The Pellucid Perspective - May 2011 - (Page 4)

LABOR MANAGEMENT Sharp tools for cutting maintenance costs Six Sigma strategies battle the status quo in golf course maintenance budget wars By Jim Dunlap he largest single budget line item for most golf courses is the maintenance budget, and probably rightly so. The golf course, after all, is the product that public access courses are selling, for the most part, and while private clubs may also promote exclusivity, social status, dining and other recreational amenities, their golf memberships depend on having a playing surface worthy of the tab. Unfortunately for the course superintendent, that prominence in the annual budget also makes maintenance expenditures the most obvious target when hard times hit the facility. When the word comes down from ownership that the cost side of the ledger needs to be trimmed, one of the first things superintendents look at is the biggest line item in their budgets — labor. The rock is the expectations the paying customers have for the golf course conditions, the hard place is the amount of money available to meet those standards, and superintendents T — and their crews — are caught between the two. “Being simplistic, historically owners have lowered maintenance costs by cutting bodies,” said John Crowder, business development vice president for the industry’s largest course maintenance provider, ValleyCrest Golf Course Maintenance. “Unless you deploy the remaining labor effectively, tasks and service levels suffer. Have you lowered costs? Yes. Have you decreased service levels? Yes. We think the key is to implement systems and schedules that allow you to deploy your current labor in a more productive way that allows courses to maintain or even improve their existing maintenance standards. If that’s done right, labor productivity per hour goes up, overall costs go down and course maintenance standards remain as high or higher. The key is productivity, not cutting bodies.” Maintenance professionals, whether contract providers like ValleyCrest or Meadowbrook Golf subsidiary International Golf Maintenance or the individual course superintendent, have — or should be — learning new ways to skin the budget cat and still keep up conditioning levels. Some of the strategies these professionals are employing may impact labor hours, benefits or job duties, but the realities of the current economy’s impact on golf operations frequently make it necessary to at least perform a careful analysis of those criteria Increasingly these maintenance professionals are learning to apply the Six Sigma principles of labor efficiency without reducing quality that manufacturers in other industries have used for years. While golf has traditionally been a “people” and a “relationship” business, today’s economic realities are forcing maintenance managers to make cold, hard decisions based on dollars, not personal loyalty to their workforce. “It comes down to what type of people do you hire, how do you deploy them, and how do you pay them,” Crowder said. It is fairly commonplace for maintenance crew laborers at privately owned courses or clubs to be classified as part-time workers with few or no benefits other than their hourly wage, but contract companies and some superintendents are learning ways to cut that expense without sacrificing course conditioning. Jeff Spangler, senior vice president for science and agronomy for Troon Golf, the world’s largest course management company, estimated the cost of labor at two-thirds of most golf courses’ overall maintenance budget. He said that particularly within the last three years, Troon and its client courses have made a number of adjustments in their labor staffing programs to control costs. “We are flexing staffs seasonally in those areas of the country where that is appropriate,” Spangler said. “We also find that in many places, merit-based compensation levels have gone beyond May 2011 4 The Pellucid PersPecTive http://www.clubcar.com http://www.clubcar.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - May 2011

The Pellucid Perspective - May 2011
Contents
Golf 20/11: A House With No Information Foundation?
Sharp Tools for Cutting Maintenance Costs
When Is a Survey Not a Survey?
Short Courses Disappearing, but Some Find Success
Apr 2011 YtD Weather Impact, Mar 2011 YtD Utilization
A Weather Word to the Wise
New York, NY Core Business Statistical Area (CBSA)
Environmentalists Seeking Closure of Revered SF Muni
Comings & Goings
The Bad, the Good and the Ugly

The Pellucid Perspective - May 2011