Best Practices for Smart Scheduling Maintenance, Maximizing Play

Ask any golfer and they will tell you that playing on a course with a mower nearby can ruin the day. Noise, distraction, slow play, and obvious safety hazards are just a few of the reasons why strategic scheduling around peak play makes sense. To help you accomplish this, BrightView has outlined three best practices for smart scheduling your course maintenance.

1. Be Specific

Many times, maintenance crews are simply focused on mowing greens or fairways without a plan or a schedule in place, and unfortunately end up interfering with golfers. When this happens, the operator should map their route and often, they will find that route will intersect with play, causing disruptions or unnecessary downtime waiting for golfers to play through.

To help with this, be specific and clear with all scheduled maintenance jobs. BrightView experts advise giving operators a hole-by-hole map which lays out the route and minimizes intersection with play. In some cases, the route may seem counter-intuitive, but a carefully designed route that takes play into account will increase safety and decrease one of the biggest costs to courses, namely the time wasted when the crew is waiting and unproductive.

2. Get a Sense of How Long Tasks Take

Knowing how long maintenance takes at each hole on your course is critical to smart scheduling. When the time needed per hole is documented, your superintendent can more effectively gauge whether a delay is due to operator error, in which case more training may be needed, or a problem with the course that needs attention. It will also help create a schedule that effectively works around peak play times, which in turn, increases productivity, improved pace of play, and player satisfaction.

3. Collaborate and Coach

Each course has its own idiosyncrasies and no one knows the ones on your course better than your crew. Create an open feedback channel in which you listen to their ideas and observations. Encourage your workers to actually play the course. You might be surprised at the good ideas they bring to the table once they've experienced what it's like to play the course they're maintaining. 

At the same time, provide your crew with careful coaching. Make it clear that good maintenance isn't all about speed, but rather consistent quality and efficient, effective productivity. Above all, make safety for your crew and your players a priority.

Scheduling is not a perfect science, but by taking a smart, collaborative, and when necessary, a flexible approach to scheduling maintenance will allow you to be able to maximize play on your course and create a good, safe working environment for your crew. Efficiency and productivity in scheduling are important to BrightView and their experts are always looking for new strategies to improve course conditions while helping crews to work smarter and safer.