So, you've decided landscaping and grounds maintenance are something you can no longer leave to chance. But now you're faced with another choice: Do it yourself, or get a professional commerical landscaper in to do the work for you.
Let's forget about the fact a professional will deliver a higher standard of work for a minute, and let's just concentrate on another element of the decision making process -- the cost.
Equipment Costs
To take care of your industrial estate or business park, you're going to need equipment. Lots of equipment. And quality landscaping machinery and tools come with a price tag.
For example, you're going to need:
- Chainsaws
- Lawnmowers
- Hedge trimmers
- Pressure washers
- Hand tools
- Storage facilities
- Vehicles to transport the equipment around your property
Before you know it, your costs have run into the thousands. Isn't it surely easier and cheaper to use a professional landscaper that comes, fully equipped and just gets on with making your business' exterior look neat and tidy?
Servicing Costs
OK, so the cost of buying all the equipment didn't ruin your cash-flow. But did you consider that all this equipment is going to need servicing every season, and if the workload is substantial, it could need servicing mid-season too. And if you want to continue maintaining your property whilst the equipment is being serviced, you're going to need to buy spares as well.
Starting to get expensive, huh?
People Costs
Right, so you've decided to buy equipment (and the spares) and pay to get them regularly serviced. The next thing on your shopping list is someone to use it.
As you know, employees come with all sorts of costs: a salary, national insurance, sick-days, holidays, lateness, afternoons off for weddings, etc etc.
And if your grounds are large enough, maybe you'll need a team for grounds maintenance. With a team comes extra costs like, uniforms and supervisor payscales.
Surely, just paying a monthly fee for professional landscaping company to do the work, is much easier?
People Costs - Part 2.
Maybe you're still so determined to prove that DIY grounds maintenance is cheaper, you've bought the equipment, servicing it regularly and paying a team of people to do the work. Now comes another load of costs to think about:
Training and safety equipment
To comply with a whole heap of health and safety regulations, your grounds maintenance staff need to be kitted out with an array of safety products, like hats, eye-protection, gloves, boots.
You also need to ensure that have received accredited training to be able to use their equipment safely. And then you need to pay for insurance, just in case someone has an accident with a chainsaw.
Is It Really Cheaper To Do It Yourself?
Now add that to everything else above, and you've really got to ask yourself, is it really cheaper to do this yourself?
Whilst, there's no actually pounds and pence values mentioned above (mainly because your costs will vary quite differently from the next guy's), you can almost guarantee it is going to work out more cost effective to simply pay a monthly fee for a professional, who specialises in contact landcape maintenance.
Get in touch with us and we'll happily show you just how affordable it is to have commerical retail park or industrial estate that welcomes customers with a neat, tidy and professional looking exterior.