It might be August, but at Gelderman we’ve been thinking about snow for more than a month already!
Gelderman Landscape Services was certified to the [ISO9001/SN9001 Certification](https://gelderman.com/blog/450/we-are-a-certified-iso-9001-sn-9001-snow-and-ice-management-company) standard last November which continually pushes us to improve our operations processes. Our management teams met in July to create strategic plans for each branch, including a SWOT analysis, identifying the branch’s direction and what it will take to get there.
We took these plans and began to create a list of “to-do’s” – it grows every day! To manage this list, we separated the items into different categories including fleet, health & safety training, financials, and operations. Once we had all of our major categories pinned down, that’s when the details came in. When do we need to order equipment? When should our budgets be set? Is there new equipment being used that we will need to train our staff on?
To help keep all these moving parts working together, we’ve created a Gannt chart to help organize the different events and decisions. This chart gives us a visual of the entire schedule of events and helps us to plan our summer operations around these deadlines as well. A key factor in this chart is how we can note dependencies between different tasks on our list. Some items must be completed first! It also shows us where we have some buffer room in our planning. Most importantly, plotting all of these activities makes it easier to see the big picture and turns the list into a manageable process.
Though we’re not quite ready to wish away this beautiful summer, we are excited to start implementing our winter plans for 2017!
