With every landscape job there comes an array of responsibilities and duties that your foremen have to complete on a daily basis. The main landscaping foreman job duty is to make sure that the job is completed on time and on budget. But being a foreman managing a landscaping crew can sometimes be difficult and overwhelming as they have so many moving parts to keep track of including staff, delivery of site materials, and getting the proper equipment to site. This proves that landscaping foreman skills extend past the equipment and really show if the job site is organized and running smoothly.
Being productive and staying efficient onsite is a constant battle that landscape business owners have. They’re always wondering why jobs are taking too long or why careless mistakes are being made. As a landscape business owner, you want to make sure that your foremen have the right tools and systems in place to get the job done right the first time. We’ll check out 5 simple systems your landscape business can put in place to set up your foreman for success on a jobsite.
1. Daily Site Meetings
Daily site meetings should be led by the foreman on site three times per day: morning, lunch, and at the end of the day. It may seem counterintuitive to spend time talking about the job rather than doing it, but it actually drives efficiency by keeping the crew organized through active communication. Here’s a breakdown on how a job site foreman on a landscaping crew should conduct each meeting:
- Morning meeting: Assign each crew member to a task so that they know exactly what their priority onsite is going to be for that day.
- Lunch meeting: Foreman needs to have the crew identify what tasks need to be completed by the end of the day to achieve their goals.
- End of day meeting: Foreman needs to wrap up the day and note what was completed onsite, troubleshoot any current issues before clocking out, answer any questions, and prep for the next work day on site.
Checklists are a fantastic process to adopt into your landscaping business. If there are standardized clocking out tasks that need to be done before leaving the jobsite, make sure to develop a checklist to ensure that nothing is missed before leaving for the day. There’s nothing worse than finding out something moved the skid-steer into a ditch overnight because the keys were left behind.
2. Daily Equipment Inspections
Have your foreman perform daily equipment inspections on each piece of equipment that is onsite, or have them assign inspections to their crew members. This will ensure that the equipment hours are recorded for regular maintenance purposes which will result in less repairs and more efficiency onsite. This system also ensures crew members stay accountable for the equipment and job site by preventing avoidable accidents or easily avoidable mistakes like ensuring batteries are charged or fuel tanks are filled. Waiting is a massive source of financial waste and that adds up everytime a crew member has a task interrupted because they didn’t fuel or charge up their equipment the night before.
3. Project Binders
A project binder should be created for each job that your foreman is working on. This one-stop shop should be where your foreman can review what’s needed for the project, and it will keep the estimator and the foreman on the same page. Landscaping project binders include all necessary safety documents for onsite and should include the following documents:
- Job Planner
- Jobsite Emergency Plan
- Locates
- Drawings & Permits – (job specific, if applicable)
- Supplier Directory
Organization is key for any successful foreman. Project binders are essential for the quick retrieval of jobsite documents should anyone request permits. Save your landscape business and the crew the hassle of fines and work stoppages.
4. Hiring and Training Landscapers
Landscapers don’t grow on trees, and finding seasoned landscapers are hard to come by when hiring for your landscaping business. While it’s easy to say you’ll hire landscapers to add to your crew, there will be some liberties taken when rolling the dice with hiring green crew members. The best way to fill those skill gaps is to quickly train crew members when they’re a blank slate through structured training and a proper onboarding system. In short, get them the knowhow they need so they can get to work right away.
Finding time with your seasoned crew veterans is another hurdle when training new hires. How can you pull aside somebody to train new hires while staying efficient on jobs and on time? Greenius has eliminated that barrier by creating an on-demand video training platform for the skilled trades. On-demand video training provides a strong educational foundation that visually shows users how to do the job and what the results will look like. Greenius training courses cover how to safely and efficiently operate specific equipment and tools, general jobsite safety, fuel basics, general safety onsite, and overall supervisor training. LMN Pro users have full access to the Greenius course library and software.
5. Connect The Jobsite To The Office
Communication is key to keeping a job efficient and profitable. Disconnects between the office and the jobsite can ruin landscaping budgets, lead to missed opportunities to right any wrongs, and create a disjointed relationship between the customer, office, and crew. To solve that, LMN Pro software connects the office to the foreman to create that transparent and organized stream of communication.
Each job created through the LMN Pro software has a steady work flow that integrates the job from estimate, budget, time tracking, job binder and notes, and finally invoicing and payments. This ensures that the customer’s expectations are met and managed and that the crews and office are on the same page.
Reach out to the LMN Team to learn how the LMN Pro software will make your business more profitable and take your foreman’s work efficiency to the next level.
