Facility Masters — Training for Educational Facility Professionals

Birds can be entertaining and fascinating to watch in the wild, but any facility or grounds manager is fully aware of the downsides of a campus heavily-populated by birds and geese. Recently, members of our Listserv shared helpful tips and proven solutions to help discourage birds or geese from flocking on or around vital campus and school facilities or areas. We have compiled some helpful tips for anyone looking to better manage bird populations on their grounds.

To read all the tips shared by our peers on the Listserv, view the full discussions:

• Trouble with Birds
• Problem with Geese Read more…

Athletic fields serve an important purpose at every educational organization, giving students a place to participate in competitive, intramural and recreational activities, as well as providing a way for the community to engage with your organization.  There are definitely pros and cons of both artificial turf and natural grass playing fields, and one may be better than the other for different fields at your institution depending on many factors including: weather/climate, primary purpose (sports vs. community use), and capital budget for initial installation and ongoing maintenance.

Our peers on the Facility Masters Listserv shared their insight, personal experiences and best practices in a recent discussion.

“Artificial turf fields do allow for a lot of use but are far from maintenance free.  We have found that they are only practical when you are prepared to charge significant fees to cover their cost and use them for competitive athletic events only.  Players need to use the correct cleats since the wrong ones tear up base lines and seams.”

“Maintenance includes regular inspections, sweeping, flushing, refilling the infill mix, repairing tears, seam splits and worn spots.  We trained in-house staff to do repairs since hiring out is expensive.  You have to ‘irrigate’ them to flush the drainage system and keep them clean. The carpet lasts 6-10 years depending on use, so you have to plan to replace it regularly and figure out a funding stream.”

Kathy Johnson – Seattle Public Schools, WA

“We have both real and artificial in many areas (athletics and playgrounds).  If you go artificial, it better be very high quality, such as FieldTurf (most NFL and baseball fields are done with that company) – expensive but worth it.  If you go cheap or less expensive… you get what you pay for!

“We are currently installing 2 new artificial turf football fields (redo’s) and building a new $48 million stadium with artificial turf football and baseball and softball fields. Cost to install them is about $700K+ per field (football), then replacement cost (fabric only) is about $350K every 10 years. Lots of capital expense, so it must be scheduled in the master plan for every 10 years.  The field must last at least 10 years, and you must replace it by 12 years (with heavy use year round). Also they MUST pass the new safety codes and drop test for cushion and bounce.”

“Real grass fields are tough here in the southwest because we get little rain and must water every other day.  Fields are used heavily and wear out, so we have to take them off line often to let them rest and grow.”

John Dufay – Albuquerque Public Schools, NM

“After extensive research, my opinion is that unless you need to play many sports in every season, natural turf is still best.  If you were to do a financial analysis, I believe you would find you could re-sod a field every year for less money than the annual amortized cost of artificial turf.  My biggest concern is what happens if, when the time comes to replace it, you do not have the funds to do so?  You can always play on dirt in a budget crunch, but you can’t play on artificial turf that is worn beyond use. ”

David Kimel – Bellows Free Academy, VT

Courtesy of Dennis Randolph – NSPMA Executive Director

This year be thankful if you have a sand based or well drained sports field. The record setting wet March has certainly slowed down the grass plant root system development both from the super–saturated and cold soil temperature standpoints. Knowing this it would be wise to make a special effort to core aerate as soon as the conditions will allow. Introducing air into the root system will help warm the soil and thus jump start the grass plant. In fact this spring you may wish to consider an even deeper aeration to loosen the compacted layer between 4-7”. This would promote not only deeper root development but more water holding capacity of the soil – thus giving you a longer playing season into the fall.
Often times when a field finally dries out after these wet conditions the playing surface will become very hard. The aeration also will assist in the safety of the field countering the hard playing surface condition

The grounds of your educational organization  should be included in your standard maintenance plans.  Your grounds are often the first perception that a parent, child or the general public have of your organization, so properly maintained grounds are critical to making a good impression and demonstrating your commitment to a well maintained campus that fosters student learning.

Our peers on the Listserv recently requested standard operating procedures Grounds Maintenance, and we have gathered a few resources to share here.

Some free, online resources include: Read more…

One colleague writes - Can anyone provide guidance as to whether there is a way to fertilize and eliminate weeds on athletics fields without having to navigate a maze of regulations, restrictions, etc?

One colleague responded – The only thing that I can think of would be to go 100% organic on fertilizer applications and look into other natural herbicide and pesticide control substances such as liquid corn gluten for crab grass control and cedar oil for insect control.  The biggest issue would be that those products do not control all weeds and insects.

Running a good IPM program and trying to apply pesticides and herbicides during periods when students are not present reduces the amount of paper work (notifications) but usually there is some staff that still needs notice.

Anoter colleague responded – Unless I am mistaken, even if the applications are contracted out (a necessity if you don’t have a pesticide license) you still have to maintain IPM records of all applications and make sure that notifications are sent out prior to any applicaltion.  Notifications do not have to be sent out if there is no one there for 5 days after the application.  However, notifications do have to be sent out to anyone (parents of students, staff, faculty, renters) that will be there during that period.  New regulatio

Another colleague responded – We over seed our sports fields to help eliminate any weed growth.  This has been working well for us

Another colleague responded - I work on a military installation and our approach to our athletic fields is as follows:

We apply a pre-emergent in the fall and again during the early spring once the earth warms up, then we practice as the rest of you do good turf management with a good watering and mowing schedule.  But instead of doing any large treatments we resort to spot treatments if we use any chemical.  It took a while but I finally for the base personnel sold on proper turf management to keep the weeds under control.  I am now trying to get them to use more organic fertilizers to promote healthier turf growth and management.  I don’t care so much for using chemical because of the cost and sometimes depending on what you use, the amount that you apply is lot.  That is why I went to spot treatments, it takes longer but we have gotten some really good control and a pretty good cost savings on the pre-emergents and the other chemicals we use.  If there is an organic way of maintaining your turf that is not as costly and can really help the soil please share.  I know quite a few folks who would love to implement that type program for their installations.

Short answer $200 hr 3hr minimum. Our policy states that additional staff is required for press box operation and we staff at least two grounds crew to manage the stadium. This is an additional $25 hr for each grounds crew person and $35 for technology person for press box operation. We keep concession in house and only open general restrooms. Our stadium is new this year so policy is being adjusted as we go.