A recap of a real conversation with real operators — no slides, no pitch.
Landscaping crew planning is the difference between a crew that runs efficiently and one that quietly bleeds margin every single week. If you’re running a landscaping operation right now, chances are your crews head out with an estimated hour figure, a property map, and a whole lot of experience-based gut feel.
That’s where this conversation started. Yates Hamilton, Customer Success Manager at TOP Green, sat down live with Eric Hill, President of Fay-Ark Lawn Co. in Arkansas, and his Maintenance Manager Jared Bravenec, two operators willing to be refreshingly honest about what changed when they put structured crew planning in their crews’ hands. No rehearsed answers, just a real conversation about growing a landscaping business and trying to stay efficient while you do it.
About Fay-Ark Lawn Co.
Fay-Ark started the way a lot of landscaping companies do, Eric Hill cutting yards in high school with one truck and a simple rule: do what you say you’ll do, then over-deliver. Eight years later, that one truck is 55 people, 45 of them in the field, and the company is pushing to triple its commercial maintenance revenue over the next three years. That growth is the whole reason this conversation exists; because, scaling maintenance is exactly where labor, and margin, quietly get away from you.
Jared Bravenec is the one living that growth day to day. He joined two years ago as a crew member with a horticulture degree, worked his way up to foreman, and took over as Maintenance Manager last June, watching his crew count jump from four to nine in a single season. He was also upfront about not having years of mowing experience at scale, and that’s exactly the point: if a clear plan can help a sharp, fast-rising manager run nine crews well, it can help almost anyone.
The Landscaping Crew Planning Problem Nobody Wants to Admit
We asked the live audience a question during the session that landed harder than expected.
“When a job goes over estimated hours — what is the real reason?”
The options were simple. Was it the estimate? Was it the crew? Was it the plan? Or honestly — do you not really know?
The room got uncomfortable. Because the truth, as Eric put it, is that without structured landscaping crew planning, everybody points at somebody else the estimator blames the crew, the crew blames the plan, the manager blames the estimate. And, because nobody can actually separate the three, the same problem repeats itself week after week with no real fix in sight and over time, the excuses start to sound like the truth.
Jared described it perfectly from his own experience — “Before CrewPlanner, it was guesswork honestly. Trial and error. And it sucks because I feel bad putting my guys in a tough position. My job is for them to succeed.”
What Structured Landscaping Crew Planning Actually Looks Like
Before getting into results, it’s worth understanding what a structured job plan actually means in practice — because it’s not what most people picture.
CrewPlanner isn’t designed to replace systems like Aspire or LMN. Instead, it gives crews clear direction on what work needs to get done, where it needs to happen, and how long it should take.
Each crew member gets a defined role; Crew Member 1 grabs the backpack sprayer and sprays the mulch beds, Crew Member 2 handles the soft edging. It even accounts for dead walking: the time it takes to move between service areas on a large property, which most operations never see.
The plan is accessible on an iPad, a phone, or printed out and kept in the trailer. Because as Yates put it during the session — the goal is to leave zero excuses. Tech issues, no signal, phone died — none of that should mean the crew is standing around a property with no direction.
What Changed After Implementing Landscaping Crew Planning
Going into this season, Fay-Ark was looking at running eight or nine separate routes, doubling up crews on its larger commercial properties. Jared described the scheduling and routing as a nightmare.
After implementing a standardized 4-man crew plan through CrewPlanner, they stood up a single four-man crew for the big properties and the 90 days of consistent landscaping crew planning, Fay-Ark eliminated a route entirely. That crew — the one with full implementation — became Fay-Ark’s highest-performing maintenance team in the company, with crew wages increasingly by roughly $15 per hour while still improving overall production and efficiency. They also avoided the cost of an entire additional truck and foreman they were considering adding.
Eric said something during the Q&A that summarizes the shift well — “The crew that has it fully implemented, they’re our highest revenue per hour maintenance crew. For all the mowing, they’re the highest. I think they’re basically neck and neck with our bush trimming and horticulture team.”
That is not a small result for 90 days.
Want to hear the full discussion?
Watch the complete webinar recording featuring Eric Hill, Jared Bravenec, and Yates Hamilton.
The Question That Every Owner Needs to Sit With
We asked the audience a second poll question that we think belongs in every operations meeting in this industry.
“As your company grows, how dependent is your ability to scale profitably on having highly experienced managers and crew leaders in place?”
And the honest answer in the room leaned one way, very dependent.
And that’s the real tension, isn’t it? Growth requires more people. More people means more variability. And if your operation only runs well when your best foreman shows up, you don’t really have a system. You have a person.
Eric addressed this directly — “You don’t scale if you can’t identify the problem. You’re just stuck doing the same thing with new properties and losing money on them.”
CrewPlanner doesn’t replace experienced people. What it does is provide a structured framework that helps less experienced team members perform with greater consistency and confidence.
Jared, who stepped into a Maintenance Manager role without deep mowing experience, described it this way — “I feel like I can relate to my guys better now. I understand how hard their job is. I can help them work out the kinks instead of just barking orders.”
That kind of clarity changes the dynamic between a manager and their crew in ways that are hard to put a number on — but matter enormously for retention and culture.
A Few Practical Things Worth Knowing
For anyone curious about the practicalities, here is what came up during the Q&A:
What you need to get started — Just your property addresses and estimated hours. That’s it. TOP Green builds out the plans from there and refines them weekly based on feedback from operators like Jared.
Scale — The system has been used on portfolios of 300 plus properties and properties as large as 782 acres. There is no cap they have found yet.
Integration with Aspire — Fay-Ark uses Aspire and simply places the CrewPlanner link in the operation notes for each property ticket. When a crew clocks in, the plan is right there.
The Landscaping Crew Planning Takeaway
If there is one thing this conversation made clear, it is this —The gap between a good estimate and a profitable property is filled by landscaping crew planning — not just experience. A plan does.
CrewPlanner isn’t about squeezing more hours out of your crews. It’s about giving them the clarity to do the job they were already hired to do — consistently, efficiently, and without the guesswork that quietly costs landscaping businesses thousands of dollars every single season.
As Jared put it at the end of the session — “It just takes the guesswork out. That’s my biggest thing.”
Watch the Full Discussion
Hear directly from Eric Hill, Jared Bravenec, and Yates Hamilton as they discuss crew planning, operational consistency, and lessons learned during the first 90 days.
Ready to see what landscaping crew planning could look like in your operation?
Schedule a conversation with the TOP Green team to learn how CrewPlanner helps landscape companies improve field execution, operational visibility, and crew consistency.