Performance Measurement and Accountability

How do you measure performance as it relates to landscape? My contractor returns my calls. He did exactly as I asked. No one complains, therefore, the performance is good. Certainly these are valid ways to convince yourself that your landscape maintenance is of good quality, but if that were solely the case, wouldn't every landscape in your region look great? After all, no one hires a landscaper to get poor performance. And no landscaper goes into business selling “poor performance- delivered on time every time!” Consider these ways to gauge performance.

1. Specifications. You should be able to review the specs and verify that your landscaper is meeting the standards that are in place. Your landscaper should have a system in place to verify that tasks are being done. At any given time, you should see tasks being performed consistently well.
   
2. Appearance. Admit it. You know which properties in your area look awesome. Does your property look as good? If not, why not? If your turf program is the same and if your irrigation system is operational, your turf should look just as good. Are your plants lush and vigorous or anemic and sickly? Are your flowers beautiful? Don’t let your landscaper convince you that your site conditions are that dramatically different.
   
3. Who is evaluating the performance? Someone who thinks plants sheared into amorphous shapes looks great, but your landscaper who may have gone to college and learned that shearing is not the best for plants may disagree. Just because he/she likes the way something looks does not make it right or meet an industry standard. Make sure that the judge of the performance is qualified to judge.
4. Unforeseen conditions. Have conditions changed so that your landscaper cannot perform at the specified level? For example: Due to drought, in the South, irrigation restrictions that limit the amount of irrigation that can be used and we are seeing some lawns decline.

If your landscaper is performing to the specifications and properly training his labor and properly utilizing his equipment and materials, your property should look good and the measurement of the landscaper’s quality should pass any test.

Now, how do you hold your landscaper accountable? Threaten him? Put him on double secret probation? Rebid? Unceremoniously fire him? As a property manager, I am sure you have seen or done all of the above and there is a time and a place for each of these approaches, but the bottom line is, have you truly solved the problem?

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. If you do not change something, you will get the same result with the next contractor. You have to put a system in place to monitor and verify performance.

Of course, we at OLM, know that we have the solution to the accountability question. Call us and we can monitor the performance and hold him accountable with Performance Payment! You have nothing to lose, but poor quality.