GOBRADIME Step 8: Maintenance

Consider future needs and anticipate the work needed to manage your project on an ongoing basis.

The M in GOBRADIME stands for Maintenance…

​and it also stands for Monitoring, Morphing, Momentum, Motivation, Mastery, and Mistakes.

Hopefully by now you’ve dispelled the rumor that there’s any such thing as a “no maintenance,” garden. Still, before you start doing all the math and signing your whole family up to your five-year chore duty calendar, go back through every detail of your design and make sure you are optimizing placement in every way possible. Work through the PEAR process we covered in Implementation, and design your site to be as low maintenance as possible.

As for the unavoidable tasks–the watering and composting and firewood and fall clean-up, here’s a question we don’t ask often enough:

Is low maintenance as good for the commons as it is for me? And is it really good for me anyway? 

What some call “maintenance,” others might call “joyfully faffing about in the garden.” Every moment spent supporting, interacting with, and caring for the different components on your site is an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to improve the whole-system design.

Here’s PWG faculty member Saskia Esslinger, sharing some thoughts and pointers about maintenance:

Tips for creating your maintenance plan

Start with a broad brainstorm, referring back to your implementation plan and making notes. Make estimates about hours, costs, and anything else that could come up. Work backwards, work forwards, work through all the zones, and do the rough math. ​

Some questions to help get the details flowing:

  • Who will be managing which parts of this project? 
  • What tasks need doing daily? Seasonally? Annually? 
  • What will happen if you go away for a day, a week, a year? Can you automate things? Do you have enough social capital or stakeholders to cover for your absence?
  • What about if you leave, or die? Think legacy or succession planning. Design your exit from any project. The resilience of any project is weakened if only one person knows how to manage it. A clearly-written maintenance plan can also work as an instruction manual so that someone else can pick up and run the project, if needed.​

The impact of a good project can be far-reaching, and especially so if it’s been thoroughly designed and documented. Your maintenance plan will have a direct impact on how easily your project could be replicated by others, and the more carefully you keep track of the mistakes, surprises, and adjustments as they come up, the more valuable your experience will be as a learning tool.

Here is a silly assembly of rough-draft examples…truly there is no limit to the types of charts you can create to help you stay on top of maintenance scheduling, and developing your own approach is an important part of this step.

A few more things to consider about maintenance

​Fundraising. You have two choices here: either design income-producing aspects of your project, or you will need to design time and space for fundraising events on a regular basis. Even the most effective systems need an influx of cash, at least during the beginning phases. Build the money needs into your long term plan and you won’t get the rug pulled out from under you by surprise.

Resource depletion. Does your system take more than it gives? Until you close the loop in all areas, some of your maintenance tasks will include replacing resources you have used up. This could include food, water, fuel, seeds, firewood, and so much more. And if it’s not obvious already: this is a great place to start your evaluation process as well, and to look for ways to improve the system.

Relationships. Interpersonal connections, working groups, and business relationships all need maintenance. Neglect them at your peril!

Self-care. Don’t forget to build in time to care for your inner landscape. If you’re the kind of person who needs down-time after hosting a big event, make sure to schedule it in. If part of your whole system design includes a daily movement practice, make sure that’s on the schedule as well. 

Feedback loops. Your maintenance plan, perhaps more than most of the layers of your design, will change over time according to how your site grows and evolves. Some areas will require less and less maintenance as time goes on. Other areas will peak in maintenance needs at certain times of the year. Some of these changes will be easy to predict, others will be totally unforeseen. Tune in to the messages all of the creatures and components on your site are sending, and adjust accordingly.

Sunk costs. This is SO important! Do not cling to patterns and projects that aren’t working, just because they were somehow expensive to create. Flow, flexibility, and responding to feedback are some of the most important skills you can have as a designer, so stay sharp and don’t get attached to sentimentalities that aren’t serving the system. Dwelling on sunk costs only costs more.

Homework for this phase of your design project

Deliverables

Using whatever systems, charts, tools, and processes work for you, develop a plan for the ongoing maintenance of your project. Try to make it easy to understand and succinct enough that anyone in the future would be able to plug in without too much explanation.

Because this design project is about practice, not perfection, and because you are likely not very far into the hands-on implementation phases, it doesn’t make sense to ask for many details from you at this point, but we do want you to include SOMETHING that passes for a maintenance plan in your final document. 

Feedback

Feedback for the maintenance step tends to come as you go.

Plants will tell you if they need more attention, and animals will too!

But also: this is a good time to ask stakeholders how much they will contribute in long term. Get them to commit to X hrs per month, per week, per year. Sign them up!

That’s it! You’re soooo close to being finished!