Dean Pearson, Senior Operations Manager at OUTCO discuses how changing seasons demand a culture shift in Outdoor Facilities Management
Maintaining outdoor spaces requires far more understanding of the environment, climate and external conditions than just planning to a strict calendar. Effective management of external environments requires organisations to recognise two key realities: our seasonal patterns have fundamentally changed, and the regimented culture of internal FM cannot simply be exported outdoors. As we start to look ahead to autumn and winter, keeping these realities in mind is key to successfully managing your outdoor estate and ensures the most productive relationship with your contractors.
The Shrinking Calendar: From Four Seasons to Two
Historically, grounds maintenance followed a predictable, bell-shaped curve linked to “growth degree days” – a metric widely used in farming and horticulture that links the expected pace of plant growth to likely temperatures and external factors. There was a slow tail-off in autumn, a dormant winter, a gradual spring reawakening, and a plateau of active growth in the summer. Today, we’re seeing that predictable curve being replaced by erratic, “up down up down” weather cycles and prolonged stagnation in external environments.
In other words, we have effectively transitioned from a climate of four seasons to just two; autumn and spring have shrunk, while summer and winter have expanded. This volatility is making traditional horticultural calendars increasingly obsolete. As an example, you might experience a 22-degree week followed immediately by an unseasonal frost, causing early-blooming plants like daffodils to emerge in February only to be wiped out by snow in April. Because of these extended growing periods, the traditional spring downtime we once used to prep borders no longer exists; grounds maintenance teams are now constantly battling active growth at all times, all while dealing with day-to-day requirements of external FM management.
Looking ahead to this winter, we can anticipate a particularly volatile period. The World Meteorological Organisation has warned that the next phase of the world’s periodic El Niño
weather pattern could be one of the strongest on record, with the Met Office predicting this could produce a milder start and colder end to the British winter. At the best of times, unsettled seasons have become the rule – this year could be even more erratic.
The Culture Clash: Internal vs. External FM Mindsets
This volatility presents a unique challenge to the world of FM, where it collides head on with a culture that is highly regimented and standards driven: One of the biggest hurdles in modern grounds maintenance is overcoming the traditional internal FM mindset that’s often guided by industry standards such as SFG20 that dictate strict service frequencies – for both statutory and non-statutory compliance (i.e. if a schedule dictates that emergency lights must be checked on a Tuesday, they are checked on a Tuesday, regardless of the weather or any external factors).
The fundamental error many FMs make is assuming the outside operates just like the inside. You simply can’t manage a living, external landscape with the same templated, standards-based mindset used to maintain a boiler tagged with an asset number. Outdoors, teams are dealing with growing, living organisms and highly variable conditions. Meanwhile, aside from wear and tear, indoor assets pretty much stay as you’ve left them. Even inert outdoor assets like bike racks or pavements (which will probably not have a useful asset tag connecting them to an orderly digitised management platform) will require a dynamic approach as they’ll be interacting with natural detritus like leaves and moss or with subsurface roots and drainage systems. When FM managers try to apply a rigid internal culture to external environments, the mismatch can result in a bit of culture shock.
Embracing Agility for Winter Preparation
This disconnect can be especially evident when planning for winter. We’ll often have clients ask for exact dates for when grass cutting will cease or when specific winter tasks will begin. However, external maintenance must be dictated by natural conditions, not fixed calendar dates.
Given the breakdown of the neat four-season pattern, a truly effective winter preparation strategy must rely more on natural triggers. Let’s look at a few key events and aspects to consider:
- The First Frost and Leaf Fall: Everything goes dormant when the first frost hits. Deciduous trees react by dropping their leaves, making leaf collection the primary task that guides teams into winter. In ideal conditions, clearing leaves by Christmas creates a “blank canvas” so that hard winter works can commence without obstruction. This is a case in point regarding unpredictability, we can often find ourselves still clearing leaves into the New Year.
- Reactive Site Management: Because weather is so unpredictable, ground teams must operate with an agile mindset. They may arrive on-site with a predetermined checklist of tasks, but that list changes the moment they step out of the van and assess the live conditions and receive on site client requests that supersede the planned requirements. If November is unusually hot, teams can still actively spray weeds because the plants are still growing and capable of absorbing the treatment.
- Timing Specialist Winter Works: Certain maintenance jobs cannot be deferred until the depths of winter – but even so, it’s the specific conditions that matter. For example, line-marking and permanent pothole repairs should be completed before harsher conditions set in and often the timings are determined by the products being used. Manufacturer specifications, guarantees and aftercare requirements often prevent laying these materials in freezing or wet conditions. This means that an FM provider can’t simply schedule these repairs during a hard frost without risking immediate failure or limiting the lifespan of the repair. Other tasks, like jet washing bus shelters or road sweeping, are better avoided in sub-zero temperatures to avoid leaving hazardous frozen pools of water creating unnecessary further issues on site.
As our seasons become more extreme and unpredictable, rigid maintenance schedules are even less appropriate in outdoor FM. To successfully manage and prepare external environments for winter, clients and FM providers must shift away from the regimented internal mindset.
However, doing so can feel risky – especially when discipline and order can be key to managing budgets and contractor activity. An agile mindset that delegates more decision-making powers to outdoor FM experts can seem like losing control. Squaring this circle demands another mindset shift. It means trusting your grounds teams and contractors to step away from the “turn up and do” approach to acting with the right level of flexibility and autonomy to properly deliver year-round care of sites – all while keeping visibility and accountability.
In other areas of business, there’s an ethos of “trust, but verify”. This can be applied to grounds maintenance too: Adopting this approach means working with trusted, dependable partners that have the right depth of horticultural and outdoor maintenance experience and that also have robust reporting and communication processes to ensure transparency and effective budget oversight.
Some of this involves better technology: leading outdoor FM providers such as OUTCO deploy the latest technologies such as client apps and portals to provide an unprecedented level of visibility to simplify management of reactive works and dynamic situations on the ground. But no matter how things change, we know that some things remain the same. You’ll always need great people on the ground you can trust your sites to. By finding the right combination of mindset, management tools and experience people, you can be sure that your outdoor spaces remain safe, healthy, and properly maintained no matter what the climate does.
For more information contact 0800 0432 911 email enquiries@outco.co.uk or visit www.outco.co.uk
