Botetourt County found an innovative solution to overcome the labor shortage in turf management – the Turf Tank line-marking robot. The robot automates the process of painting lines on sports fields, ensuring that all projects are completed on time in parks, schools, and sports complexes around the county, keeping sporting events on the schedule.
As the health and well-being of the citizens in the community is a top priority for the county officials, they focus a great deal of their attention on athletic activities that could give people the proper space to work out. But creating and maintaining those areas is no easy task.
Wayne Carter, the Athletic Fields manager for the county, and his team are responsible for managing 40 fields all around the county. They maintain a blend of warm and cool-season grasses, with various sports layouts, from soccer and football to baseball T-ball and softball.
Over the years, finding a qualified workforce willing to maintain all the fields proved quite tricky. And the explanation for this lies in the job of a turf manager.
“For us to really paint a field properly, it could take up to four people and a lot of hours,” says Carter. “Then you have to count on the equipment functioning properly, the stress of getting it all done and not making mistakes and doing a good job, and somebody has to mix the paint correctly– a myriad of issues with doing it by hand. It was just a very labor-intensive, demanding process.”
But ever since Botetourt County added the Turf Tank line-marking robot to the team, things wholly transformed.
“Turf Tank was the best option for us as far as combining resources and being able to multitask on the job,” Carter said. “Now, painting a soccer field takes 20 minutes. And it’s a one-person job. It doesn’t take two people to string over and over again. It’s really opened the doors for us to do other tasks. Instead of spending the majority of our time painting fields, we can do other things.”
With the advancement of technology, Carter believes that the industry has become more attractive. Instead of working endless hours, dragging strings, doing manual measurements, and pushing a line marker up and down the field, turf managers can rely on a robot to help them perform the tasks easier and faster.
Moreover, with the time saved on painting fields, the crew is now free to focus on tasks that typically get neglected. And Carter is proud that they can paint more than the lines on the field. The robot’s letter and logo creation features allow them to make their mark on the fields.
“Not only do we have a great field painted, but we added endzone zone letters, made a stencil, and put a special message on the field. One of our schools has its own logos. All these things are common for NFL teams, but maybe not that common for us, rural counties. But we were able to really dress the fields up for the kids,” he said.
“It looks good. And, hopefully, it means something to the kids.”
The Turf Tank has been a welcomed addition to Botetourt County. It solved the severe challenge of finding a qualified workforce to manage the athletic fields around the county, but it also transformed the meaning of a turf manager job. A tool that improves the working condition and raises professionalism, the robot made the turf management industry more attractive. It thus helped the county with its attraction and retention of personnel.
