Back from a week off - and I feel energized.  You know, back when I was “hard at it”, growing the snow business - working 7 days a week, sometimes 24/7 - I felt taking a vacation was a luxury I had not earned.  After going to Snow Dragon, I was forced to take time off and did so, but still could not quite get away from it all.  Still an owner at Snow Dragon, it was my baby and my responsibility.  Even now, with the consulting business, it is hard to get it out of my mind.  However, with age comes maturity and knowing/realizing that time off is important.

I encourage my consulting clients to take time away from the business.  Down time is needed, is justified, and should be considered a requirement so as to get reenergized.  I wish I had taken more time off during those hectic years when growing the business consumed my every waking moment.

I’m glad I can now enjoy time away from “work”, and look forward to doing it even more at i enter the fall of my life.

It’s time for a slight diversion from the normal educational posts I enter here. 

On Friday I leave for a weeks vacation with my wife, Peggy.  Some of you know Peggy.  Too often, we take our spouse’s “being there” for granted.  We often don’t tell them how much they mean to us, and how we lean on them to help us through bad times and to share good times.  Peggy is an incredibly hard worker who has her own very successful business in Erie.  I’ve written about her a few times in the past.  Peggy has been at my side in every endeavor I pursued during my business career.  She was hardnosed when needed, soft when it was called for, and supportive in every way.  To say she is my equal isn’t really quite true.  I believe her to be much better grounded than I, a better judge of character than I, and a much, much better money manager than I.  I love her dearly and I am blessed to have her in my life.  I thank God regularly for allowing her to have been a part of everything I have achieved in my business endeavors.  We have been married 25 years the last day of August.  This vacation is a celebration of our life together, thus far – and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Happy Anniversary, Peggy.  I love you and thank you for everything.

The ‘large crew supervisor’ must make a choice to reduce (or eliminate) his own productivity in order to keep five men up to speed, or allow their productivity to drop to maintain individual productivity.

Most large crew supervisors do a little bit of both and lose both productivity and quality.  This is unfortunate as everybody loses when this happens.  The combination that seems to work best is a full time working foreman with one or perhaps two crew members trained to require very little direct supervision.  Divide large crews into smaller two and three man crews and teach them to function as separate work units.   Productivity will increase – sometimes dramatically.  When large properties require more man-hours than a three man crew can generate, divide the property into two zones and send two crews to produce the work.  It will be much cheaper for the customer in the long run - and the contractor will look much better at budget review time, or when it comes time to determine if a viable profit has been made on that particular account. 

Each two or three person crew should have production and quality goals for the specific snow event they are working.  Even though they may be in competition on the same property, they should be evaluated on that particular snow event’s performance.  And, they MUST be evaluated often enough to changes may be had as/if necessary.  Also, set the goals aggressive enough that the crew must stretch to get there.  Easy goals are easily achieved – harder goals are also achieved to the betterment of the margin for that account.  Remember – it is all about the margin……

The myth that large crews provide better usability of supervision is a throwback to factory or assembly line thinking that really does not apply to on-site sidewalk snow removal crews.  The notion that one strong supervisor can supervise five people as easily as two and still keep production responsibility does not apply during a snow event.  Some supervisors try to keep the men together.  Supposedly they are easier to supervise, but in reality the “herd mentality” further reduces productivity.  The ‘large crew supervisor’ must make a choice to reduce (or eliminate) his own productivity in order to keep five men up to speed, or allow their productivity to drop to maintain individual productivity. 

In the next few posts – I will exam and address “Large Crew Myths”.

Increase in man-hour efficiency is only one of the many myths about large crews.  Another popular legendary myth is that large crews insure quality work.  This was born in the belief that it takes more time to do quality work, and non-quality work is faster and saves time.  Neither are true.  Quality is the result of a process that includes trained people operating the correct equipment according to a set procedure.  In large crews where accountability is minimal, quality is often sacrificed.

Owners/managers like large crews on site.  When you are behind schedule, the first solution is to add people.  Desperate owners may even dictate specific crew sizes and threaten to withhold payment if these demands are not met.  In most cases this “knock it out” behavior is an attempt to correct performance problems and force the contractor back on schedule.  In this situation don’t increase the crew size; bring in a separate crew, divide the property into appropriate zones, and then “knock it out”.  Once back on schedule the owner/manager will become accustomed to, and accept fewer people on the site during a snow event.

One drawback of small sidewalk crews on large properties is they cannot complete the work fast enough.  They spend too much time on-site, or do not get the job done on time.  Of course, most of this is due to the weather - when the weather hit - when we mobilized - etc.  One answer to that problem is increasing the crew size.  All that is needed is a crew-cab truck and a few more hand held snow pushers.  You should be able to send as many as six people to one property and “knock it out”, then move on to the next site.  Large crews are fun to work with.  They appeal to the social side of our nature, making it easy to build enthusiasm.  Large crews make the members feel safe and secure.  They feel as though there are enough of “us” to get it done.

Production managers and snow removal customers like large crews because absenteeism does not cripple the production effort.  Supervisors (especially non income producing supervisors) like to have a lot of people to look after.  It makes them feel needed.  Crew members like large crews.  It is like being on a team.  You don’t feel the same pressure to produce.  They have more freedom to do the things they enjoy as long as they keep busy.  Property owners/managers love big crews!!  They are taught in property management school that the more people running around their property the better !!  They sometimes demand contractors “get more people” on the job and “get it done”!!

Crews working a specific route are often sized to fit the largest property.   Crews seem to grow almost by themselves.  Supervisors and production managers often add one member as ‘insurance’ against anything going wrong.  This is a sign of mismanagement, not efficiency.  Everyone likes large crews except the person responsible for profit.  In some cases he (or she) does not know that large crews (with more than 3 people) are the problem rather than the solution.  They blame people, the pricing system, or the weather for the production crisis that is reducing profits.  Introspection is difficult due to the crisis management nature of our business.  However, introspection should be the FIRST place to look to resolve problems, rather than throwing more labor at the hard to define problem.

I’m currently facilitating a GIE Media Inner Circle meeting in Cleveland, Ohio.  This is great !!  Two dozen contractors – with no competitors in the room – interacting about issues important to their markets.  The give-and-take amongst peers is a perfect way to bounce ideas off of others in their industry without fear of giving away details of their business.  What a tremendous idea.  I facilitated two of these in 2009 and it was SOOOO well received – two more were booked for 2010.  I’m honored to be a part of this kind of interaction. 

I am beginning to do more public speaking now too.  On October 23, 2010 I’ll be the Keynote Speaker at the Ohio Landscape Association (OLA) Snow and Ice Management Clinic at St. Michaels Woodside in Broadview Heights, Ohio.  On November 6, 2010 I’ll be doing a Webinar on Snow as a Profit Center for the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA) at 7 PM.  On November 13, 2010 at 7:30 AM, I am doing an educational session at the TCIA National Show on Snow and Ice Jobs in Pittsburgh, PA.  Then, on January 9 and 10, 2011 it will be a session on Increasing Revenues through Snow Removal at the National Green Centre Trade Show for the Western Nursery and Landscape Association in St. Louis, MO.

For details, email me at john@johnallin.com -  hope to see some of you at one of these trade show functions. 

In sidewalk snow removal work we do not perform activities that offer opportunity for positive synergistic effect.  In fact, we have the opposite.  When we increase the crew size, we lose efficiency.  For example; send one person to do a job that takes 4.0 hours of elapsed time (or 4.0 man hours).  Now…. send 2 people with the same equipment the same distance to clear the same area, and it takes 2.4 hours of elapsed time (4.8 man hours).  The two person crew did it much more quickly (2.4 hours instead of 4.0 hours total), but more time was spent in man-hours and therefore it became less efficient.

Now, in a lot of cases clearing a sidewalk in a little over two hours rather than half a day is a worthwhile tradeoff for the inefficiency - especially if it is snowing like the dickens at the time the sidewalk needs to be cleared by.  The important issue is to recognize that the more people we send to do the job, the faster it is completed - but it is also less efficient in total man-hours spent.  Your cost is proportionate to man-hours spent, not elapsed crew time.  The small two or three person crew may not effectively clear snow quickly enough at all sized properties.

More about crew sizing in the next post.

The most efficient crew size for performing sidewalk snow removal activities has been discussed, argued, and subjected to trial and error testing.  Since sidewalk snow removal emerged as a separate (or specialty) business, the issue became more important.  By adding mobile crews, we discovered the importance of correct crew sizing.  In today’s competitive labor environment the need for higher productivity and increased quality suggests a ‘new look’ at sizing sidewalk snow removal crews.

Let’s look back at our (non-snow related) experience with small crews.  Most of us at some time in our careers have worked as a one-person crew.  Remember how much you could accomplish in one long day??  Remember the first really good helper, the one who read your mind and did what you wanted him to do??  You increased your production when you added the helper — BUT you did not double it.  Sidewalk snow removal (and snowplowing too, for that matter) is a series of solo, one-person tasks.  Unlike landscape installation or construction, sidewalk maintenance crews do not handle heavy or awkward materials or equipment requiring more than one person to improve efficiency.  This lack of synergistic benefit on a per task basis encourages us to think of our crews as combinations of one-person crews.

Loading heavy sheets of 4’ x 8’ plywood is a good example.  One person can load 30 sheets per hour by himself, but a crew of two can load 75 sheets an hour.  The difference is called synergy - which means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  By working together, the plywood loading crew actually increased the output per person from 30 sheets per hour to 37.5 sheets per hour.  What would the effect be if you added a third person to the plywood loading crew??  It would be detrimental to the overall production synergy.  Sometimes “more” is not necessarily “better”.  I will go into more detail in my next posting.

In my blog entries below there is a link to some articles that appeared in Masschusetts recently, about how the state supreme court there ruled that property owners may be held liable for snow related injuries whether the accumulations are caused by mother nature or by snowplowers.  Of course, the lawyers are celebrating and believe this ruling could result in a wave of personal injury lawsuits.  And, it is only natural to assume insurance carriers for snow contractors will reflect the ruling by rewarding snow contractors with larger premiums.  Most snow contractors will be unhappy with this development.

However, while the Massachusetts snow contractors will be unhappy, most contractors from other states could be saying “welcome to MY world”.  Personally, I do not like the ruling.  But, most other states have similar standards by which property managers and snow contractors must operate.  In my own home town, property owners must clear sidewalks in front of their property (along the street) within 24 hours of the end of the storm.  Failure to do so can result in a fine.  Often, this responsibility is passed to the contractor hired to clear the parking lot/driveway. 

I know the contractors in Massachusetts are unhappy, and I certainly understand why.  But, from a realistic standpoint – I’m surprised it took so long for this type of thing to come to pass.

Instead of feeling sorry for one self – maybe the outlook should be “now we can get paid to clear those areas” rather than have property managers say “nah…don’t clear that walk, we’re not required to do that”.  This could be an opportunity for generating more revenues in a world that has seen revenues and profits decline over the past several years due to the economic situation we are all faced with.