Cared-for outdoor areas say you also give proper attention to everything, including employees and donors. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Stough can help you create and maintain a welcoming exterior by:
Plasma centers designed/built/maintained by Stough retain their curb appeal through—among other things—well-kept landscapes and parking areas. Call us to enhance your image and production today.
1. Best parking lot practices
Regular parking lot maintenance saves money over time, and helps preserve property values and community relations.
Your regimen should include the following, usually required in your lease. Keeping on top of these tasks will improve and enhance your center:
- Sweeping and cleaning to remove debris and reveal spots that need repairs
- Treating asphalt with sealant every few years preserves its resilience and prevents weathering. Sealant can be scraped off during snow removal. In the spring, check to see if your lot needs resealing to prevent expensive major crack repairs later
- Repainting marks like lane dividers regularly to keep them clear and visible
- Filling potholes and cracks that allow water and debris to penetrate the surface layer, causing further damage
- Stripping the top layer of pavement off periodically and replacing it with a new layer helps extend its life while making it look new
- Repaving when the asphalt begins to crumble. With proper care, this should only be necessary once every few decades
Keeping your lot in good shape not only prevents the need for costly repairs, it also minimizes liability from slips, falls and car accidents on your property.
A good paving company should help you develop a program to keep your lot in appealing shape.
The Stough team can take tedious and distracting landscape and parking lot work off your plate. One call does it all!
Ensure adequate parking for donors near the entrance.
Drive by any restaurant or retail outlet at opening or closing time and you will see a lack cars by the entrance. That’s because employees park in the back to leave the most desirable spots free for customers.
Why would plasma centers not do the same?
Require employees to park away from the entrance. Open spots say to donors, “Welcome! We’re so glad you’ve come, we’ve saved a spot just for you!”
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2. How your landscape helps operations
Because your costs are fixed, it doesn’t make sense to scrimp.
Everything about your centers—from the way you treat your bushes to the way you treat your staff and donors—impacts your production.
For best results:
- plant hardy, local species
- keep your sprinklers running in dry weather
- nurture your plants with regular feeding, pruning and thinning
- stay on top of weeds
For most of us, it’s hard to find time to mow our own lawns, let alone keep up with landscaping at our place of work! It makes sense to let others handle mundane maintenance tasks so you can focus on more important aspects of plasma collection.
Stough can provide a maintenance contract, or an easy path to maintaining the landscape yourself. We install shrubbery, trees and mulch beds that present beautifully and last.
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3. Give smokers space—away from the entrance
We can provide a solution to your outdoor cigarette smokers situation.
What you don’t want is smokers discouraging donors by blocking your entrance.
A better option is a designated spot at the back of your property with a pergola for protection from the weather. This area, which projects a better image than smokers congregating at the entrance, can double as an attractive lunch space for employees.
Gently guiding smokers away from the entrance also reduces the half-smoked cig litter around your “face” (your front door).
Back To TopLETTING STOUGH CARE FOR YOUR GROUNDS AND PARKING LOTS PROTECTS YOUR INVESTMENT AND ENSURES YOUR EXTERIOR STAYS ATTRACTIVE.
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To streamline delivery and control costs, we take a prototype approach when possible, engage local civil engineering consultants for each project, and establish a working relationship with the local governing authority.