Reliable Property Services is a landscape company with locations in Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin that have been providing maintenance care to locations like this property at a commercial multi-tenet high-rise since 1983. Their services include lawn care, landscaping, tree and hedge maintenance, erosion management, snow removal, snow hauling and parking lot de-icing.

The factors needed to create and sustain a thriving commercial maintenance company are varied but much can be realized about how to generate success in this sector from looking at a company who has done, and is doing, just that.

Exhibit A
Started in 1983 by Joe Schierl with two employees, Reliable Property Services continued to grow through the years providing exterior maintenance services for retail centers, commercial office buildings, corporate campuses, medical facilities, educational campuses and warehouse and distribution centers, apartments and condominiums, home owner associations, churches and cemeteries.

Recently, Reliable expanded its scope even more. In 2013, they formed a strategic partnership with The Bruce Company of Wisconsin and assumed responsibility of their Golf Maintenance Division and took over the management of the five courses they previously maintained. The existing golf maintenance staff, with their 130 years of combined experience, was kept on board, and all assets, including the fleet of equipment necessary to the ongoing maintenance program, was acquired.

Near the end of 2014, the expanded company strategically partnered with The Lawn Ranger of Minnesota. This created the largest and most experienced full service exterior maintenance company in Minnesota. According to vice president and national sales manager David Ketcham, Reliable retained 90 percent of Lawn Ranger's customers.

Reliable installed and maintains the planters throughout this office parking lot in suburban Minneapolis.???(R)???AE'?N????e'?N,A+ In the center of this planter is purple fountain grass. Surrounding it is coleus, and on the outside are purple wave petunias. In addition to seasonal planting, the landscape company provides this location with base maintenance services, including mowing, pruning and trimming, and shoveling and snow blowing in the winter.

A flowerbed at the main entrance of an office center in Minneapolis was decked out with a summer design consisting of (from the center to the outside ring) purple fountain grass, red geraniums, red green-leaf begonias, and purple petunias. The landscape company does not rely on specific plants for seasonal planting. Instead their enhancements team consults with customers to determine which plants best meet the aesthetic needs of the property, and maximize its curb appeal within the budget set forth by the customer.

Equipment used on their commercial accounts include zero-turn riding mowers, walk/ride-behind mowers, riding fertilizer spreaders, string trimmers and backpack blowers.

At Ground Level
The company, headed by president and chief operating officer Tom Hougnon, has locations in St. Paul, Minn., Grimes, Iowa, Milwaukee and Racine, Wis., and employs 50 full-time and 250 part-time workers. The Minnesota branch is the largest with 30 full-time and 150 part-time employees. It services all of Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.

In the spring, summer and fall, the crews perform lawn care, landscaping, tree and hedge maintenance, erosion management, irrigation installation and maintenance. Their snow and ice management services include plowing, shoveling, snow removal, snow hauling and parking lot de-icing.

Company-wide there are over 50 crews for warm-weather commercial maintenance. A typical crew size is three to four persons.

"We have three types of crews for summer maintenance," Ketcham states. "Mowing crews dedicated to base maintenance services such as mowing, pruning and weeding, enhancement crews who handle flowers and bed maintenance such as mulching, and irrigation crews who take care of irrigation maintenance and installations. Each of the crews has a different, very detailed routine."

In the winter, besides the plow operators who work on their own, two- to three-person shoveling crews clear sidewalks.

Intermittent maintenance jobs include irrigation blowouts in the fall and parking lot sweeping in the spring.

Besides trucks and trailers, Reliable's equipment list includes skid steers, front-end loaders, zero-turn riding and walk/ride-behind mowers, string trimmers, riding fertilizer spreaders and backpack blowers.

For snow and ice management, they use skid steer plows, skid steer brooms, skid steer blowers, ATVs with plows and sanders, salt/sand trucks, liquid de-ice trucks, containment plows, brooms/blowers, snow blowers, and sidewalk spreaders. Equipment that has to be rented from time to time is pretty much limited to air compressors for irrigation blowouts in the fall.

Located throughout a corporate campus that Reliable has serviced since 2011 are sidewalk beds with perennial, ornamental grasses and stone features. The grasses are a sustainable feature that come back a little bit bigger every year and require very little maintenance.

Reliable has an irrigation team that does installations, repairs, year-end blowouts, and upgrades. Some of their customers ask to have irrigation services built into their maintenance contract but most of the irrigation work is done on a time and material basis. Problems are identified, and then cost estimates are given to customers before work proceeds.

Since forming a strategic partnership last year with another landscape company, The Lawn Ranger, which also cared for commercial sites like this corporate complex in Eden Prairie, Minn., Reliable Property Services lays claim to being the largest and most experienced full service exterior maintenance company in Minnesota.

The Minnesota branch employs 30 of the commercial maintenance company's 50 full-time workers, and 150 of the company's 250 part-time workers. Here a crew maintains a bed of day lilies in suburban St. Paul.

Summer maintenance contracts are seven months in length. Winter maintenance contracts are five months long. In addition, year-round contracts are available. Reliable Property Services also performs some design/build work.

An Elevated Perspective
Reliable promises to deliver services to their customers' properties at a moment's notice, and to that end, the company runs a 24-hour call center out of every area they serve. To ensure that the right tool for the job is available, each location has an extensive inventory of the top equipment in the industry.

Through data collection efforts, Reliable looks for trends and inefficiencies as they occur, then informs their customers of these issues and recommends adjustments to the specifications when needed. Installing GPS technology in their trucks and using tablet computers in the field are two more examples of embracing technology to help improve internal operations and customer relations.

Another illustration of the company's commitment to first-rate customer service is their approach to seasonal planting. Instead of having specific plants that they tend to use, which would streamline the process, Reliable's enhancements team consults with customers to identify the right plants to: meet the aesthetic needs of the property, and maximize the curb appeal of the property within the budget set forth by the customer.

To win business, the landscape company has a professional sales staff in each branch that manages the sales process and solicits contracts; be they 5-month winter contracts, 7-month summer contracts or 12-month full service contract.

Besides the two types of snow and ice management contracts - time and materials billed hourly or per visit, and seasonal, which is a flat monthly fee for services regardless of snowfall - Reliable Property Services offer several innovative contract types to fit customers' tolerance for weather volatility and risk. These include insured products and refund programs that let clients stay within their budget and still be protected against volatile snow levels.

"Eighty percent of our summer customers are customers for winter as well," says Hougnon, which speaks to the level of service his company performs and to the value of being a year-round maintenance company. The challenges the company faces are referred to as "typical." These include identifying, hiring and training a skilled workforce. Another challenge is to keep improving operations so that they are as efficient as possible in order to maximize profitability.

Citing one more example, Ketcham states, "We offer a wide variety of contract options for winter and it is a challenge to find the correct mix of contracts to mitigate our financial exposure in low/high snow years."

In addition to their longevity and constant growth, Reliable Property Services was also recognized as "One of the Best Companies to Work For" by Minnesota Business magazine – more grounds to use them as a role model and a source of incentive for your commercial maintenance operation; whether just starting out or already well on the way.