As we enter the new year, we have several "New Year Resolutions". Every fall we evaluate our service and forecast the needs of our clients with new technologies and strategies to better manage their landscape assets. We have spent a great deal of time this fall, as we have in past years, researching and learning from our industry trade associations as well as other peers form across the country. We went to the National Association of Landscape Professionals Landscape Conference in October, our Peer Group conference in November, and the Irrigation Association Conference and Oregon Landscape Contractors Association Expo in December.
We have several service objectives that we have been working on to help you save resources and money while improving the appearance and sustainability of your landscape. You will hear much more about these throughout this year but they include:
Smartlink Weather-Based Smart Irrigation:We signed up to be a Premier Partner with Weathermatic to allow us to offer this service as a subscription; eliminating the capital installation costs and providing immediate return on investment to our customers. We tested out this system last summer on approximately 50 sites and found it to be highly successful. We have proposed it to all customers and hope all consider it. We have received another 150 approvals to install which we're working on right now in preparation for the 2020 irrigation season.
Water Conservation Evaluations:We have also proposed to do a water conservation evaluation this summer for our customers. The goal of these are to help define opportunities to upgrade irrigation systems and/or modify the landscape to reduce water consumption and provide return on investment. Water rates have doubled over the last 5 years and are supposed to double again in the next 5. Water is the fastest growing utility cost in the Portland Metropolitan area and we are working aggressively to help our customers reduce their water usage and save money. Please consider approving an irrigation evaluation as it will provide you with valuable information to help plan for water saving projects.
Rejuvenation Pruning:Most landscapes include plant material that is required to be maintained at significantly lower growing height than the natural mature height. This results in plants in need of aggressive pruning to properly fit in the existing landscape conditions. We're working on a plan to propose rejuvenating these plants, which means cutting them low to the ground. This seems drastic, but we've been experimenting with this practice over the last several years and found significant success in returning overgrown plants to their desired height and appearance. Look for more information about this in the coming months and proposals for your specific project.
LEAN:We have been studying and learning about the Lean Management Process over the last several years and are helping our teams improve their efficiency through the Lean Process. Our costs have risen dramatically over the last 5 years and we have utilized Lean Management to help mitigate the cost increases that we have needed from our customers. This is something you will directly see and it is an important piece of how we are keeping our cost increases at a minimum.
