to be performed — mowing, weeding, blowing off parking lots, edging — on the vertical axis, and time intervals on the horizontal axis. The width of the horizontal bars in the graph shows the duration of each activity.
It’s named after its inventor, Henry Gantt, who designed the system in the early 1900s.
But it’s still really useful today.
“It gives the supervisor a tool,” Wisniewski says. “Here’s your task, then move to this one. Here’s exactly how you should move across the property in the most efficient way.”
Job mapping nails down a lot of crucial factors. Who is responsible for what task? How long will it take? What’s the best order for the tasks? What size mowers are needed? How should everybody work together to efficiently flow through the property?
“Everybody knows exactly what to expect,” he says. “Crews don’t have to constantly ask their supervisor, ‘Hey, what do I do next?’ Everybody knows what they’re doing and where they should be next.”
A new supervisor can step in, consult the chart and do the job well right away, Wisniewski says.
“There’s no confusion.”
Once a job map is created, it’s not set in stone, Wisniewski says.
“We’re always tweaking it,” he says. “Watching the crews, updating it as needed so it can continually be improved.”
The mapping is done collaboratively, he says, with branch managers, operations managers and crew members offering input.
They do training three times a year with Envisor Consulting to make sure their job mapping is as efficient as possible.
Level Green started using the process about a year ago. They’re phasing it in on maintenance jobs for now, but job mapping can be expanded to spring cleanup, snow removal and other areas of the business, too, Wisniewski says.
Quality improves with job mapping, Wisniewski says.
“There are no areas missed, because everybody knows exactly what they’re doing,” he says.
There are cost benefits, too.
“When we’re as efficient as possible, we can be more competitive in pricing,” Wisniewski says. “Our estimates can be down to the last detail. We know exactly what our costs are, which allows us to tighten up our estimates, saving customers money in the long run.
“It’s beneficial to everybody — to us and our clients.”
At Level Green Landscaping, we’re always looking for ways to do our job even better and more efficiently.
It’s what our customers deserve.
If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers.
Our focus is on commercial properties like offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.
Contact us at 202-544-0968.
You can also request a free consultation online to meet with us one-on-one.
We’d love to hear from you.