Roll the dice

What are some thoughts that come to mind when someone tells you they're making a career change? After sharing my decision with friends family and peers there were a variety of comments such as "good for you, "congrats,""always good to get more education." There were also comments like "why are you leaving a secure high paying job with a pension,""can you afford it,""don't do it!" When you're fresh out of high school, the magnitude of the direction you decide to take in post secondary education may not be as apparent when compared to being a middle aged man who quits his job to go back to school. Needless to say, a lot of time, research and question asking occurred before giving my two week notice at work and applying to "Turfgrass management" at Guelph University.

Although most would agree I am taking a risk and/or gambling my future, it's not a blind leap of faith. Golf is the most played sport activity in Canada and students have a 95% placement rate upon graduation. Now that I've been accepted and school has begun, it's time to review the various career paths my education will open doors too. Instead of going with one of the obvious paths which the majority of graduates pursue, I'm going to start of with a career option that most alumni and future grads would agree is not on their radar but, is an intricate part of the turf industry.

It should be noted that this is an educational blog for myself and viewers who can take someone from it. A regurgitation of the research I'll be absorbing if you will.

Irrigation technician – Working since it all began

Irrigation technician, without the modern title or pay, is one of the oldest jobs in world history. When mankind began to evolve from hunter-gatherer to farmer in the Middle-East’s “Cradle of Civilization”, irrigating the semi-arid lands for grain crops during dry seasons was vital to the survival of entire communities.

The technologies, the tools, our accumulated knowledge and, indeed, our workplaces have changed out of recognition – but the basic task remains the same: dependable delivery of water to a portion of the landscape, in a timely, targeted, measured manner. Backed by vigilant maintenance.  To those ancient rice paddies, or to a pro putting surface… no difference.

     
A golf course, an amusement park, a stadium, or the landscaped surrounds of a large business park … the difference is all in the details.  Professionally maintained landscapes are integral to property values, and irrigation is the heart of maintaining the landscape investment.

The over-watch and applied skills of today’s irrigation technician have become increasingly important in recent years – and will continue to grow in demand – as environmental concerns finally move close to the head of the line for any construction project or development. Responsible water management, founded in current best practices,  is a major check box for sound environmental stewardship.

                    

If you enjoy working with your hands, spending your working day outdoors, and don't mind a little physical labour, you might look at a career as an irrigation technician.

There’s a good bullet-list of Responsibilities, Knowledge, Skills & Abilities here:                                     

…and a very good job description here.

Golf course auditing: Preventive medicine and info mining

A golf course audit, as it applies to our side of the industry, doesn’t involve ranks of bean-counters.  Our audit might be, for example, an exhaustive investigation and report on a golf course’s irrigation system and practices. It could be a whole course assessment of playing quality – the speed, smoothness and firmness of greens, the quality of the fairway lie, the overall quality of the turf  – and areas such as levels of organic matter, root depths, water retention, drainage rate, and more.

An audit, in fact, is conducted around whatever the golf course or property owner wants to learn about some sector of their landscape.  It’s  preventive maintenance, a benchmarking, a proactive means of assessing health, strengths and weaknesses, and a way of identifying trends early.

Regular audits of golf course quality will provide the course with benchmarked trends. Quality losses can be spotted and addressed early, before it becomes an issue for players.  An audit may identify a need for change within the golf club, but it shows the positive side of the ledger, too – the areas of strength and good performance.

Golf course quality auditing services employ a wide range of objective scientific measurements to evaluate the condition of a course… obtaining the real-time/real-world knowledge that helps set realistic quality standards for individual courses. It can also be an education to players about realistic course conditioning expectations or the requirement for renovation.

This link has an excellent, detailed article on an irrigation audit of a golf course.  A good and easy read. 

Soil/science technician? Just what do you mean by that?

I was chatting with my dad on the weekend about parallels in our lives. Like me, he made the decision to return to school as a mature student to follow a very different new career path.  At 28, he left a top job at a Toronto ad agency to enroll at the Ontario Forest Technical School in Dorset, where he graduated with honours.  I’m… ahem!... a little older, and coming from the distantly related field of drilling and blasting. 

Our experiences are 45 years apart, so it was interesting to see how much they married up. Dad said, as a Certified Forest Technician, his job/career tree grew out of sight, branching into industries he’d never considered.  He suggested I grow one.

I’ve made a start, but the research is already an eye-opener.  Most of the rest of this blog will comprise found information from 3 or 4 job description websites – mixed, stirred and edited. I picked Soil/Science Technician at random for this: I already had the research.

First level search gets me Soil Technician, Science Technician, Chemistry Technician,  Earth Science Technician, Life Science Technician, School Laboratory Technician, Hydrographer, Environmental Scientist … we see where this is going.  The Tree is a monster time-eater.  It’ll have to be a corner-screen doodle for idle moments.

Our Soil/Science Technician has multiple split personalities. The best umbrella description I could cobble together is: Perform tests and experiments, and provide technical support functions to assist with research, design, production and teaching in  chemistry, earth sciences, life sciences, and physical sciences.

And the job itself? The following tasks are a mix from several different sites that are seeking their specialized version of Soil/Science Technician.

•   Prep materials for experimentation – e.g. freezing/slicing specimens; mixing chemicals    •   Collecting information and samples   •   Conduct field & lab experiments/tests/analyses   •   Present results in graphic and written form by preparing maps/charts/sketches/diagrams/reports   •   Perform routine mathematical calculations and computations of measurements   •   Control quality and quantity of laboratory supplies by testing samples and monitoring usage   •   Check/calibrate/maintain test equipment   •   Participate in fabricating/ installing/modifying equipment to meet critical standards   •   Prepare experiments and demonstrations for science classes

More?  There’s plenty!   •   Work with Project Managers on various remediation, reclamation and monitoring projects involving contaminated sites   •   Complete fieldwork for on-going environmental monitoring projects which may include soil, groundwater, surface water, waste and /or air sampling and monitoring   •   Engage in coordination and field supervision of subcontractors   •   Interact with clients and assist with technical report writing, including regular project documentation, data entry and cost tracking   •   Work in a multidisciplinary team environment that fosters career development   •   Provide assistance to other disciplines as required

OK… I’ll stop.  Sorry about the pilin’ on. But it’s the easiest way to show the density of choice and direction surrounding one job title. One last help wanted ad to make the point.

As an Environmental Scientist, you will have the opportunity to work on large-scale world-class projects involving site assessment and remediation projects, upstream and downstream, producing and abandoned oil and gas facilities as well as various infrastructure sites. This role will provide you with excellent technical challenges and an opportunity to develop your project management skills.

Hockey and Hogwarts

We had Hockey Pool Night a couple of weeks back – an annual event for the past 15 years for 10 lifetime friends… guys who went to school together, played soccer, or worked together in our youngest days. A couple of the guys fly half across the country every year to attend.   

Brandon, I’ve known since we were 9. He asked me a question while I was gloating over getting the goalie I wanted, and I just answered off the cuff. “I think I’m at Hogwarts!”, I said. I wasn’t looking for a laugh, but it got one and I went back to planning my next excellent move.  But I thought about it since, and I think that top-of-my-head answer was true for me. I may have mentioned in another entry that I’m an older student, making a career-path change. I enjoyed my college days but, looking back, I don’t feel any great tug of affection for the bricks-and-mortar of the place. But for sure I felt something the first time I visited the Guelph U campus. And that’s where the Hogwarts connection first came in. I wasn’t seeing ghosts floating by, but it did feel like I was stepping into an invisible crowd. Weird!

                                          

Or maybe not… maybe it was just my hyperactive imagination, set off by the surroundings. All that sense of time and learning and history, and feeling the presence of thousands upon thousands who’d walked where I did… it was pretty overpowering. And that’s just the outside!

Inside, I had no trouble seeing Potter’s place in Guelph’s classrooms and corridors. To my eye, both the fantasy and the real have the look and feel of aproper university. 

So, I already know I’ll be carrying fond lifetime memories of my Guelph experience… and 

they will include the bricks and mortar.

Fifty years on…

Back in the summer, I was looking at my dad’s notes from his Forest Technician course back in the late 1960s. Two big green 3-ring binders – stuffed with hundreds of pages, all done on a typewriter on thin paper, with charts and sketches in coloured felt pens.

It’s hard to get my head around the fact that he, and all the students at all the schools from his time and before, worked without ’puters, printers and the internet. That’s prehistoric! The time investment in the notes alone would have sunk me!

But there’s more than hard labour in those 40-plus-year-old notes – and that’s the course content.  I wrote in an earlier post about how one job description today covers a long and expanding list of different employment and career choices in the turf management industry. But I think I’m correct to say that our industry was narrowly focused, and much more limited in applications and options back then. So, looking in the rear-view mirror, as it were, in those old binders, I wondered how much cross-over of information went into, and maybe still does contribute, to building the modern courses we’re taking at Guelph U.

Some of the binders’ content has barely changed; e.g. learn 65 trees and bushes by leaf, twig, bud, fruit and bark.  That’s still plain old skull work today – but the old courses also covered a number of topics in depth that, to my rookie eyes, relate directly to what we will be learning.       

Soils and Geology, for instance… or Forest Pathology (diseases and parasites), or Silviculture, from raising seedlings to reforestation. Obviously,  the topics were focused on trees not turf, and a lot of new knowledge has been learned since then, but the core information was there. And I like the thought that I’m learning along the same paths nearly half a century later.

Also…  I REALLY like the fact that I have my ’puter and the internet to work with.

Auditing & Consulting

When it comes to a million dollar repair bill, does a superintendent seek advice or go it alone? Auditing and consulting are key components of the turf industry and the way they are utilized are as diverse as the industry they serve. We're not just talking about turf grass here folks.

Take a golf course for example: the components that typically make a golf course successful are numerous and varied i.e. trees, plants, irrigation, ponds, pest/animal control. Additionally things like building structures, equipment and budgeting also require maintenance which at times leads to external guidance.

What I will be trying to figure out is how superintendents go about doing this. In many cases, potential course issues can be resolved internally. Choosing when to seek consultation is crucial and as you will see in this video, sometimes not making a decision is the worst decision you can make. Making the right choices can save millions! When a super seeks or requires external services depends on numerous factors like the course budget, required licensing (pesticide control), city approvals (cutting down trees), soil reports, water management and much more.

There's a lot to look after and doing it efficiently may not always be the easiest or least expensive method but, if the results keeps the costumers coming back, then the choice is obvious (if the budget allows it, of course). Sometimes I'm sure a super can struggle with the budget they were handed. So much so that at times a super has called upon accounting services to find ways to cut costs in some areas so that money can be spent in others. Accounting and golf, who would’ve thunk it.

The more research I do, the more I realize how much TLC a course needs. Superintendents and their crews really are unsung heroes. Certainly, there are less competent course keepers out there, and in some cases the lack of maintenance has nothing to do with the course itself, as you will see in this article.

When someone tells you they're being audited, they're usually cringing as they say it. However in some cases, when it comes to a golf course or a sports fields it is welcome, requested even. Who makes the request, I wonder? Is it the superintendent reaching out for help, the course owner, the municipality? Maybe it’s a high school principal or a University president asking for a diagnosis of their field. All of the above, I reckon. There must be many sports fields out there that don't have internal greens keepers, so external assistance is really the only option.

The factors that dictate the service of sports fields employ a very diverse and wide spectrum of service providers. Take a look at the services provided by the "NZ Sports Institute." Initially, I decided to open with this subject as I thought it would be less obvious and possibly not as interesting as other career options I'll be covering, the idea being that we'd start with an appetizer before the main course; but the more I read the more I realize this is a main course and with all the fixings! Perhaps I'll make a few entries on the subject and all it's branches. It's a huge world that orbits this industry and I have only glimpsed the outskirts.