When it comes to record keeping my motivation is to accumulate relevant information about KGC that I can use to make decisions to improve the upcoming year. Data entry and collection is time consuming so when I read how some guys are using online tools to collect and arrange data I started to do the same. I've been a user of Excel for decades but limitations in transferring files between computers made me look for an alternative. Enter Google Sheets. It took some retraining and, initially I had to give up some options I depended on when using Excel, but I'm slowly making Sheets work. The one problem with changing and tweaking things is there can be a bit of a disconnect between data from other years so in presenting comparisons in this post I'm going to generalize a bit.
The biggest difference about the data for 2017 is I've included my hours and the mechanics hours spent on the course when we were performing tasks that in the past were normally covered by regular maintenance staff. Going with the adage a picture is worth a thousand words I'm going to post a few charts to look at:
I've done this before and the obvious take home message is the hours spent maintaining the course are trending down. I'm not too sure if everyone understands the scope of how much the hours between years differs so for the next two charts I will use the same data but I will use a different scale on the vertical axis:
The difference in the amount of time spent maintaining the course is more obvious. Now take a look at this chart:
If we focus on 2015 to 2017 I can point out some interesting things. Certain members have been generously donating their time for quite a few years (go HERE) but we never had a formalized volunteer program until 2015 (go HERE). Take out the hours the Greens Team contributes to the regular maintenance and you see how much the volunteers "free" labour contributes to grooming the course. It should seem obvious that volunteers are the only way I can keep certain maintenance tasks, such as hand mowing the greens, a regular part on the maintenance schedule here at KGC. Going one step further in collecting information in 2017 I began to track the hours myself and Neil L. spent on the course performing the basic daily maintenance that, in the past, was covered by seasonal staff. Combine mine and Neil L.'s hours together with the volunteer hours and subtract them from the total hours all turf staff worked in 2017 and you will get a number that will only be the total number of hours worked by seasonal employees. Comparing that number to hours collected in 2010 (remember that we had no volunteers and I wasn't tracking mine or the mechanics hours so the amount for 2010 is strictly the amount of time seasonal staff spent maintaining the course) and it reveals that we are spending close to 40% fewer hours in 2017 performing routine maintenance on the golf course as compared to 2010.
* As an aside, the blip in 2016 is the result of the early start we had (go HERE) that year *
Again, in general the staff is working less hours maintaining the course but I think the second chart example does a better job at making the point. I'm going keep beating that same old tired drum about smaller staff and fewer hours spent maintaining the course until everyone has a firm grasp our situation and realizes how unsustainable, as it relates to my department, this situation at KGC is becoming.
