State of the Landscape Industry During COVID-19
The COVID-19 disruption arrived just as the spring irrigation season was starting. Landscape and grounds operations had to rewrite their playbooks on labor, supply chain, and customer communications inside two weeks.
We held this session in mid-2020 to compare notes across the network — how landscape contractors, school districts, and HOA grounds managers were holding their crews together, sourcing parts during a supply-chain shock, and keeping irrigation systems running through reduced site visits.
Labor & crew structure
Crews moved to one-truck-per-route to maintain distancing. Hand tools and shared equipment got new sanitation protocols. Some operators added a second shift to keep crew counts low per truck.
Supply chain & lead times
Drip fittings, controllers, and replacement heads ran into intermittent stockouts. Operators who pre-stocked early-season parts in March came through better than those who didn’t. JAIN moved to allocate critical SKUs across the four US facilities to reduce regional shortages.
Irrigation maintenance under restricted access
School districts and university campuses restricted access; irrigation crews shifted to remote monitoring where smart controllers were installed. Sites with ETwater controllers and flow meters had visibility that sites without didn’t.
Water-budget compliance during the shutdown
Most California municipalities did not waive water-budget enforcement. Sites running smart-controller compliance reports continued doing so without site visits.
Lessons that stuck
Pre-stocked critical SKUs. Smart-controller deployment accelerated. Remote-monitoring became table stakes. The crews who’d already standardized on protocols handled it best.