Making the Most of Your Landscape Walk Around

As we approach the green season once again, the landscape contractor should be on board and landscape walk arounds should be scheduled before too much of the season passes. I have gone on a good number of walk arounds and dare to offer a few tips to landscape committees and property managers on how to make the most of the walk around from the landscaper’s perspective.

The first problem to solve is just who goes on the walk around. If there is a landscape committee, they are the obvious choice and hopefully one or more members are also on the board. The landscape committee makes recommendations to the board and the board is the body which authorizes the contract work. If the board is not inclined to authorize additional work as a result of the walk around, then there should not be any additional work requested by the committee or proposed by the landscaper.

Checklists and note taking are important part of walk around.

Participating in a walk around with a landscape committee who has no clear direction or authority from the board is not a productive event.

Should the management company also participate in the walk around or even lead it? It varies widely in practice and has its pros and cons. On the pro side, the management company seems to keep the process more focused. Walk arounds during normal business hours are often attended by the management company and those which are held on Saturday are often with the landscape committee by themselves. We like walk arounds during normal business hours not only because of the management company presence but also because it lets us document and research punch list items the same day. When held on the weekend, action on the punch list is inevitably delayed until the following Monday when lots of other pressures are at work. The down side of having the management company participate on the walk around is that all sorts of other (legitimate) subjects get discussed that have nothing to do with the landscaping. Roofing, painting, driveway repair, etc are not subjects to be included in the landscape walk around. Effort should be made to limit the discussion to landscape subjects during the walk around.

The responsible group assembles on the appointed day and the walk around begins. Whose walk around is it? Does the landscape committee want to take the landscaper around and point out areas of concern or is the landscape committee expecting to be walked around and areas of concern from the landscaper pointed out to committee? Either method works and a mixture of the two makes for the most productive result. If the landscaper is expected to point out concerns and make proposals, advance notice of this desire by the committee is critical to a successful outcome. Nothing is worse that a landscape committee expecting proposals for improvement during the walk around from a non-prepared landscaper.

Setting up the objective of the walk around in advance makes for a much more productive session for both parties. If the association has a tight landscape budget, then the objective of the walk around should be to maximize the results without increasing the cost. Can one item in the budget be traded for another to produce a better result? Perhaps the objective is to minimize the maintenance items so that more funds can be put into improvements. Perhaps this year the board has approved the upgrade of beds around the clubhouse. These items really need to be brought out as early in the process as possible so that the landscaper can be more prepared to respond appropriately. Nothing is worse than a landscaper pointing out the need to repair or improve problem areas when there isn’t any budget to accommodate the proposal.

Establish a time limit for the walk around. Things just seem to go better when a time limit is established. Once again, the management company is usually quite good at setting limits to the walk around time whereas the landscape committee quite often wants to spend more time than less. The old adage “Time is Money” holds true for landscapers too and time is precious, especially during the spring time start up period where so much has to be accomplished in a very short period of time.

Assign a scribe to take notes and action items for the landscape committee. We always come prepared to take notes but what we hear is not always what was said! Our best walk around results have occurred where both the committee and we took notes and compared them later. It certainly eliminates the holes and confusion, if any. When something is brought up during the walk around it should be assigned a priority status. High, Medium and, Low works fine so long as everything doesn’t wind up being High priority. This status should be marked with the action item and tracked within status groupings.

We have an incredible number of landscape experts living in condominium communities! It is quite offensive for a committee member to lecture the landscaper on landscape procedures while on the walk around. The offensive part is not on the part of the landscaper (we deal with experts all the time) but rather for the other committee members. I have found that members often don’t agree amongst themselves on procedures. Our best results have come from walk arounds where punch list action items were the topic rather than particular procedures. Discussions about particular procedures can and should occur later when implementation is being discussed.

There is some sort of magnetism involved with walk arounds. There are many times when the walk around gets stalled in front of a committee member’s unit and the discussion becomes very detailed and critical. This is most often controlled by the property managers (if they are part of the walk around) since they know the addresses. We landscapers most often don’t know where the committee members live which puts us at a disadvantage. Spending an inordinate amount of time at a committee member’s unit is unfair to the overall community. It should be the other committee member’s (or management company’s) responsibility to keep the walk around moving if it should get stalled. To give everyone their due, I have had many committee members specifically remark that they live at such and such a unit and they don’t want to have their units get any special treatment (honest!).

Set a date for the punch list to be prepared and reviewed. Both parties should prepare their punch list and the landscape committee should be prepared to get approval for any additional work requested during the walk around. Those punch list items which are part of the maintenance contract need to have a completion date assigned so that the landscaper can have a priority order for accomplishing the tasks. If there are specific proposals required as a result of the walk around, establish dates when those proposals should be complete.

Lastly, set up a time for the next walk around. You don’t need a specific date but next month or after the 4th of July or not until Labor Day are good enough examples. A more specific date can be arranged as the time nears but at least everyone is agreed on the time frame for the next walk around.