In addition to the numerous site audits that we conduct throughout the year, the Schill Grounds Management team also makes sure to perform larger, more comprehensive site audits twice per year on every property we manage. This allows our customers to get a snapshot of their property’s health, get any issues fixed quickly, get a head start on the next year’s landscaping work, and get the best service.
In fact, we believe so strongly in the benefits of pre-season inspections that we wrote this article explaining their benefits so that property managers and owners can take full advantage of them.
Get A Snapshot of your Property’s Health
Your landscape is a living ecosystem that’s always changing both aesthetically and biologically, and it’s important to keep a record of those changes. Imagine having to go to the doctor when you’re sick, but you have no medical records. Not knowing whether your illness has been going on for days, weeks, or years would make it very difficult for your physician to prescribe an appropriate course of treatment.
Similarly, your landscape maintenance provider needs to be informed when and why any issues on your property arise. Observing your property several times a year allows us to keep our fingers on the pulse of your landscape, and keeping track of all problems great and small helps us to properly plan the upcoming season’s service.
Get the best service
Here at Schill, we use preseason inspections to make sure our crews know your property inside and out.
Based on the information we gather in the fall from each inspection, we spend a couple months before the first storm of the season training our team.
When we examine your property, we identify any potential hazards such as unattached parking blocks, sinkholes, and drains and make sure that our crews are aware of them. This helps prevent damage to the landscape and our equipment as well.
During this time, we also identify areas of heavy foot and automobile traffic and instruct our crews to make sure that those zones receive pretreatment or more salt.
We also spend time making sure our crews know how to get to each property, where the nearest salt storage locations are, and what path to plow most efficiently. Such preparations allow us to estimate with great accuracy how much time it should take to service your property, and we use those estimates to track our crews’ performance and efficiency throughout the season. Because they know that we’re closely monitoring this, our customers have peace of mind that they’re not being overcharged for labor.
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Get issues fixed quickly
Property damage happens. We’ve written before about the “blame game” that can happen when multiple contractors are working on the same site. But when you only have one provider that performs both snow removal and landscape maintenance, this doesn’t happen. Instead, we use preseason inspections to document any damage that has occurred and fix it. And if we conduct a pre-season inspection a few months before the first storm of the season, we have much more time to correct any issues that we spot than if we examine your property later in the year.
With that being said, it’s important for us to schedule pre-season inspections as early as possible. For our potential clients, this means reserving a spot on our list as soon as possible, and for past clients it means early contract renewal. Every year we turn down bid requests that get submitted to late because taking on new customers late in the season sometimes means having to completely adjust our routes and schedules. Don’t get left behind—find a snow removal contractor as early as possible!
Get a head start on next season
In addition to helping us fix existing damage, pre-season inspections can also help us prevent problems from worsening or even happening at all.
For instance, sometimes trees and shrubs that have a hard time in the summer heat fare even worse in the harsh winter sun. Sometimes the full extent of the damage isn’t even visible until the next spring, when trees start to leaf out again. Nevertheless, identifying such vulnerable plants allows us to protect them so that they can survive when winter weather hits.
We’re always looking forward here at Schill Grounds Management. So, when we conduct inspections in the fall ahead of snow season, we’re looking at changes and improvements we can make to your landscape in the springtime.
Many of the property managers and owners that we work with use our recommendations when they start to budget for the next fiscal or calendar year. These suggestions can range from basic tree and shrub replacements to smart upgrades to irrigation systems.
Trust Schill to protect your property
The team at Schill Grounds Management loves to protect landscapes four seasons per year. If your HOA, retail, apartment, or commercial property is located in the Northeast Ohio area, contact us today to discuss how a pre-season inspection can help. And if you want more tips on how to protect your landscape before winter hits, be sure to download our Fall Landscaping Checklist below.
