Working with these facilities, your group has compiled the following background information for these three facilities.

Introduction to the Three Facilities

Sample General Hospital is an older, 100-bed hospital.The new Outpatient Center, built last year, is across the street and the Golden Age Nursing Facility is down one block, on the corner.The hospital is located in the mid-western sunbelt; there is occasional frost in the winter but no snow.

Grounds Maintenance Tasks That Should Be Performed At All Three Sites

• Mowing and edging
• Walk sweeping
• Raking leaves
• Blowing off parking lot
• Flower bed maintenance (where necessary)
• Hedge trimming and minor tree pruning (major tree trimming is performed by a contractor on an as-needed basis and thus should be disregarded)

The following figure provides a map that illustrates the layout of the grounds for each facility and their proximity to each other.

Grounds Maintenance Arrangements for the Three Facilities

The current grounds maintenance arrangements vary among the three facilities as follows:

2. Sample Hospital uses its Maintenance Department employees for grounds care. The hospital pays these employees $15 per hour plus 15% employee benefits; it is estimated they spend 1,000 hours per year on grounds maintenance work. Another estimated 120 hours per year are spent on maintaining the lawn care equipment. The employees use a riding lawn mower, edger and blower, all owned by the hospital. The hospital just bought a new mower for $2,995 less a ten percent discount. It is expected that the mower should last for five years.
4. The hospital's Chief of the Medical Staff's son Jason, a student at the local community college, is paid $100 per week year round for grounds maintenance at the hospital's Outpatient Center. A friend sometimes helps, but when that happens Jason son pays him out of his weekly $100. It takes about one and a half hours to mow, edge and blow.Jason uses his dad's riding mower and blower, but Jason recently bought his own edger. Jason also buys fertilizer for the grass twice a year.
6. The Nursing Facility contracts with a landscape service on a seasonally adjusted sliding scale. The landscape service is paid $600 per month from April to October (mowing season); $400 per month for February, March and November; and $200 per month for November, December and January. The landscape service provides all their own equipment. They also provide fertilizer and provide annuals to plant in the flower beds every quarter.

Sample Hospital Property Description

The grounds to be maintained are as follows:

• The front lawn is grass in two sections on either side of the front entrance. Each section is about 50' by 60'.
• There is a hedge along the front of the building that is about 50' on either side of the front entrance.
• There are two small matching flower beds on either side of the front entrance.
• Another strip of grass along side of the building is 30' by 100'.
• A third small strip of grass about 5' by 25' is by the Emergency entrance.
• The walkway dimensions are as follows: about 50' of front walk; about 30' of staff entrance walk, both of which are 5' wide.
• The Emergency Department's paved patient drop-off area is about 25' by 30'.
• The parking lot surface is about 200' by 250'. Along one side are overhanging trees that drop leaves and debris and are a constant sweeping problem. These are the only trees on the hospital site.

Outpatient Center Property Description

The grounds to be maintained are as follows:

• There is a strip of grass at the front of the building that is 12' wide and 65' long, split in the middle by a walkway 5' wide.
• There is a strip of grass at the back of the building between the building and the parking lot that is 5' wide and 50' long
• All the rest of the property is paved.

Nursing Center Property Description

Golden Age Nursing Center occupies one whole block.The grounds have many large trees.Flowerbeds have been planted around the trees as well as along the front walk and entrance.There are also two secured patio areas at the side of the building screen by hedges and each has a small bed of annuals.Because of the unique design of the building grounds maintenance requires considerable handwork.

Required Assignment

Review the available information for grounds maintenance at the three facilities.Decide how to convert this information into comparable data.Prepare a report, based on your assumptions, that presents comparable costs of grounds care.Also, provide your assessment of what the best future course of action should be.

 

Decide how to convert this information into comparable data.

Prepare a report, based on your assumptions, that presents comparable costs of grounds care.

Also, provide your assessment of what the best future course of action should be.