Spon's Grounds Maintenance Contract Handbook

Mr R M Chadwick, R.M. Chadwick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781135833572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Aimed at those at the sharp end of contract grounds maintenance, this book will provide guidance for anyone unfamiliar with the process of contracting work out. Written in a clear and readable style and full of practical details it will be particularly valuable to local authorities who, from 1990 will be thrown into contractual maintenance and competitive tendering for the first time.

CHAPTER 1
The concept of contract grounds maintenance

1.1 CHANGING TIMES

The concept of contract grounds maintenance is not new. Many Local Authorities and Government Agencies have been operating with contract labour for some years. On the one hand we have the small rural Parish Council which arranges for a local man, perhaps a farmer, to cut the village green twice a year, often for a nominal sum. At the other extreme there is the Property Services Agency, responsible for the maintenance of airfields, military establishments and Government properties all over the country, with a highly organized system of contract landscape maintenance operating contracts worth, in total, many millions of pounds annually.

Inbetween these extremes there are those County, Borough and District Councils who employ contractors for specific landscape works of a one-off nature, as well as a few who are no strangers to some form of regular Grounds Maintenance Contract, having been involved in this type of operation for a number of years.

Traditionally, of course, the bulk of the landscape maintenance in our towns and cities has generally been carried out by the staffs of the Local Authorities concerned, whose Direct Labour Organizations (DLOs) may include parks staff, nursery-men, groundsmen, gardeners, foresters and arboriculturists as well as those employed in ancillary enterprises such as catering, cleaning and others.

Today, however, the situation is changing, as Local Authorities are now obliged to contract out a certain minimum proportion of their grounds maintenance under the terms of the Local Government Act, 1988. This has been a very unpopular piece of legislation with many Authorities, but one with which most of them are rapidly coming to terms.

Legislation notwithstanding, in recent years a number of Authorities have been considering the political, economic and government pressures of contracting out at least some of the work of their Parks Departments to the private sector.

1.2 POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The political reasons need not concern us greatly here. Policy making is the province of our elected representatives and the author is not prepared to engage in that particular arena. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that, in recent years, considerable pressures have been applied by central government to encourage privatization of many of the services traditionally provided by Local Authorities. This has now culminated in the Act to which reference has already been made, the implications of which will be discussed in later pages. The work of the Parks Department must be considered especially vulnerable in this situation, in view of its high labour intensity and the large amounts of revenue money expended annually.

The question of whether to go out to tender, or to continue with the existing system of in-house landscape maintenance, has long been a difficult one to resolve. Many left-wing-dominated Authorities (and not a few others) see it as part of their duty to provide local employment in the form of Direct Labour Organizations and are averse to any proposals that run counter to this. In this, they have the support of the Unions, whose members are naturally opposed to anything which seems likely to endanger their livelihood. There are powerful economic arguments, however.

1.3 ECONOMIC REASONS

From the taxpayer’s point of view, privatization has much to commend it, as there is no doubt that properly managed contract landscape maintenance can be cost effective. Savings of between a quarter and a third may be expected, with no loss of working standards. This does not imply that the private sector employees are necessarily more efficient or more zealous than their Local Authority counterparts, but is mainly due to the following factors.

1.3.1 Overheads

Many DLOs are subject to a level of general overhead which no private business could tolerate. Contractors do not have to pay to support expensive town halls, armies of clerical and administrative staff and all the pomp and regalia which so often accompanies local government. This one factor alone is often sufficient to preclude the possibility of any DLO from ever becoming cost effective, through no fault of its own. Unless some alternative method of accounting can be adopted, which produces an overhead rate based only on those charges actually incurred by the DLO in the performance of its duties, and which is acceptable to all parties concerned, the Parks Department can never compete on level terms with the private sector.

1.3.2 Flexibility

Contractors generally have a much greater level of flexibility in the manner in which they control their staff. Although they, like the rest of us, have to abide by the Health and Safety Act, Employment Act and all the many other Acts and Regulations relating to employment of staff, they are less restricted in their interpretation of the various conditions imposed. They are better able to hire and fire and can take on temporary staff at peak times for short periods, according to the needs of the day. They are in a better position to resist excessive demands from staff with regard to pay and working conditions, despite the fact that some of the better firms offer conditions of service which compare very favourably with those encountered in Local Government Service.

1.3.3 Incentives

It is possible for private companies to offer incentives to their staff which those in Local Government are often unable to provide and this encourages greater productivity and a quicker turn-over of the work load. These may take the form of bonus payments, opportunities for overtime working, transport to and from work, gifts of consumer goods for achievement of target dates and the like. Some of the larger companies may offer profit-sharing schemes to their permanent employees.

1.3.4 Competition

Nothing is more calculated to bring down prices than the element of competition. The landscape industry is operating in a highly competitive situation with many companies vying for the available business. The effect of this is for firms to constantly seek ways of improving the efficiency and cost effectiveness of their business in order to win contracts.

In this, small, local contractors are at an advantage, as they can operate with minimum overheads, and are often prepared to accept a smaller margin of profit than some of their larger competitors.

On the other hand, the larger firms can often effect economies of scale when handling the larger contracts which are beyond the capacity of smaller companies to undertake.

For these reasons, the private sector should usually be able to operate more competitively than the average DLO, so that, on economic grounds alone, there would seem to be an over-whelming argument in favour of using contractors, in preference to in-house maintenance of grounds. There are other considerations, however.

1.4 IN SUPPORT OF THE DLO

In the implementation of the Local Government Act, most authorities have restructured their DLO in such a way as to enable them to adopt a ‘contractor’ role and themselves tender for the work of their own Authority. Many of them have been successful in this (Chapter 12). Where this has not happened, the use of private contractors would appear to threaten redundancy of at least an equivalent number of Local Authority staff and, in some cases, even the eventual closure of the DLO entirely. There is a very good case against this, however.

In the first place, in order that a contract maintenance programme should operate successfully, we need good contractors, a good contract and good client management. These matters are dealt with at length in later chapters of this book; suffice it to say here that if the mix is right, all will be well. Unfortunately, the practical reality sometimes falls short of the theoretical ideal and it is well to be prepared for such an eventuality.

It can be reassuring to know that, if the worst happens, there is a back-up team ready to step in if required, in order to fill what would otherwise be an embarrassing void. This knowledge will also strengthen considerably the Authorities dealings with the contractor concerned.

Secondly, there are some aspects of grounds maintenance which may be considered to be inappropriate for inclusion in a maintenance contract. These may include ticket selling, booking of pitches and other recreational facilities, promotion of special floral displays, Britain in Bloom, Best Kept Village Competitions and others.

Then there is the problem of the quick response. We are all familiar with the situation where unexpected urgent work is required, where an immediate response is vital. It may be a question of making good the effects of a bad spate of vandalism, or the ‘VIP’s visit’, where the route has to be checked and quickly tidied up at the last minute. It is not always possible to obtain the immediate response required in these circumstances from the maintenance contractor as his or her staff are not under our direct control.

There is a very good argument for retaining a part of the DLO as a small but viable unit to cover the sort of eventualities described above. The ‘private contractor versus DLO’ argument has been running for years, and is likely to continue for years to come. It is suggested that the conflict is not as great as normally imagined, as there is a role for both types of organizations in most Parks Departments.

1.5 THE TRAINING OF GARDENERS

The question of training is one that needs to be considered also. Many of today’s skilled gardeners owe their craftsman status to the training they have received while in the employ of Local Authorities. They will have benefited from short courses in particular craft skills as well as from day release, on full pay, for the purpose of obtaining more general qualifications in horticulture and allied subjects, in order to further their careers. This has been going on for many years and it is largely due to the encouragement and assistance provided by the employers that we have a pool of trained, skilled and qualified gardeners available today. If the DLOs were to disappear, or to be drastically curtailed, it is difficult to see who is to continue this support. The contractors are unlikely to provide such facilities as, apart from the financial considerations, they would not wish to lose the services of their staff, on a regular day-release basis, throughout the major part of the year. Where then, is the industry’s future trained staff to come from?

The colleges may have a part to play in this, as by restructuring their courses it might be possible to compress a whole year’s day release into a few weeks’ intensive block training during the winter period, when the average contractor might be more amenable to releasing staff for training, at a time of year when he or she is less busy.

If this could be supported by some sort of training grant from central government, financed in part by a training levy arranged on a per capita basis, so much the better.

The above scheme, supplemented by the continued efforts of those DLOs remaining, albeit perhaps at a lower level, would ensure the continuing flow of trained staff for future generations of gardeners.

CHAPTER 2
Some basic considerations

Before considering some of the more basic aspects of contract grounds maintenance, it might be useful to look briefly at the Act which has been largely responsible for its instigation.

2.1 THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT 1988

The Local Government Act is a comprehensive one, which embodies such diverse matters as the provision of public services, financial regulations, dog registration, publicity and the prohibitions of the promotion of homosexuality, and is designed to limit, control and regulate the actions of Local Authorities in these and other spheres of action. The particular section which concerns us here is, of course, that which deals with the maintenance of grounds by Local Authorities.

The following brief résumé of the Act, in so far as it applies to Local Authority grounds maintenance, is not intended to replace a detailed reading and study of the Act itself. In all cases, reference should be made to the official publication by HMSO, with professional advice being taken on its interpretation in any particular cicumstances.

The Act requires that a ‘defined authority’ shall undertake certain ‘defined activities’ only if they can do so competitively. The Act applies throughout England, Scotland and Wales, including island authorities where appropriate; it does not apply to Northern Ireland.

A defined authority includes:

1. Local Authorities
2. Police Authorities
3. Fire and Civil Defence Authorities
4. Metropolitan County Passenger Transport Authorities
5. Waste Disposal Authorities
6. Education Authorities
7. Scottish Water Development Boards
8. The Scottish Special Housing Association

Local Authorities are further defined as:

1. County Councils
2. District Councils
3. London Borough Councils
4. Parish Councils
5. Community Councils
6. Council of the Isles of Scilly

and in Scotland:

1. Regional Island or District Councils
2. Joint Boards or Committees

Defined activities include:

1. Collection of refuse
2. Cleaning of buildings
3. Other cleaning
4. School, welfare and other catering
5. Maintenance of ground
6. Repair and maintenance of vehicles

There is a certain amount of overlap between the authorities responsible for certain activities and between certain of the activit...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• FOREWORD
• CHAPTER 1: THE CONCEPT OF CONTRACT GROUNDS MAINTENANCE
• CHAPTER 2: SOME BASIC CONSIDERATIONS
• CHAPTER 3: PREPARING THE GROUND — SURVEYING
• CHAPTER 4: CONTRACTORS
• CHAPTER 5: SPECIFICATIONS (1)
• CHAPTER 6: SPECIFICATIONS (2)
• CHAPTER 7: ESTIMATES
• CHAPTER 8: TENDERS AND TENDERING
• CHAPTER 9: SUPERVISION
• CHAPTER 10: SCHEDULES OF RATES
• CHAPTER 11: CONTRACT DOCUMENTATION
• CHAPTER 12: THE DLO AS TENDERER
• APPENDIX: THE MILTON KEYNES SPECIFICATION