Chickens Coming Home to Roost.

As a general rule the season has been fairly mundane on my end with not very much to comment on.  We are well into the golf season and past all the negative comments regarding green speed and now into the judgment calls regarding unfair pin locations because of green speed....ironic.  There's probably a post lurking in that statement but that would make me proactive; obviously not the case this year.

A good thing as of late definitely relates to staff.  Aside from my core group of 4 guys, the Greens Team group composed of member volunteers has been a huge help in getting the course into summer condition.   Randy K. developed and fleshed out the idea last year and has been the driving force this year (go HERE) in recruiting and organizing.  I'll try to demonstrate how much those guys are helping out.  The daily basic maintenance at KGC is as follows:

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Holes	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Greens	1	1	4	3	3	3	3
Fwys	1	1	1		1	1
Rough	1	1	1		1	1	1
T/C	0.5			0.5	1
Roller	1	1	1	1		1	1
Bunkers	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
3100	1		1		1
Blower	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Spray/fert					1
Top Dress				1
Total Staff/day	8.5	7	11	7.5	11	9	8

If you read the chart vertically you will see how many staff members each task needs with a total amount of staff for each day at the bottom of the chart.  For example, on a typical Monday I need one person to change holes, one person to mow greens, one person to mow fairway, etc, etc, for a total of 7 staff.  Any day with a number greater than one means multiple staff performing that task.  Again, for example, I need only one person on Monday to mow greens since we are using the triplex but on Tuesday we are double cutting greens with the walk mowers so I need 4 staff.

The next chart identifies the people I've hired:

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Mr. Scott	4	7	7	7	7
Garry	4	7	7	7	7
Neil			7	7	7	7	4
Liver			7	7	7	7	4
Horticulture			"7	"7	"7	"7	"4
Kenny L	4			4		7	4
Jim E					7	4	4
F/T Stud -			"7	"7	"7	"7	"4
P/T Stud- Brock	4	7	4
Chantal	4
Peter L			4	4
David Mc	4	7	7
Darcy C					7	4	4
Ricky			4	4
Rick B				4		4	4
	6	4	8	8	6	6	6
	2.5	3	3	-0.5	5	3	2

More complicated to read but the take home point relates to the very bottom line.  Those numbers represent the difference between the required people needed to maintain the course vs the staff actually working at KGC.  So on typical Monday, again, I need according the first chart 8.5 people but according to the second chart I only have 6 staff working which means something isn't getting done.  Throw in an irrigation break, extra work either from projects or extraordinary maintenance and even less of the routine maintenance won't be getting done.

I was unable to fill two position (the Horticulture and Full-time student) with suitable people which exasperated the situation.  Luckily, 7 members showed up for training and are helping to make up the deficit staff wise

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Mr. Scott	4	7	7	7	7
Garry	4	7	7	7	7
Neil			7	7	7	7	4
Liver			7	7	7	7	4
Horticulture			"7	"7	"7	"7	"4
Kenny L	4			4		7	4
Jim E					7	4	4
F/T Stud -			"7	"7	"7	"7	"4
P/T Stud- Brock	4	7	4
Chantal	4
GreensTream			4	4	4	4
GreensTream			4		4
GreensTream					4
Darcy C					7	4	4
Peter L			4	4
David Mc	4	7	7
Ricky			4	4
Rick B				4		4	4
	6	4	10	9	9	7	6
	2.5	3	1	-1.5	2	2	2

If I take that second chart and add in the Greens Team to create a new chart, now Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday look a bit better; especially Wednesday. When there is a negative number highlighted in green it means I have extra staff for that day!!

The real point of describing how staffing relates to the present level of maintenance is my backhanded way of explaining why some routine or typical maintenance practices are being ignored or only partially attempted.  Even with 7 volunteers we still have too few people to maintain the course at a level that players may have enjoyed in the past.  Third party comments have left me with the impression that some of the more vocal members are disappointed with the existing course presentation. If you happen to be privy to any one persons rant please direct them to this particular post, or better yet directly to me since I can best explain the reason why particular situation may or may not exist as it relates to maintenance at KGC.

Year in Review.....Number Wise, Part III

January 22.  Firstly, a brief comment about the course.  Nothing has changed and after a cursory look I think we are O.K.  My observations noted in the Dec. 18 post are still holding true with no bad ice.  I may hate myself for writing this, but I even think the ice on the new putting greens may be a non-event.  The only bad thing would be above normal temperatures and above 0 overnight lows for a few days combined with rain.  We don't have the snow to ride out one of those.  

..... continued from December 10th......

As well as fairways, mowing the rough is one of the most costly jobs we perform.  In the past, especially last year, we ran both rough units without to much concern for cost.  The bigger unit can mow plenty of rough but it is a hog when it comes to fuel.  Same as we did with the fairways, we made a concerted effort to limit when and how long each unit was operating.  Anytime we can mow without play the better production is.  A few years ago we broke the rough areas down into precise zones and then mapped these zones.  The areas we choose to mow each day are optimized with the hope of avoiding golfers.  On our lunchroom wall we have aerial photographs of the golf course highlighting these zones and operators keep track of where they had been by labeling a zone with a date of when it was last mowed.  You would think it would be easy to decide if an area needed to be mowed or not but there was more than a few times in the past where I would see different operators mowing the same spot a day apart.  All this effort and planning did pay off:

Hours Spent Mowing Rough

Although the decreasing hours trend is obvious, what you don't see is the fact that by operating fewer machines my total staffing requirements also dropped (and this is despite the fact that we added an extra cut around the greens this year.....oops, another caveat: that extra cut was absorbed mostly by me and my hours aren't included in these graphs.   The more I think about that the more I realize that it is wrong and maybe I should start to add my hours spent on equipment to these numbers.  Hmmmm).  In fact, for 2014 from May 1 to Oct.12, the total staffing hours put into maintaining the golf course was 1200 fewer than in 2013 during the same time period.

I already mentioned what a funky year 2014 was with respect to staffing but basically the drop in total hours can be attributed to operating with one less season full time staff member (which actually was part of the plan for 2014).  For 2015 I already know I will be losing another season full time staff member and I plan to replace that person with a part time but I have to believe we are at or slightly below the optimum staff number for my department so I'm not sure how feasible that plan really is.

It's getting repetitive and boring but here is one more graph:

This graph highlights the yearly cost of mowing (labour added to operating costs) for fairways, roughs, and tees and collars.  I don't include the cost of maintaining our equipment in any calculation mostly because there is a fair amount of variability which could slightly skew a comparisons (for example in 2013 we spent just over $500 on repair and maintenance for both fairway units; this year it was only $126.  Same machines and a year older; should be more, you'd think).  I believe I have far less control over the repair costs associated with equipment maintenance.  If I could predict when or how something was going to breakdown I would stop it from happening.  So, I guess, the point being that as inconvenient as it is dealing with old stuff when it comes to mowing the biggest cost is the labour associated with process itself....usually (so much for getting any new stuff?).

Year in Review.....Number Wise, Part II

..... continued......

For T & C, a different approach to fertility and different types of fertilizer resulted in a longer time between mowing.  Instead of mowing every 4 days we were able to stretch it to every 6 days which translated into about 40 hours less mowing in 2014 versus previous years.

Hours Spent Mowing Tee's

The only real way, I think, to keep this up is to start spraying with a growth regulator but at KGC's HOC and grass species I would have to take a real hard look to see if there was any savings.

The other area I thought we could do better was the amount of time and money spent mowing fairways.  Different mowing patterns, different fertilizer sources and release patterns, and different growth rates on certain fairways were some the approaches we took when trying to increase efficiencies.

Hours Spent Mowing Fwys

A quiet tee sheet in the very early a.m. and limiting mowing to 4 hrs/day regardless of how long the fairways appeared were the two biggest reasons the total hours spent mowing decreased.  Skipping a fairway because it was a slow grower helped but this is only applicable to some of the back fairways.  I believe the extra time we gained in very early mowing with only 1 group teeing off between 7 and 8 o'clock created less interference between player and equipment which allowed us to keep up with the turf.  The new/used mower we bought this fall is slightly wider but I suspect the increase in fuel costs (bigger engine in this unit) will off-set any gains received by cutting a wider swath.  Really, the biggest decrease in time and money spent on fairways occurred after 2010 when we began to use a single mower on a regular basis.  Looking to the future, I'm having trouble seeing ways to decrease costs associated with mowing fairways.  Shutting off water during the summer is the only thing we could do to see a dramatic change but without tee to green cart paths to control cart traffic it wouldn't take long for more than a few of the fairways to turn to dirt.

To be continued......

Year in Review.....Number Wise, Part 1

Last year at this time I attempted to explain the time and money each job takes (go HERE) and tried to highlight supposed trends in the maintenance at KGC.  I used that information this past season and with some reading on Twitter and various other sources I tried to implement ways to be more efficient.  The one caveat about this years information is that 2014 was not the best year when it comes to demonstrating staff hours worked this season.  Early season staff changes caused me to veer from my original compulsive, controlling, and over-thought plan but I'll still explain it and then "pontificate" about what I've been able to interpret from the numbers.

As it stands, we are pretty tight staff wise already so what I felt I needed to do was plan each day from opening to closing so I could staff as efficiently as possible .  Generally, it's the SSDD when it comes to the routine maintenance at KGC so I felt I could plan a week out it would be fairly representative of the season in a very general sense.

Schedule for a "Monday"

This was only the first part.  Last winter there was a fair amount of talk amongst turf geeks about something called a "digital job board".  Basically, a digital job board posts staffs daily routines on a template that was stored in the "cloud".  This allowed for viewing jobs anytime and anywhere as well as on the fly changes from a smart phone out on the course.  It was suppose make me more efficient but I didn't take full advantage since my phone lacked a data plan; however, it did make me plan better. For my job board I basically stole the format from the superintendent at Pender Harbour golf course on the coast.  I think it was a Twitter discussion about job boards in which he and allowed anyone to view his job board so I basically copied the look and added some personal touches.

The View as You Enter Lunchroom

Close up of Donated 40" L.E.D T.V.

Now instead of trying to interpret my chicken scratches on the white board staff could easily read what the days plan was.  There was glitches and there is lots of fine tuning to do but I'm fairly confident in saying it has become a useful and appreciated method of communication.

Enough background.   How did all this planning and scheduling affect the operation of my department?  As already mentioned, the whole process made me a better organizer.  It also reaffirmed my assumption that there are very few areas we can cut back on.  Laying out a typical weeks worth of week ahead of time demonstrated to me just how much we are unable to do.  There was more than a few mornings when either a unplanned absence of a staff member or some other event resulted in me having to shuffle a typical daily task or completely eliminate that task.  I had an idea that there were potential cost saving in a few of the daily routine tasks (mowing greens, tee, fairways, roughs, bunkers, daily set-up, rolling greens) associated with maintaining the course.  I thought we could do better (budget wise) when it came to mowing tee's and collars, mowing rough, and mowing fairways.  Maybe we could save money on fuel and labour if we tried a few different things.

To be continued.......

Update.

No catchy title this time out.  All we've been doing in routine maintenance.  As promised, we aerated and top dressed the collars and aprons around all the greens.  The fairways, roughs, and greens surrounds were all fertilized so expect grass in the next couple weeks.  One thing different is the primary cut of rough we started to do around the greens.  It's not much but it is in response to the survey I put out at the beginning of the year.  Interestingly enough no one has commented on it so it is either not enough or people haven't noticed.  Let me know what you think.

I added another sheet to the Maintenance Standard so take a look at that.  More volunteer work : 18 tee railing and snack shack painting are two recent projects completed by Gord J. and his crew.

We are dealing with some wildlife issue but I don't have any good pictures so that may wait until next time.  Otherwise, aside from the usual equipment issues (finally got the correct shaft for the fairway unit parked behind 15 green) we are bumbling along.

I bet you thought I forgot

I threaten way back at the beginning of the year to create a maintenance standard that outlines the course maintenance.  Obviously, it would be best to have it all done at once but this year (most years, it seems) has been tight on office time once the season got going.  I will place an evolving draft copy in the clubhouse next to the handicap computer for your reading pleasure.  Ideally, a standard would be developed by numerous individuals from a good cross section of golfing members, manager, and directors.  That is a lot of people to get together for a number of meetings.  Instead I used the online survey people filled out this spring as the bench mark for the basic maintenance practices.  I've furthered "fleshed" out the maintenance practices to provide information as a reference in the event there is a question regarding any of the maintenance.  Take a look and I'll tweak it as I get more done.

Golf course wise it's been a typical spring with disease, hydraulic leaks, snow, snapped axles, cracked frames, and lots of seed head on the greens and fairways (take a look at the right of #4 fairway by the big tree; there is so much seed head the grass hardly looks green!).  The mechanic has been swamped with our "new" used equipment starting to show some of why it was traded in not to mention all the sh*t he has to repair on our old stuff.  The only thing really working out, and I know I've said this before, is the staff.  Not having to train or baby sit opens me up to filling in on the course where we have man power gaps.

This month we will try to catch up on some of the stuff delayed for various reason (aerating  and top dressing collars and top dressing greens).  Extra ordinary projects we've undertaken (completing the #7 mini irrigation expansion and re-fencing the maintenance compound) have kept us busy as well.

Volunteer work this month will be highlighted on the deck and in the beds around the club house as all the plants and pots were planted by a group players on their own time.  Take a look.

Some Apropo Links for Those Interested

Pure coincidences, I assure you.  One sort of rosy view point of creating a standard and one a wee bit cautionary.

http://gsr.lib.msu.edu/article/niven-value-3-8-13.pdf
http://gsr.lib.msu.edu/article/vavrek-unreasonable-3-30-12.pdf

Discussion of Survey, Part 2

continued.......

The results from the question about the accessories (flags, rakes, etc.) can be interpreted a couple of ways.  61% thought accessories should be replace once they appear "worn out" versus repairing and using them until they are damaged beyond repair.  We actually do the latter.  Are people saying they don't like the way we do it now or are they unaware of how we stretch out the usable life of accessories?  Why stretch out the usage?  9 nylon flags of a single color cost $90.  We run 3 colors so $270 for new flags that appear worn out in one season.  A single item but here's some food for thought: bunker rakes: $25 each, flag sticks $45 each, divot bucket (you see them on the par 3's) $50 each.  I choose those items since we have multiples of each and by the end of the season they all show wear and tear which we address in house to stretch out the dollars.

The last question where respondents were asked to express maintenance expectations in general had 50% agreeing with the idea of leaving areas considered unsafe or too costly unmaintained.  Again, pretty much what we do but the point of that question was to see if people knew of the maintenance we perform outside of the golf course proper.  Think of things like controlling the pine beetle on the lands down by the river, snow removal, and building maintenance to name a few.  Not a big part of the overall picture but still processes that are required and processes that consume resources that could otherwise be used for maintenance on the actual golf course.

Question #6 referencing green surrounds was the only question that allows me to demonstrate how members’ expectations may be out of line with realities of KGC.  62% want dense turf shorter than regular rough height around the greens.  A surprise to me mostly because of how little difference we are talking in height of cut.  The rough at KGC is mowed at 1 ½ inches while the fairways are at 5/8’s of an inch.  A nice middle ground between the two would be 1”.  I guess people are hoping a shorter height will allow the ball to sit up in the turf a bit more. 

Aside from adding another task to a crew that we are already cutting back on (16 staff in 2011, 14 staff in 2012), increasing the intensity of maintenance means you have to increase the inputs (fertility and irrigation, for example) to maintain healthy and, therefore, playable turf.  The biggest hurdle is the irrigation.  Only 6 of 18 green complexes have irrigation heads specific for irrigating surrounds.  This has been a pet project of mine that has been way-laid as of late for budgetary reasons.  Dual heads around the greens give me the power to irrigate the greens and the green complexes separately.   I’ve noted before that keeping the greens dry and firm is one of the biggest factors in providing a superior putting surface by enhancing both speed and the "trueness".  As much as I lament the root zone of our greens I can tell you it is better than the native growth medium available for the turf on the surrounds.  The poor growing conditions for the surrounds means I actually spend more time irrigating the surrounds to keep them healthy (read playable) than I do irrigating the greens.  Obviously, on those 12 greens without dual heads the amount of irrigating needed to maintain the surrounds would impact the playing conditions of the greens themselves since I would have to also water those greens while watering the surrounds.  Because those 12 greens would be seeing more irrigation they would play differently from the 6 greens with surrounds heads....there goes consistency. 

It’s not that black and white but the reality is maintaining the surrounds at a lower height will have an impact on how I distribute resources.  One other consideration is the type of mower required to accomplish this type of maintenance.  At that height (1”) it best to use a reel type mower (think of the cutting heads we use on the fairways).  A rotary mower (this type of mower is similar style to what you would see on a regular homeowners' mower) would be prone to scalping on our surrounds because of bumps and hollows and the steepness associated with some greens surrounds.  Even if the rotary cutting heads were able to provide a proper cut we only have one unit small enough to manoeuvre around bunkers and the putting greens.  That unit is already needed in conjunction with our large rough mower to maintain the regular rough.  

Changing the height of cut to use the smaller unit for both the regular rough and short rough around greens is possible but not practical since we would have to do it at least 3 time a week (Analogy?  The only one I can come up with relates to having a set of expensive tires you don't want to wear out so you switch them out to another set every time you go on the highway and then switch back to the expensive set when you're driving around the city and you have to do this 3 times a week.  You could do it but what a P.I.T.A!).  Other non-turf considerations include the increased costs and time associated with the maintenance of reel mowers and how tree litter impacts the quality of cut.

I could try to project out the costs in labour and materials but I don’t really have enough information (mostly with respect to the time/labour component) to provide a somewhat relevant number.  Despite the long winded explanation I still think it something we'll try this year and I'll keep track and see if the results justify the costs.

Holy!  That was long.  Now what?  I've already created the "standard" for the fairways and I will be posting a standard for each area on the course in the clubhouse so everyone can read them.  Feel free to stop me and ask questions or comment if you have any sort of input.

Discussion of Survey, Part 1

Question #1:	V. Important	Somewhat	Important	Not as Import.	Unimport.
Playing Conditions	62.00%	23.90%	13.00%	0.00%	1.10%
Turf Health	26.10%	46.70%	18.50%	8.70%	0.00%
Environmental Impact	3.30%	5.40%	17.40%	28.30%	45.70%
Course Grooming	8.70%	18.50%	46.70%	22.80%	3.30%
Landscaping	0.00%	5.40%	4.30%	40.20%	50.00%

Some people did not like this question since it forced you to choose only one condition as being “Very Important”.  Welcome to my world.  Weekly, if not daily, I am forced to make these very same choices.  For me every one of these items is VERY IMPORTANT and should receive the same attention.  I don’t think it’s too dramatic to say that the experience players have on a golf course is not the result of one thing but a sum of its parts.  The position we’re now in has forced us to review everything we do and make some hard choices.  However, if everyone has some say hopefully the choices we make are supported or, at the very least, understood by all at KGC.

As well as making you prioritize this was a question that tested your knowledge of golf course maintenance.  Only 26.10% got it right by listing turf health as very important.  Perhaps I need to define turf health with respect to a golf course.  For me, healthy turf is able to withstand whatever conditions I decide to subject it to and not decline or, worse, die as a result.  Further, healthy turf has to be able to withstand whatever Mother Nature decides to throw at it.  Notice there is no mention of green/lush/long turf, aerating monthly, pounding the fertilizer, or ladling down control products.  Healthy turf begets good playing conditions, which is reflected in good course grooming.  Healthy turf doesn’t need protectants which decreases the environmental impact and less money spend on treatments means more money for the non-turf related areas of the golf course.

Question #2:   As I hoped most (95.8%) choose consistency over speed.  Now we need to define consistency.  As I mentioned at AGM, greens are considered consistent if all green roll with 6" of each other.  For example, if a green is rolling 8’6” any green plus or minus 3” (i.e. 8’3” to 8’9”) is considered to putting at the same speed (I get that info from this article).  What speed is good for our greens?  That goes back to my definition of healthy turf: whatever speed I can get that doesn’t kill ‘em and whatever speed we can get that falls within equipment and staffing limitations.

For most all other questions most people choose the maintenance regime we regularly perform:

81% expect moderate bunker maintenance

57% expect mostly weed free tee surface mowed 2 to 3 times/week

84% want firm fairways with defined edges with few weeds

62% want rough mostly green and longer than fairways with few weeds

73% expect most areas to be usually free of most debris

There is 3 more questions to discuss but this post is long enough.

The Impetus for the Survey

That was great!  Its been a little over a week and I had fantastic participation in my survey.  So much so that if I want to collect more responses I would have to upgrade to the "Professional" version of the software.  (FYI: I made use of a website that allows you to do small surveys without any fee.  The trade offs are numerous and include things like only allowing no more than 10 questions, allowing only a limited number of respondents, no ability to chart results, etc., etc.).
  
Now, as boring as this sounds, I think everyone needs a bit of back ground on what started this process of developing a maintenance standard.  First another quote regarding the development of a maintenance standard: 

"Golf course maintenance standards are guidelines that detail the manner in which a golf course is maintained on a daily basis. They are not instruction manuals for each cultural practice, or a list of job descriptions for employees, although these can be included. They are, however, formal documents that outline golf course maintenance goals and the necessary practices for meeting these goals. These plans can be very helpful in addressing budgetary concerns and customer expectations."

It's the last sentence that really got me going down this road. With both a shrinking budget and membership I needed a tool that could, hopefully, consider both those points while also aiding in giving members the best bang for the buck.  In the past, the bonus of having a large membership and the associated revenue was the freedom it offered us when making maintenance decisions.  Basically, decisions were made with an eye on always improving conditions with only a cursory glance at the cost (within reason, of course).  Now maintenance practices that appear to be the norm for KGC may not be feasible in the present environment.  One example is greens mowing.  Not that long ago we hand mowed all greens everyday from May 1st to Oct 1st.  Last year (2012) over that same time we frame we only walked 57% of the time.  The rest of the time we triplexed to save on wages.  I feel there is a substantial difference in the quality of cut when you compare a hand mowed green to a triplexed green with hand mowing giving a better cut.  That is especially true when you factor in the triplex unit and the style of cutting heads it has.  Next post I'll delve into the survey result.

Course Conditions

Another quick look around at some more greens and everything appears good.  There is only just over 10" of snow on most the front greens compared to 18 to 20" on the greens last year at this time (and that was before we got all the snow in March).  What does that mean?  Not much since we never really seem to get going before the 3rd week in April regardless of snow pack.