Maintenance
Once you have completed your project you will want to make sure that all your hard work is well looked after. Making sure you've arranged the management and maintenance of your project is a key element in ensuring its long-term success. You may have decided that your project will be maintained by the project group or you have made an agreement that the contractors will continue to maintain the work they have done - this could be for a set period (usually 12 months) following the completion of the contract, or a more permanent arrangement. Alternatively if your project site is owned by the local council they may be willing to take on the ongoing maintenance of the project. What ever you have decided you should prepare a Maintenance Plan. This ensures that every one knows what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and who is responsible for doing it.
You should aim to plan up to five years ahead, as anything shorter tends to be impractical. If your project is happening in phases then your maintenance plan should reflect this phasing; alternatively you can add or change bits as each phase is completed. Your maintenance plan should form the basis of all future project maintenance requirements for the site, so it's a good idea to involve as many of the people who will be carrying out the maintenance as possible in its production, including your landscape architect/designer if you have one.
A good way of producing a Maintenance Plan is to identify various areas or zones within the project area and number them. You can then assign a key to the plan to indicate the aims and uses of that particular zone and outline briefly what sort and how often maintenance will be needed.
Here are some things you might want to consider:
- play equipment - how often will it need to be inspected*? Will it need to be refurbished regularly?
- surfaces - some sort such as mown or hoggin (compacted stone) paths may need to be maintained on a regular basis. Hard surfaces such as concrete paviours will need to be inspected at regular intervals to sort out problems such as slip or trip hazards (loose paviours or a build up of moss).
- trees and shrubs - new planting will need maintaining by watering, weeding, mulching and thinning to ensure they successfully establish.
- fencing - how often should this be inspected or replaced? Will it need painting regularly?
- hedges - how often will they need trimming and at what time of year?
Don't forget to review your maintenance plan regularly to make sure everything is covered and that the maintenance you're carrying out is working.
You will need to make sure you have enough resources to carry out your maintenance plan. This may be through volunteer or 'in kind' effort; or you may need to include the cost of maintenance in your grant application to cover the cost of employing contractors (many funders allow 1 or 2 years maintenance to be built into the cost of the project). If this is not possible you will need to think about how you are going to fund the project aftercare.
If the land is owned by a local council they may be willing to take on the actual maintenance, either from the point of completion or if you have appointed a contractor, after their 12 month maintenance period has finished. If the council does own the site you should approach them as soon as possible to set up a maintenance agreement with them to ensure there are no gaps between the completion of the project (or the end of a contractors maintenance period) and the start of their maintenance operations.
If they are unwilling to take on the maintenance they may be able to contribute financially to the ongoing costs.