Assistant Director, Building and Landscape Services, Brandon Rux coauthored APPA’s Operational Guidelines for Educational Facilities: Grounds. He was recommended for the role by Kevin Austin, senior director, building services, trades, and residential properties. For the past two years, Rux worked collaboratively with J. Thomas Becker, associate vice president for academic and research facilities, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and R. Marc Fournier, arborist, and horticulturist, The Trustees of Reservations, Boston, Massachusetts. Rux served as co-chair for the project and worked with the team to secure authors and editors, and ensured progress was tracked.
In Rux’s contributing chapter on maintenance strategies, Broadcast vs. Zone, he defines the two approaches and outlines the pros and cons of both. The broadcast strategy uses teams of staff to do the same task every day throughout campus; whereas zone maintenance strategies can be used to break large grounds maintenance areas into specific grids, or zones, that allow staff to focus on tasks in their own zone.
Rux goes on to explain with the broadcast strategy using the same groups of people for similar tasks every day can be beneficial in that the team becomes efficient because they are completing repetitive work for long stretches of time. On the other hand, staff may enjoy the increased accountability the zone approach gives them, as it allows them to work more autonomously and highlights their individual efforts, which may have gone unnoticed in the past.
Not only does the book highlight maintenance strategies, but it also includes grounds staffing guidelines, sustainability topics, pest management and so much more.
