The Baptist St. Anthony’s (BSA) Hospital in Amarillo, Texas, is consistently mentioned among the top health care facilities in the country. The hospital has nearly 500 beds and offers full-service health care to patients in and around the metropolitan area, living up to its billing as “A Great Place for Patients.”
Landscaping/fleet manager Stuart Hughes likes to think of the hospital grounds as a great place for plants, too. His team of five people extends a caring hand to 14.5 acres of irrigated landscape at the main hospital and six other health care locations throughout the city.
In health care vernacular, Hughes and his team would be called general practitioners. In addition to mowing and maintaining the turf, his group is responsible for daily grounds cleanup, installing annual color, maintaining the irrigation system, removing snow, changing hospital signage, and servicing a fleet comprised of 40 vehicles and 100 pieces of outdoor power equipment.
“We accomplish a great deal with a relatively small number of people,” says Hughes, who has been with the hospital since 1991. “Four to five acres of the grounds require top-level maintenance on par with four-star hotels. We mow weekly, 37 weeks out of the year, and not a month goes by that we don’t have one of our Walker Mowers doing something on the property.”
According to Hughes, the hospital was one of the first Walker users in the area. In fact, when he arrived in 1991, two Walker Mowers, an ’85 unit and an ’87, already roamed the grounds. “Except for the hospital, nobody knew what they were back then,” Hughes emphasizes. “Today in Amarillo, having or not having a Walker Mower is the dividing line between being or not being a serious lawn maintenance professional.”
The hospital operates four Walkers, including the ’87 model that has long since been converted from chain drive. Each has two 42- inch decks, a mulching deck and a GHS deck. “We mulch probably 85% of the time,” Hughes relates. “Doing so reflects our commitment to environmentally friendly landscaping practices that, among other things, puts an emphasis on IPM (integrated pest management) and common-sense fertilizing. We don’t want to throw down a lot of fertilizer and water. Instead, we try to take advantage of the micro nutrients that grass clippings give back to the soil. Using a mulching deck also saves us time.” He emphasizes the word “time.”
“Roughly 40% of our effort every day goes into some aspect of trash pickup. There is a trash run every morning, and parking lots, both surface lots and underground structures, need to be cleaned routinely. We’re not sure how many shrubs there are on the property, but we have more than 1,000 trees, both of which require trimming and pruning. We also install 130 or so flats of annual color each year.”
Despite the number of acres the maintenance crew oversees, it spends only 25% of its time on the Walkers. “With that in mind,” says Hughes, “you can understand why I call these mowers my secret weapon. In fact, the mowers save us so much time that we can interact a bit more with our visitors and patients.”
Ribs and More
Hughes was raised in his family’s high-end furniture business, and later purchased and operated a restaurantlike retail outlet that cooked ribs for grocery store patrons. He operated that business for eight years prior to joining the hospital. All along he was mowing lawns, too, and always had a desire to work outdoors.
“When I interviewed for this position, I found that the hospital had already stepped up to the plate and operated the best equipment available to get the job done,” Hughes recalls. “That kind of commitment from management was encouraging.”
Still, he adds, maintaining a large hospital has its challenges. The biggest one, of course, is working around a constant influx of people and cars. To lessen its impact on patients, visitors and doctors, Hughes’ staff generally works from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. daily. There are exceptions to the rule, including a 2 a.m. parking lot cleaning shift through which employees rotate.
The hospital also has a variety of terrain and mowing conditions. Despite Amarillo’s relatively flat topography, the main hospital features a 50-foot drop in elevation from the front of the property to the back. Sandwiched in between are some steep inclines and undulations that give Walker operators an appreciation for the machine’s low center of gravity. Landscaped parking lot islands also test the mower’s maneuverability.
Maintaining the hospital’s fleet poses another major challenge, one that Hughes shares with fleet mechanic Troy Anders. Out of curiosity, Hughes calculated the average age of the hospital’s fleet and was surprised to learn the average vehicle age was 9.75 years.
He suspects the Walker Mowers would fall somewhere in that age bracket, too. “The age of the vehicles and outdoor power equipment, and the fact everything runs so well, is a testimonial to the type of equipment the hospital runs and the level of maintenance Troy delivers on a routine basis,” he emphasizes. “A case in point is our ’87 Walker that has more than 4,000 hours on it. The next oldest Walker, the ’91 model, has logged more than 3,000 hours.”
To facilitate servicing the Walkers, Troy customized the hospital’s vehicle lift system. A flip of the switch allows the service technician to work on his Walker Mower at eye level.
Having someone with Troy’s expertise is more the norm than the exception at BSA, adds Hughes. The hospital operates its own cabinet shop, does most of its own finish carpentry work, and overall maintains a high degree of self-sufficiency.
The grounds department has a high level of expertise, too. Lead maintenance person Teri Richardson, for example, is a master gardener. Troy Main, who has worked for the hospital for 15 years, is the irrigation specialist. His crew mates also refer to him as “straightline” Troy because he is overly fastidious about making sure mowing lines are straight.
The expertise and the equipment give the landscaping department the ability to provide a high level of service to its primary care customer, the hospital, Hughes re-emphasizes. “Again, our goal is to keep the grounds looking great, while at the same time practicing good stewardship of our environment. In addition to mulching, practicing IPM and being conservative with our fertilizing, we also use native grasses where we can to save on water.”
He continues, “BSA is a great place for patients. It is our job to make it a great place for plants, too.”
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