Preventive Maintenance vs. Reactive Maintenance by Randy Newhard, CLT/M, CLT/I, CLIA

Proactive, reactive, preventive, are all words that are being "thrown" around nowadays. "It's just so hard to spend money when there does not appear to be an immediate need" said one Board member. Immediate is defined as "without delay or instantly." Preventive is defined as "to keep from happening." Geez, that definition of preventive should be hung in the halls of associations worldwide.

KEEP FROM HAPPENING - $PEND A LITTLE TO $AVE ALOT !!!

I do understand there is a need of balance here. An Association could spend all or most of it's money trying to prevent everything in the world from happening to them. What is needed here is a good team and a lot of communication. The team is made up of a savvy Board of Directors, an educated and aggressive community manager and the particular vendor for the situation. Let's go through some landscape situations where Boards were proactive and some were reactive.

Reactive: Every community manager has witnessed an association like this. There are dozens and dozens of these associations in San Diego and other communities that are faced with this same problem. This particular association is an attached housing project. Lawn areas are very small. I mean small, like in 10' x 10'. Shrub beds are even smaller. But everyone likes their privacy, so the site was designed with many trees. The soils are poor, composed of sandstone or decomposed granite. Get the idea? Landscapers needed jackhammers to plant the 36' box trees.

Proposals have been sitting in the Board of Directors files for about 1 1/2 years to address the surface root problems. The landscaper being proactive, recognized the potential tree root problems that were showing signs of lifting sidewalks, driveways, irrigation systems, etc. The proposal was for the removal of certain roots and the installation of root barriers. This item and many other proactive proposals were brought up again and again at the monthly landscape walkthroughs. No action was taken. After a few months of mentioning these extra work proposals the landscaper did not want to aggravate the manager and landscape chairman. So he chose not to bring them up again.

This particular proposal involved 6 homes. The cost was $295.00 per home, total being $1770.00. Well, the landscaper received an emergency call one Sunday night. The problem was a broken sprinkler line (or the association thought). The water was constantly running and the association could not get the water shut off. Proactive -The landscaper had shown the association what backflows to shut off in case of an emergency like this. With the association knowing where to shut off their own landscape water in case of an emergency, the potential savings could be significant. Two hours of emergency service call out alone is $70.00. Add in how much water would be saved in the amount of time a company could get mobilized and be on site, the savings is in the 100's of dollars! Oh, back to the story, the water could not be shut off at the backflows. The landscaper shows up ($70.00) and after awhile determines it's the homeowner's main water line that has a broken fitting. Being that it was 2:30 in the morning, all the landscaper could do was shut off the homeowner's main water supply and leave the homeowner a note on their door (proactive). They came back out the next day and it was determined that a root had pushed up the main water line at that fitting and jarred it loose.

So how mad would you be -  if you are Joe or Joan homeowner who woke up at 4 a.m. thinking about this big presentation you were giving at 8 a.m. Your upcoming raise was dependent upon the outcome of this presentation.  It's winter and it's cold and you jumped into the shower and discover that you have no water!!!!!! How mad would you be????? OK, OK, OK. Do I need to tell the rest of that homeowner's story that morning? I do not think so.

The net reaction expenditure of this story was approximately $1050.00 and that was to take care of one home, not 6, as the proactive proposal stated. The moral of the story is that if the Board or landscape committee took the time to communicate and ask questions as to why the landscaper was recommending this extra work and understood that this was preventive maintenance, maybe this nightmare for this homeowner could have been prevented.

I believe sometimes that associations and maybe even community managers think that contractors of all trades are trying to generate extra income for their companies with these extra work proposals. Maybe instead of calling them extra work proposals contractors should call them preventive maintenance proposals. Watch out associations that may become the new buzz word. Quite truthfully, it should!!!!

I believe Boards should be able to distinguish the difference between an enhancement project verses a preventative maintenance project. That is where having educated and savvy community managers and even landscape or committee chairs on your team is a huge benefit for your association. I have heard comments from committee people saying that they thought it would be "fun" to be on a landscape committee. Fun, is described by my Webster's New World Dictionary as, "source of amusement." Yeah, sometimes I am amused at landscape walkthrus. People really need to analyze why they are joining a committee. Ego's should be check at the door as they leave home. Nah, I won't go there any further, I think I will quit right here on that subject. Back to more examples of proactive and possible savings. That is more fun, oh, I mean educational.

Very large potential savings for associations can be associated with proactive water management. Many associations have saved millions of gallons of water by choosing a proactive landscape contractor. Not all landscape contractors are water managers. You can require your landscape contractor to have certain credentials such as: Certified Landscape Irrigation Auditor (CLIA). or Certified Landscape Technician in Irrigation (CLT/I). At least with these certifications your contractor has educated themselves on the basics of how an irrigation system should operate. There is a tremendous amount of information a contractor must know as he or she checks your irrigation system. I feel the most savings for an association comes from the proper scheduling of the irrigation system.

Let's say your association has 6 irrigation controllers with 24 stations on each. That's a total of 144 valves or stations. Now your association's landscape is all slopes. It is a new association and you have a hydroseed mix of alyssum, gazania and some perennial shrub seed mix has been included. The irrigation delivery device is rotor heads. Hydroseed has to be kept wet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for approximately 8 weeks.  Each valve should run approximately 30 minutes, 3x per day. Stay with me for this math because you will be amazed at how much water is going to be used and where you savings may come from. Each head contains a nozzle. Some nozzles precipitate 2 gallons per minute, some 10 gallons per minute. (See below for a big, big savings due to proactive irrigation system checks). Let's say your system head's precipitate on average 5 gallons per minute and there are on average 8 rotor heads per valve. So the math looks like this.

144 valves X 8 heads X 5 gals/minute X 30 min. ea.  X 3 times/day X 7 days/wk. X 8 wks. = 29,030,400 gallons of water over that 2 month period!!! Water rates vary city by city in San Diego County. City of San Diego bills by the unit of water. One unit is 748 gallons at the cost of approximately $1.34. So for those 2 months of water the cost is figured by: 29,030,400 / 748 = 38,811 units x $1.34 = $52,006.74 !!!!!!!

Wow, what a water bill! Be happy that at this point it probably is still the developer's headache. Sales have gone well for the developer and after 2 months the association is up and running. Simultaneously with this turnover, your watering schedule should have been reduced from 3x per day, 7 days a week, to 2x per day, 3 days per week. But somehow it did not happen. The Board had a hard time deciding on what landscaper to choose because they were trying to go with the lowest price and they did. The mow, blow and go company (it was later determined they did not have a C-27 license) came on board 1 week later. Reaction - Being this was a huge account for the mow, blow and go company it took them quite a while to figure things out. They did not get to the irrigation system checks and scheduling until 2 months into the contract and all they did was reduce the 3x per day to 2x per day and from 7 days a week to 5. Reaction - the Board fired this company after 5 months.

Proactive - during the interview process the new landscape contractor had asked for the water bills. The first week on site they performed their irrigation evaluation and rescheduled the run times on the controller. Bottom line results - over watering costs for the first 2 months - 20,736,000 gals. = $37,147.00 and for the next 3 months - 5,529,600 gals. or $9,905.00. These figures may seem unrealistic but I can assure you they can be quite real. Proactive - Also during the irrigation irrigation system evaluation the new contractor also identified some incorrect nozzling. There were different nozzles in some of the heads, thus more overwatering had occurred.

There are many, many more ideas and programs for a landscape contractor to be proactive and ways to offer your association preventive maintenance. I'm sure you will read about them in this article.

Until next time, DON'T PROCRASTINATE !!!!

Randy Newhard is President of New Way Professional Landscape Services in San Diego County. Randy is also a Director of San Diego Chapter of CAI.