Grounds Maintenance Workers, All Other

Career Description: All grounds maintenance workers not listed separately.

Industry: Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance

Other Job Titles for Grounds Maintenance Workers, All Other:

• Realistic: Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.
• Investigative: Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.
• Artistic: Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
• Social: Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
• Enterprising: Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.
• Conventional: Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.
• First Interest High-Point: Primary-Rank Descriptiveness
• Second Interest High-Point: Secondary-Cutoff/Rank Descriptiveness
• Third Interest High-Point: Tertiary-Cutoff/Rank Descriptiveness

• Establish and enforce operating procedures and work standards that will ensure adequate performance and personnel safety.
• Inspect completed work to ensure conformance to specifications, standards, and contract requirements.
• Direct activities of workers who perform duties such as landscaping, cultivating lawns, or pruning trees and shrubs.
• Schedule work for crews depending on work priorities, crew and equipment availability, and weather conditions.
• Plant and maintain vegetation through activities such as mulching, fertilizing, watering, mowing, and pruning.
• Monitor project activities to ensure that instructions are followed, deadlines are met, and schedules are maintained.
• Train workers in tasks such as transplanting and pruning trees and shrubs, finishing cement, using equipment, and caring for turf.
• Provide workers with assistance in performing duties as necessary to meet deadlines.
• Inventory supplies of tools, equipment, and materials to ensure that sufficient supplies are available and items are in usable condition.
• Confer with other supervisors to coordinate work activities with those of other departments or units.
• Perform personnel-related activities such as hiring workers, evaluating staff performance, and taking disciplinary actions when performance problems occur.
• Direct or perform mixing and application of fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides.
• Review contracts or work assignments to determine service, machine, and workforce requirements for jobs.
• Maintain required records such as personnel information and project records.
• Prepare and maintain required records such as work activity and personnel reports.
• Order the performance of corrective work when problems occur, and recommend procedural changes to avoid such problems.
• Identify diseases and pests affecting landscaping, and order appropriate treatments.
• Investigate work-related complaints in order to verify problems, and to determine responses.
• Direct and assist workers engaged in the maintenance and repair of equipment such as power tools and motorized equipment.
• Install and maintain landscaped areas, performing tasks such as removing snow, pouring cement curbs, and repairing sidewalks.
• Perform administrative duties such as authorizing leaves and processing time sheets.
• Recommend changes in working conditions or equipment use, in order to increase crew efficiency.
• Confer with managers and landscape architects to develop plans and schedules for landscaping maintenance and improvement.
• Negotiate with customers regarding fees for landscaping, lawn service, or groundskeeping work.
• Answer inquiries from current or prospective customers regarding methods, materials, and price ranges.
• Prepare service estimates based on labor, material, and machine costs, and maintain budgets for individual projects.
• Tour grounds such as parks, botanical gardens, cemeteries, or golf courses to inspect conditions of plants and soil.
• Design and supervise the installation of sprinkler systems, calculating water pressure, and valve and pipe coverage needs.

Emerging Tasks

• Check and maintain equipment to ensure that it is in working order.
• Maintain grounds area, for example, by removing snow and mowing the lawn.

• Analyzing Data or Information: Identifying the underlying principles, reasons, or facts of information by breaking down information or data into separate parts.
• Assisting and Caring for Others: Providing personal assistance, medical attention, emotional support, or other personal care to others such as coworkers, customers, or patients.
• Coaching and Developing Others: Identifying the developmental needs of others and coaching, mentoring, or otherwise helping others to improve their knowledge or skills.
• Communicating with Persons Outside Organization: Communicating with people outside the organization, representing the organization to customers, the public, government, and other external sources. This information can be exchanged in person, in writing, or by telephone or e-mail.
• Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates: Providing information to supervisors, co-workers, and subordinates by telephone, in written form, e-mail, or in person.
• Controlling Machines and Processes: Using either control mechanisms or direct physical activity to operate machines or processes (not including computers or vehicles).
• Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others: Getting members of a group to work together to accomplish tasks.
• Developing and Building Teams: Encouraging and building mutual trust, respect, and cooperation among team members.
• Developing Objectives and Strategies: Establishing long-range objectives and specifying the strategies and actions to achieve them.
• Documenting/Recording Information: Entering, transcribing, recording, storing, or maintaining information in written or electronic/magnetic form.
• Drafting, Laying Out, and Specifying Technical Devices, Parts, and Equipment: Providing documentation, detailed instructions, drawings, or specifications to tell others about how devices, parts, equipment, or structures are to be fabricated, constructed, assembled, modified, maintained, or used.
• Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships: Developing constructive and cooperative working relationships with others, and maintaining them over time.
• Estimating the Quantifiable Characteristics of Products, Events, or Information: Estimating sizes, distances, and quantities; or determining time, costs, resources, or materials needed to perform a work activity.
• Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards: Using relevant information and individual judgment to determine whether events or processes comply with laws, regulations, or standards.
• Getting Information: Observing, receiving, and otherwise obtaining information from all relevant sources.
• Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates: Providing guidance and direction to subordinates, including setting performance standards and monitoring performance.
• Handling and Moving Objects: Using hands and arms in handling, installing, positioning, and moving materials, and manipulating things.
• Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events: Identifying information by categorizing, estimating, recognizing differences or similarities, and detecting changes in circumstances or events.
• Inspecting Equipment, Structures, or Material: Inspecting equipment, structures, or materials to identify the cause of errors or other problems or defects.
• Interacting With Computers: Using computers and computer systems (including hardware and software) to program, write software, set up functions, enter data, or process information.
• Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others: Translating or explaining what information means and how it can be used.
• Judging the Qualities of Things, Services, or People: Assessing the value, importance, or quality of things or people.
• Making Decisions and Solving Problems: Analyzing information and evaluating results to choose the best solution and solve problems.
• Monitor Processes, Materials, or Surroundings: Monitoring and reviewing information from materials, events, or the environment, to detect or assess problems.
• Monitoring and Controlling Resources: Monitoring and controlling resources and overseeing the spending of money.
• Operating Vehicles, Mechanized Devices, or Equipment: Running, maneuvering, navigating, or driving vehicles or mechanized equipment, such as forklifts, passenger vehicles, aircraft, or water craft.
• Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work: Developing specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize, and accomplish your work.
• Performing Administrative Activities: Performing day-to-day administrative tasks such as maintaining information files and processing paperwork.
• Performing for or Working Directly with the Public: Performing for people or dealing directly with the public. This includes serving customers in restaurants and stores, and receiving clients or guests.
• Performing General Physical Activities: Performing physical activities that require considerable use of your arms and legs and moving your whole body, such as climbing, lifting, balancing, walking, stooping, and handling of materials.
• Processing Information: Compiling, coding, categorizing, calculating, tabulating, auditing, or verifying information or data.
• Provide Consultation and Advice to Others: Providing guidance and expert advice to management or other groups on technical, systems-, or process-related topics.
• Repairing and Maintaining Electronic Equipment: Servicing, repairing, calibrating, regulating, fine-tuning, or testing machines, devices, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of electrical or electronic (not mechanical) principles.
• Repairing and Maintaining Mechanical Equipment: Servicing, repairing, adjusting, and testing machines, devices, moving parts, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of mechanical (not electronic) principles.
• Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others: Handling complaints, settling disputes, and resolving grievances and conflicts, or otherwise negotiating with others.
• Scheduling Work and Activities: Scheduling events, programs, and activities, as well as the work of others.
• Selling or Influencing Others: Convincing others to buy merchandise/goods or to otherwise change their minds or actions.
• Staffing Organizational Units: Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and promoting employees in an organization.
• Thinking Creatively: Developing, designing, or creating new applications, ideas, relationships, systems, or products, including artistic contributions.
• Training and Teaching Others: Identifying the educational needs of others, developing formal educational or training programs or classes, and teaching or instructing others.
• Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge: Keeping up-to-date technically and applying new knowledge to your job.

Detailed Work Activities

• analyze operational or management reports or records
• answer customer or public inquiries
• assign work to staff or employees
• conduct or attend staff meetings
• consult with managerial or supervisory personnel
• demonstrate or explain assembly or use of equipment
• determine work priority, crew or equipment requirements
• develop staffing plan
• direct and coordinate activities of workers or staff
• establish employee performance standards
• estimate materials or labor requirements
• explain work orders, specifications, or work techniques to workers
• fell or buck trees
• finish concrete surfaces
• hire, discharge, transfer, or promote workers
• interview job applicants
• investigate customer complaints
• judge soil conditions
• maintain or repair construction machinery or equipment
• maintain or repair farm vehicles, machinery, or mechanical implements
• maintain production or work records
• make decisions
• make presentations
• mix paint, ingredients, or chemicals, according to specifications
• modify work procedures or processes to meet deadlines
• monitor worker performance
• operate agricultural equipment or machinery
• orient new employees
• oversee work progress to verify safety or conformance to standards
• perform safety inspections in agricultural, forestry, or fishing setting
• plan or organize work
• prepare cost estimates
• prepare or maintain employee records
• publicize job openings
• recognize plant diseases
• recommend improvements to work methods or procedures
• repair and maintain grounds keeping equipment and tools
• resolve landscaping problems
• resolve or assist workers to resolve work problems
• schedule employee work hours
• schedule facility or property maintenance
• supervise grounds keeping or landscaping workers
• understand second language
• use chain saws
• use hand or power tools
• use herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides or related products
• use oral or written communication techniques
• use plant or crop transplant techniques
• use power mower
• use truck-mounted hydraulic lifts or other accessories

• n/a

• Average hourly wage (2007) -$10.27
• Average annual wage (2007) - $21,350.00

• Projected growth (2006-2016): 16.65%
• Projected need (2006-2016): 4,640
• Employment (2006): 27,873

• First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Agricultural Crop and Horticultural Workers
• First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Animal Husbandry and Animal Care Workers
• First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers
• First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Food Preparation and Serving Workers
• First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers
• First-Line Supervisors/Managers of Logging Workers
• Lodging Managers
• Opticians, Dispensing
• Postmasters and Mail Superintendents
• Social and Community Service Managers