Facility&Operations
Creating & managing
expectations—the key to field
use and maintenance planning
Editor's note: This article is based on a presentation at January's STMA Conference by Rebecca Auchter,
manager of grounds maintenance, Cranberry Township, PA entitled "Athletic Field Use and Maintenance
Planning." Thanks to Ms. Auchter for allowing us to use this material; more information can be found at
the links listed below from www.cranberrytownship.org.
A
s many parks
and recreation
and K-12
school district
turf managers
know, the agendas of field
users and administrators are
often contrary to what is best
for their fields. Rebecca
Auchter, manager of grounds
maintenance for Cranberry
Township, PA told her audience at the Sports Turf Managers Association Conference
in January that to combat this,
they needed to create and
manage others' expectations.
Auchter said the path to
8 SportsTurf | April 2013
creating and managing expectations was to establish good
relationships with key "influencers" such as administrators
and spend time communicating with and training them,
with a goal that eventually you
will spend less time doing that
and more time on agronomic
practices. She reminded the
audience that establishing rela-
tionships means "being nice"
and "making friends."
"You have to get the 'owners'
of the fields to buy in to what
you want to do to protect your
fields," she said. "The better
your documentation and the
more thorough your policies
are, the faster you can get back
to work."
Auchter said turf managers
need to teach, train, communicate, document and explain, not
only to supervisors and other
administrators but also to field
users. She has put together three
tools she uses to accomplish
this: a Parks Maintenance Plan;
an Athletic Field Use Policy;
and an Athletic Field Maintenance Manual. "You can use
these tools to answer a lot of
questions so again, you can get
back to work."
PARKS
MAINTENANCE PLAN
"The Parks Maintenance
Plan is general and comprehensive—what we have, where it is,
what we do with it, and how to
assess it." said Auchter. The plan
is broken out into categories of
maintenance (turfgrass, skins,
trees/landscape, trails, etc.) and
"It's all about expectations!"
-Rebecca Auchter, Cranberry Twp. manager of grounds
www.sportsturfonline.com
