Ep. 506 Reducing Risk in the Landscape Industry Series with Bill Arman: Asset Protection
In the final episode of a special series, Bill Arman, head harvester at Harvest Group Landscape Business Consulting sits down with Rancho Mesa's Drew Garcia and discusses the key ways landscape companies can protect their assets while at work on customer grounds.
Show Notes: The Harvest Group, Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter
Director/Host: Drew Garcia
Guest: Bill Arman
Producer/Editor: Megan Lockhart
Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “Breaking News Intro” by nem0production
© Copyright 2025. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
Transcript
Drew Garcia: Welcome back everybody. I'm Drew Garcia vice president landscape and tree care group here at Rancho Mesa.
You're listening to Rancho Mesa studio one podcast where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive. We're joined again by co-founder of the harvest group Bill Arman and Bill, we've covered a few different topics so far when we're diving into the safety environment for employees and for the general public.
We did safety and security, and now we're going to get into liability, which can be a broad brush. But talk to us a little bit about maybe shedding liability or protecting yourself to avoid it for landscape businesses.
Bill Arman: Yeah, great point. And there's a lot of liability out there. And as being responsible for the landscape, there's a lot of things that we encounter. So let's start with some of the big ones, right? So V-Ditch, what's a V-Ditch? V-Ditch is the concrete swell that catches water from a slope. We have a lot of slopes here in California. So the water comes down, caught by a horizontal V-Ditch, goes to a drain and goes out and disappears, the water, right? And if that V-Ditch is plugged up with mud or soil, things like that, the water goes over the V-Ditch and goes down the slope and the slope goes down to the bottom and you have a problem. Or if the drain at the end of a V-Ditch is plugged up. So V-Ditches, that's a big one. And I'm not just reading about this in an article or things like this. This has happened to us in the past, and it can be a very expensive process.
Next one would be, listen to this, I know it sounds crazy, but gophers, gophers and rabbits, you know what they do? They burrow underneath the soil on, they love slopes. And once they have established themselves, they really take off. And so that will entail a great deal potential exposure for another slope slide. So gopher control and rabbit control on slopes, particularly is a big deal.
And I'm saying that in very slow terms, because I've been involved in some of those things. I share with you earlier where I had a bank of attorneys asking me about gophers for like three or four hours. So it wasn't a fun thing. So if you think you can control gophers and rabbits, you can't hire a specialist, subcontract them out, have them additionally insured, you know, do all the process so that they share the liability if there's an issue. So there's a couple right there; V-Ditches and rodents right out of the gates.
DG: And I'm going to jump in too, just in terms of facing those challenges, is that something where the landscape business, again, documenting, getting the information in front of the property owner or property management company to make sure that you made them aware that you're looking at maybe a potential issue that either you're coming into because it's a new job or an emerging trend on a job that you currently have under contract?
BA: Once again, you should be a landscaper. Come on, Drew. That's a great point. So you want to that. And I encourage that you put it under a safety or liability umbrella. Number one, don't blend it with other enhancements. And then you should also say, here's our proposal. And we just want part of our jobs to alert you to this potential condition. And here is the potential outcome if you don't approve this.
And we've seen this before. And then if you don't get approval, I think you need to knock on the door several times so you have it in a document just in case they don't approve. People say, “I don't want to spend the money or I don't have the budget.”
I'll tell you, the budget's a lot bigger to pick up a slope than it is to maintain a slope. That's for sure. I mean, quantum leaps more expensive having had to do a couple of these myself. So great point, document it and show what would be the consequences if this issue is not dealt with and show them what the cost is per maybe square foot on a slope is just astronomical, right?
Let's talk about people that maintain high-end residential or even some of the buildings that we maintain where the grading is appropriate. The grading goes towards the house and water goes towards the house and infiltrates the wall. There's a thing out here that was stuck at home called Weep Screed and it's just above the foundation of a home. And if the soil's up above the Weep Screed, it'll weep into the wall. It's supposed to prevent that weeping. The soil grazed on top of that. I've dealt with an entire community that had over 2,000 homes have this problem with mis-grading. It wasn't our problem, which was good. But that's how I was a witness in that particular lawsuit. So Weep Screeds, watch out for those.
For those people that maintain playground equipment, there's a whole program on the base of a slide land, you know, and how that's supposed to be. And there's certain regulations, cities have codes for those, checking the nuts and bolts on the play equipment, checking all that. So you want to really take a look at your specifications, what you're being held accountable for. If that's part of it, you better be all over that, pay attention to that. That's a big one. We've had a couple of issues where people weren't supposed to be using a slide in the middle of the night, not using a slide appropriately, they were running down the slide, and they had a little fall at the end and we were part of that lawsuit because it wasn't fluffy enough. So all things can happen, right?
Trees that are rubbing against the building, you know, and then unfortunately, rodents can climb up trees. Guess what? They jump from trees onto the building. So the difference be the space between the tree rubbing on the building or becoming up to where gutters are or they have access to roofing. So that's another one. It's a great tree trimming proposal right there and motivation to do that.
Gutters, we see gutters just houses this way on high-end residential I've visited one of my clients in Colorado and there's weeds a foot-tall growing out of the gutter It's hard access and we gave them a proposal, but that'll just rot out and it weeps in you see these ads on TV where, that's not a good thing to have right? Block drains, you know, this just rains a lot here, right? People send a lot of their workers’ home in the maintenance business. I sent my crew leaders out and did drain checks to make sure the drains were cleaned out. So making sure the drains are cleaned out.
Hazardous trees. Now you need to have a certified application on this in the arborist level, but trees can be hazards and you need to have a full-on document on that. That's a whole legal document that you need to have; an outside expert. You can do it as a horticulturist. I'm a horticulturist, you know, “Hey, I would highly recommend you have arborists come in here, but I can tell you right now, it's safely to say that tree should be removed.”
And then we've had some issues with that. More defined one that was a very serious accident that we're aware of was palm trees. Palm trees will start getting these rot on them, and they do what, I don't even know what the technical term is, but they basically x–ray palm trees in areas where it was high pedestrian areas. And unfortunately, we had a palm tree land on somebody, and it wasn't a good event. So think about that on the palm trees and the high-end jobs. At least recommend it. They can say no, but at least you're documented to say you gave them the opportunity to make a decision on that.
Girdled trees. What's a girdled tree? What the heck is that? Basically, we tied the trees down to the soil to have the roots get in. We first planted a tree, and these ties get around the trees, and they strangled the tree, basically. And so when you're When the liability standpoint, you want to document that, so that doesn't just carry over to you. And they go, "Hey, you girdled my tree. You killed my tree."
Another one from a landscape management standpoint is girdling the trees at the base with the weed eater. Guys are knocking around the lawn in the turf area, and they're weed-eating trees. That's what we call the cambium bark layer of a tree. And if you do that enough, you kill the tree. So those are part of the documents.
Another one thing that Damage, especially high in residential, stains on their driveway, broken lights. We have water causes a lot of issues. You have salt deposits on water if the sprinklers aren't doing correctly, right? Those are some of the things that we look for in liability.
The other one, bollards. I don't even know what a bollard was until I ran into a couple with a couple of my lawnmowers. And they're not inexpensive things. These are the things that like little collars at the bottom of a lighting fixture, a big lighting parking lot or in a lawn area, unfortunately, where my lawnmower ran over them. And they're pretty expensive. I can tell you that right now.
Once again, I'd say water. Now, right now, as you know, true, unfortunately, we've had some serious fire issues from a liability standpoint. If you're in a fire zone, you still have the fire authority. There's usually a fire authority that's certified or the public agency in your county, your city, come out and do an inspection and be very familiar with the fire code and the size of the plant material that's next to or adjacent to a plant, buildings, you know, it's 100 foot, you have to have this and that. Get very familiar with that. And unfortunately, we were too familiar with that recently. Now you have the fire, now you've had the damage, now you have erosion. So now you have a whole liability potential for your customer being liable. And you, if you aren't presenting it, because you're probably listed as what we said early, John Doe's et al, that you didn't give them a proposal to put either jute deadening down or some effect, you know, you can spray on some soil retention material. There's all different ways to maintain the soil, so it doesn't erode off the soil. But we're going to have floods, and we're going to have mud. We just saw that recently, didn't we, in Southern California?
DG: Yeah.
BA: So those are just some examples. There's a lot of them out there, aren't there? And there aren't there?
DG: There is. It can be overwhelming. I'm sure people are listening to this like, "Man, my goodness. I feel like we have so much against us.”
But I think a good process in a system to not only shed this, but you're protecting your client. You're protecting your business. You're protecting your insurance carrier to an extent. Everybody needs to be able to work together for a business to continue to go on.
Talk to us a little bit about maybe creating that process for a business so that this becomes second nature. You know, they're not, everybody's doing a little bit different. Is there an easy way for a business to turn this into a process? Is that available somewhere?
BA: Yeah. Not only a process, but a profit center. Actually, if you want to get, you know, about that, and there's opportunities here as well, right? So documentation, you should have a new job startup process. Now you aren’t going to be able to cover everything that can happen because things happen right? Wind, fires all sorts of weird things happen that we'd ever even knew about right? And we may have to come up with a disclaimer that some of that we're going to be looking out on your behalf but we're not going to be able to find everything because we've had that come back on us as well, “Hey we thought you're our safety director what happened?”
And then we had an issue that happened and they try to bring us as John Does et al but that didn't work out so good. So I'd say documentation, write it up, photo document it, have it on a map, on the job startup. Job startups are critical. And so you have a document right from the very beginning. And then when you have a new property manager come on board, refresh their memories, and then I would even have it up, if there's no action taken on a proposal—you don't want to be a nag-- but if it's really a critical thing, you know, big winds are coming up or the big storm coming up, you should remind them of these on a pretty regular basis.
DG: Very good. Those are great tips. Again, this is our third item of four that we're talking about today with Job Site/Environmental Safety for Landscape Businesses. Join us for our last one, we're going to talk about asset protection. Thanks, Bill.