The Future…

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The Future…: With Turf Matters celebrating its 10th birthday thoughts go to 10 years down the line and what life will be like in the mid 2030s. Scott MacCallum was given a glimpse into the future by Husqvarna and JCB.

In many ways, 2014 seems like ancient history. Back then, we saw Scotland voting to remain as part of the United Kingdom; Brazil were tonked 7-1 in the semi-final of a World Cup… held on home turf in Brazil, and Conchita Worst, sporting a very fine gown and a very fine beard, won the Eurovision Song Contest for Austria.

The Future…

The Future…

It was also the year that Turf Matters was launched, and this issue represents the 10th anniversary of the magazine.

With so much, good and bad, occurring over the last 10 years, it led to me to ponder where we might be 10 years from now. Could we be being picked up from the pub in our driverless car; might we have all our mail and deliveries dropped down to us from drones, while might we all have chips inserted in our wrists, thus removing the need for all money, keys and forgettable passwords?

But what about our industry? What are some of the things that we might expect when the 20th anniversary Turf Matters drops to you from your friendly drone… Hang on… will we still have printed magazines in 10 years’ time?

Now I don’ t have a crystal ball but I have been lucky enough recently to attend two events which shed some considerable light on what developments are being made towards 2034 and beyond. A quote which is attributed to either science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke or Bill Gates, and raised in Paris, and tweaked slightly for our needs is also worth re-stating.

“We tend to overestimate what can be achieved in two years but underestimate what can be achieved in 10.”

Husqvarna’s Living City 2023, held in the wonderfully nostalgic Jardin d’Acclimatation, in Paris, was a two day look into the future, while a couple of weeks later I was one of a select group of journalists invited to attend a briefing at JCB’s Headquarters, in Staffordshire, to look at the extraordinary progress they have made in hydrogen power.

What I discovered was that 10 years is well within the scope of some amazing advances in technology and thinking. Looks like Arthur or Bill might have been spot on.

Living City 2023, saw 160 people attend for 13 different countries and covered a range of topics from global change and how that was impacting cities – the temperature rise in northern hemisphere cities is four degrees against a global rise of one and a half degrees – to how biodiversity 10 years down the  line will be increasingly seen as the lifeline for the future of the planet.

Paris has a target to be the greenest city in the world by 2030 while London Mayor Sadiq Khan has promised to plant two million more trees in the city. New York has a policy of every missing tree having to be reported

One speaker was Douwe Snoek, a renowned Dutch landscape architect, who told the audience that we had been building our cities all wrong. Douwe will be featured in the next issue of our sister publication, Landscaping Matters, but in essence he said that too much influence had been given to the car and future cities should give limited access to the car.

The Future…

The Future…

Opening the Conference Yvette Hensall-Bell, President Global Professional for Husqvarna, revealed that more than one million species were at risk of extinction if the status quo was maintained and said that the company had set up a Biodiversity Advisory Board, pulling together some of the finest minds on the subject to work on finding solutions and lobbying Governments.

They also presented papers on how there will be a return to quietness, with the removal of the brute force of engines and all the toll that puts on the body.

Gent Simmons, Vice President Global Product Management & Development – Professional, spoke on the need for sustainability in all areas, even citing safety trousers which currently tangle in a chainsaw to bring it to a sharp stop, at the overall expense of the trousers. Building sensors into safety trousers would instantly bring the chainsaw to a halt and not damage the trousers.

“It is about encouraging customers to move from more of a business model approach to a more sustainable one and adding customer value is how this is achieved,” explained Gent, adding that no new project at Husqvarna progresses now, until it is proven to be fully sustainable.

“No project will be started without a plan to have fossil independence,” said Gent, who added that the philosophy at Husqvarna is to encouraged engineers not to make “new stuff” but to make “stuff better”.

Gent’s closing words were that his greatest wish was to return nature’s balance, something which we’d lost over recent years.

So what else?

Well, we’ve had robots for a number of years now which have become adept at cutting lawns or amenity areas before heading back to their base to recharge.

Well how about, in 10 years’ time, a team of robots which will carry out a range of different turf management practices – aeration, chemical application etc – silently in the middle of the night?

And these robots won’t need to be guided by satellite or guide wires, they will be using AI to work autonomously able to identify where they can and cannot go and, in a golf environment, know the difference between fairway, greens and bunkers.

The robots will arrive in a mini vehicle which will act as their recharging base while they are on site.

With the current recruitment crisis within the industry, it will allow human staff to get on with important jobs during their regular working hours.

For more remote working Husqvarna’s R&D has given thought and provided solutions to the challenge of powering chainsaws and the like for a full working day. Among those was a fully kitted out vehicle with recharging points and storage for all manner of spare batteries and equipment itself.

Much of the pathway to progress revolves around battery power, something which Husqvarna believes will be essential for hand tools for the foreseeable future, and which is make more possible by innovative ways of recharging and supplying sufficient batteries for an entire day’s work. It is worked that is being mirrored at many of the most innovative hand tool companies in the world including Stihl and Pellenc, both of whom are well advanced with their own battery power development work.

Interestingly, however, they believe that hydrogen is the ultimate fuel to provide fossil independence. The problem for the hand tool industry is that currently a hydrogen powered hand tool would need to be six times larger than they are at present.

That obvious limiter to progress does not stand in the way of JCB, whose range of vehicles are sizeable enough to cope with a hydrogen engine.

The Future…

The Future…

How do they know? Well they’ve built one and it is already powering prototype JCB’s at their testing quarry a few miles from their Headquarters.

In fact, a fully fledged hydrogen engine was not the first option considered when viable alternatives were being assessed by the JCB engineers. Further up that list were indeed, battery and hydrogen fuel cells, which initially ticked a lot of boxes and where thought be a quicker route to zero carbon fuel.

While extensive research determined that battery is still the optimum non-fossil option for smaller vehicles, including in that category, domestic cars, it is not practical for equipment with an operating weight of over six tonnes.

JCB’s chief innovation and growth officer, Tim Burnhope, one of the most decorated engineers in the country, explained that with domestic cars now averaging 8,000 miles a year, a drop from the pre Working from Home era of 12,000 miles, battery power remains more than a viable option.

“At JCB, we believe that it is important to use the right technology for the right application. For low power applications, close to built infrastructure, and potentially with additional demands on product such as noise, and where fume extraction is an issue, battery-electric technology is applicable,” said Tim

“These machines tend to be more compact, due to the nature of the work, and while are on-site all day, generally only work a couple of ‘power hours’ in a day. An example of this in the turf and landscaping industry would be electric ‘golf’ buggies, which have been commonplace for many years due to their low power application, low noise and proximity to charging infrastructure.”

For huge excavators, which in countries like India car run for 22 hours a day, lifting and emptying fully loaded buckets every 21 seconds, batteries wouldn’t cut the mustard.

The Future…

The Future…

“For larger machines and equipment, the job site tends to be more remote, building the infrastructure need (e.g. utilities, road, rail, and housing) for the first time. As such fuel needs to be mobile and fast to replenish to enable machines to operate whenever and wherever they are needed to. Hydrogen is a zero carbon fuel, which can be brought to machines and refuelled in a matter of minutes – making it an ideal future fuel for construction and agricultural machines.”

The example Tim gave was of a busy quarry with 100 excavators. The required recharging points would mean that power would require to be drawn from a considerable distance at a current installation cost of £1 million a mile. Of course, when the quarry was drained of resource the expensive recharging infrastructure would be redundant.

“Continuing down the battery power route would also mean that net zero by 2050 would not be achieved, as predictions suggest that it would stop at around 10%,” explained Tim.

The hydrogen fuel cells also had similar success-limiting deficiencies.

“We worked at developing a machine which would work for 16 hours a day, not even the 22 hours that is required in places like India. However, even that would require £400,000 worth of fuel cells – 4.3 times the cost of an existing excavator, and it would weigh 10,000 kilos.”

Machines must also have a resale value to make them viably options for customers and having been worked at such a rate they wouldn’t be an attractive proposition without a hugely expensive replacement battery pack.

“Hydrogen fuel cells were therefore too complicated, not robust and too expensive,” explained Tim.

And so it was that during a break in Covid lockdown in 2020 a team of JCB engineers  sat down with Lord Bamford, JCB’s Chairman

“It was July and Lord Bamford laid down his Chairman’s Challenge. He wanted us to produce a hydrogen engine by Christmas,” recalled Tim.

Now, rather than leave the meeting with spinning heads and a desire to find the nearest darkened room in which to lie down, the team of engineers got to work and met the Challenge. Not surprising when you appreciated the desire and ability of the JCB engineers to the push the envelope. The world’s fastest diesel vehicle, as driven by Andy Green, sits in the corner of the factory floor. It achieved a speed of 365 mph on in Utah, USA, in 2006,  if you are interested.

The engine they produced has the same dimensions as that used in fossil fuel-operated JCB machinery, so can be fitted into the same chassis while they have the same level of performance.

It is a huge breakthrough and JCB is now just the first of at least 130 hydrogen development programmes going on around the world at some of the biggest companies in a range of different usages so progress will undoubtedly intensive.

The one challenge which is still to be met satisfactorily is refueling.

An extensive nationwide set of hydrogen filling stations is a long way off so a solution for the early adopters of hydrogen powered machines had to be found.

JCB have come up with, and built, a mobile hydrogen filling vehicle which would travel around an area refilling hydrogen machines thus ensuring that down time for those valuable workhorses is minimised.

That may be a useful option for operators of a large fleet of machines or those who tap into a refilling service but the dream of freely available hydrogen filling stations is still a little time away.

So, that question of where will we be when Turf Matters celebrates its 20th birthday…

“The landscape in 10 years’ time will certainly be a growing mixture of both technologies; where the line is between the two will be highly dependent on application, location and cost,” predicted Tim.

Overall the glimpse into the future, as offered by both Husqvarna and JCB, is extremely interesting and shows that the landscape of our workplace, and life in general, will be markedly changed. Husqvarna’s work on battery development and holistic lifestyle changes and JCB’s progress on ensuring that large vehicles will emit steam rather than fumes should assist in achieving, or getting close to, nett zero

Many thanks to Husqvarna and JCB for inviting Turf Matters to two extremely interesting events

Potential unleashed

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Potential unleashed: Millfield School has an enviable roll call of high achieving alumni. Scott MacCallum speaks with Craig Richardson, Head of Grounds and Gardens, to find out how they do it. 

Ask many people at which school they would have loved to have been a pupil and I’m pretty sure the name Hogwarts would feature strongly.

Not for me, though, the school I would have loved to attend is Millfield School, in Somerset.

Potential unleashed

Potential unleashed

I grew up learning about the great names who had been educated, and honed their sporting prowess, at Millfield School and I wanted to join them, not because I was particularly adept at any sport. Quite the reverse, I’m pretty inept at most sports. But I love sport and while I was never likely to achieve what the likes of Sir Gareth Edwards, Duncan Goodhew, Helen Glover, Adam Hastings, Tyrone Mings, Andrew Castle, Lando Norris, Chris Robshaw, Mako Vunipola and Huw Jones, to name just a handful, I would undoubtedly have become more proficient with some top quality coaching.

The site itself is phenomenal, and coupled with coaching of the highest quality, you can see exactly how the school has acquired its reputation.

No amount of talent or high level one-to-one coaching, however, can succeed without a quality surface on which to show off skills, and the man in charge of managing the sports surfaces, as well as maintaining the fantastic gardens around the school grounds, is Craig Richardson, Head of Grounds and Gardens.

“The brilliance of this school is that we pretty much cover every sport. It’s not just football and rugby in the winter and cricket in the summer, we’ve got grass tennis courts, we’ve got golf, we’ve got equestrian, the list goes on. Up until this year we had our own polo pitch and we still have an annual polo event. It’s a fantastic spectacle,” said Craig, in his calm north east accent.

With such a range of sports for which to provide surfaces, the entire site is 240 acres, Craig is fortunate to have a strong team of over 20 whose goal, set by Craig, is akin to those goals set for the elite sportsmen and women who are lucky enough to attend the school.

“We try to maintain our sports surfaces as close to professional surfaces as we can. There are going to be constraints because of time and also finance, but that is what we try to do.

“And we try to take it one stage further because, rather than just look for those standards for the first team pitches, we want to make all of our pitches to the same standard. So, whether it’s the under 15 Cs or the A team, I believe they should be playing on the same standard of surface.

“That is what we aspire to. Do, we get it right all the time? Probably not, but that’s our goal,” explained Craig.

The school, in the village of Street, was founded in 1935, a mere stripling alongside some of the country’s public schools but in those 88 years its sporting claims to fame has been unmatched. Where else, for example, could boast of having been represented at every Olympic Games since 1956.

Indeed, at the Rio Games in 2016, eight Millfieldians took part and won a total of four medals, in rowing, swimming and rugby sevens. Go back to the London Games in 2012 and Millfield was the most represented UK school.

There are 130 sports coaches on staff who oversee 24 diff erent sports including, in alphabetical order, athletics, badminton, basketball, chess, clay shooting, cricket, cross country, dance, equestrian, fencing, football, golf, hockey, karate, modern pentathlon, netball, rowing, rugby, skiing racing, squash, swimming tennis, trampolining and triathlon.

There is one word for that stable of sporting opportunity – WOW! Facilities include, a 50 metre swimming pool, the equestrian centre, sports halls, cricket nets, putting green, squash courts, water based hockey pitch, outdoor tennis courts, netball courts and a nine-hole golf course.

Definitely spoiled for choice! And it’s not just in sport which Millfield has produced the goods.

The world of entertainment can look to the school for producing some if its biggest stars – Lily Allen, Tony Blackburn, Sophie Dahl, and Rose Leslie, among a host of others, saw the firm foundations of their careers built at Millfield. The current Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, is a former pupil.

“There are so many talented people at the school and it is good to be in and around it,” said Craig, who recently watch the school’s long jump record being broken by one of the girls.

Despite having risen to the top echelons of grounds management Craig was actually a late starter. He spent the early part of his adult life in the casino business, where he worked around the world before a yearning for a career which would expose him to a little more sunlight.

“I was playing a lot of golf between contracts, and saw the opportunity to do something different with my life,” he recalled.

He approached a local college and they found him a work placement at Woodspring Golf Club, in Bristol, where he was lucky enough to fi nd Course Manager, Steve Chappell, there to mentor him. Steve went on to be Head Greenkeeper at Gleneagles for the Ryder Cup in 2014 and is now a Course Manager in Slovenia.

Potential unleashed

Potential unleashed

“He was great to work for and we had a young team which produced some very good surfaces.”

Having cut his teeth on golf he then moved to Ashton Gate, home of Bristol City Football Club, where he spent 15 years.

“I remember I started two days after 9/11 in 2001 working under Martin Plumley, who was Grounds Manager. When he moved on a year later I took on the Head Groundsman’s job. At that time we just had the stadium to look after, but I then took on the responsibility for the training pitches at Clifton College.

“We then build a training ground next door and helped level an area for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital School to enable them to create more sports fields before taking on a management contract from the school to look after the facilities.”

Towards the end of his time with Bristol City he had taken on the role of Head of Operations.

“It was amazing really. We were developing three stands at the ground and it was very exciting to be involved with the club. But then the job at Millfield came up. I had a great job at Bristol City and it took a lot to get me to move but with everything the school had to offer it was too great an opportunity to miss.”

As everyone knows, the trick is when starting a new job is to make a good impression early and Craig knew what he wanted to do. Using renovation techniques he’d learned at Bristol City from people including Premier Pitches he introduced new practices which had an immediate impact on the school’s playing surfaces.

“I was lucky that there was a good budget in place and we were able to buy a fraise mower, a disc seeder and a top dresser while we already had a fl eet of tractors and the manpower to carry out the work that I wanted to do. The pitches had never been fraise mown before, but it was something that I knew would bring about significant improvement.

“We also installed drainage and irrigation into a number of pitches and we now take the top off every pitch every year and top dress.

We’ve fraise mown the cricket square for the last three or four years and this year is probably the best we have had them.

“It has allowed us to do our renovations in-house and so we have been able to improve our surfaces and protect the investment that has gone into the pitches.

“Hopefully the school appreciates that and the children can appreciate what they have here when they go to other venues which perhaps don’t drain as well and perform a little bit differently.”

Standards across industry are rising all the time and expectation levels rise accordingly, but any pressure to clear the bar at a school which demands the highest standards is handled with a degree of sensible.

“I don’t think the pressure weighs on us. You can only do what you can do. We are limited with the soils that we have, the drainage that we have, the irrigation that we have and the finances that we have.

“We are not a premier league football club which can spend a lot of money on fertilisers and the latest technology etc, but seeing what can be achieved does give us something to shoot at – we should be trying to improve ourselves and improve the surfaces that we have to look after.”

It would take a very experienced eye to blind test successfully any Millfield pitch against the pitch of a professional team in a range of sports, so Craig and his talented team of groundsmen and gardeners are an extremely good fit for a school where striving for excellence is a non-negotiable.

For me I left the school still regretting that I hadn’t been fortunate enough to have attended but just wondering how many more pupils they would attract if they offered quidditch on the curriculum?

Look at me now!

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Look at me now!: Scott MacCallum caught up with Jordan Fairweather and learned just how far greenkeeping has taken him.

Jordan Fairweather had been joined by his parents for a meeting with the school’s careers’ advisor. Always keen to keep busy, he had been splitting his time between two holiday jobs, one at his father’s car dealership and the other divotting fairways at Letham Grange Golf Club, near Arbroath.

Look at me now!

Look at me now!

When it came to the inevitable question of “What do you want to do?”, it was as much a surprise to his mum and dad as it was to the careers’ advisor when he replied, “I’d like to go to Elmwood College and give greenkeeping a go”.

It was perhaps the fact that his parents were so dumbstruck by the answer that it was neither of them who spoke next.

“’That’s an absolutely silly idea. It will never give you a career, never give you enough money and you’ll be spending the rest of your life cutting grass, You should go into the family business’,” was the response from the person whose sole role was advising young people on the path to career fulfilment.

That was back in the mid ‘90s and Jordan was recounting the story from Dubai, where he is in charge of operations at three prestigious golf clubs. He had just spent his weekend with his wife and two young children around the private pool in his housing complex. He has responsibility for around 115 staff and regularly meets with the clubs’ boards and stakeholders to discuss the current performance of the business along with further development opportunities.

Thinking back to that careers’ advisor, there is no feeling of having proved her wrong, just a degree of frustration that an excellent career option could so easily be ridiculed.

“I remember thinking I wonder what she would have said if I’d told her that I wanted to be a Formula One driver or a fighter pilot. She’d probably have said it was a good ambition to have. But what are the chances of making a life at that? Very slim!”

Being brought up on the east coast of Scotland – not far from Carnoustie – Jordan was very much in a golfing/ greenkeeping heartland, particularly with that other huge employer of greenkeepers, St Andrews Links, not too far away either. However, Jordan had a thirst for knowledge and to make the most of his career, and without a genuine affinity for links golf, he felt the urge to move away.

“I could see that I wasn’t going to learn any more where I was and so I took a long shot and gave up my full-time position and took a seasonal job at Loch Lomond Golf Club, working for Ken Siems and David Cole. I stayed there for seven and a half years.”

After just one year Ken, known for his ability to identify talent, was giving Jordan special projects to handle, including installing the SubAir system, one of the first at any UK golf club, irrigation-related projects and installing drainage pumps on what was and is regarded as a particularly wet site.

“What he saw in me? I’ve no idea. You’d have to ask him. Maybe it was a willingness to learn and try anything new. That was what I saw in Ken. He’d take a risk on anything.

The view was if you don’t try you are never going to improve. The funny thing is we still call each other now bouncing ideas of each other.

“Loch Lomond was certainly a stepping stone to learning and creativity, the management team were always trying to see how to take something to the next level.”

Certainly Loch Lomond was a great place to develop and Jordan was there when it was a regular host of the Barclay’s Scottish Open. He also grabbed the opportunity to study at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

“The Scottish Opens were always such a highlight on your calendar, but what really came through to me, at a place like Loch Lomond, was that there was so much more to the industry and so much you can do within the industry whether than be in a specialised area like irrigation or in construction or grow-in.”

When Ken moved on to a build a golf course in Dubai he asked Jordan if he wanted to go with him.

Look at me now!

Look at me now!

“That was in 2008 and to say that I haven’t been home since, would be correct,” said Jordan, who clarified the statement by saying he’d probably been back to see his parents five or six times since, often coinciding with friends’ weddings or BTME at Harrogate.

Jordan was Construction Manager, working under Ken who was Project Manager, on the Golf City project in Dubai, which , ironically given its name, has now been replaced by a housing development. They were also responsible for grassing the racecourse which hosts the world’s richest race along with construction of the world-acclaimed Yas Links.

Dubai was not immune from the world recession in 2010 and construction work on such projects slowed, so Jordan made the decision which was to impact the rest of his life – he took on the task of completing construction and growing-in on a golf course in Bulgaria.

“The job had been advertised through St Andrews company, Braemar Golf, and I went to work there for a Bulgarian owner. It was then that I met my now wife. We were the first two employees of
the company and she was working on the marketing,” said Jordan, for whom the apartment they bought in Sofia, is still, and will always be, regarded as home – no matter where he and the family are living.

That Bulgarian project lasted two and a half years, after which he was off to Bahrain and the Royal Golf Club, where he not only managed the agronomy of the golf course, but also managed a landscaping company along with a golf cart sales and service division.

“The golf club was on an island and there were no local companies to supply fertilisers or flags and pins etc. The club was already the island’s biggest importer of seed and fertiliser and so a lot of the other managers at football pitches and racecourses used to ask us to bring supplies in for them.

“I stayed there for four years and by the time I left the landscaping company, which was run out of the golf maintenance department, was turning over $1 million, more than the F&B banqueting and Fitness departments.”

That was a great lesson for Jordan about the how various departments within a golf club can work towards the overall success of the club.

“Back in Scotland, each department tends to be run very separately – the greenkeeper is the greenkeeper, the steward is the steward and the F&B guy is the F&B guy. Very rarely is there any working together to achieve more for the club. Greenkeeping is usually the biggest cost centre for any golf club so the golf course manager or Superintendent should be in a position to manage more of the business and make the decisions. It was in Bahrain where I started to learn more about the business side of running, not just golf clubs, but businesses.”

Next stop was Malaysia.

“The Royal Golf Club was managed by Troon Golf and I’d been doing well and enjoying the job. Our daughter was born while we were there.

However, Troon asked if I wanted to go to Malaysia because they had a 72 hole Ernie Els design project.

They had already opened 18 holes and there was going to be another 18 holes on one side of a village, close to Singapore in Southern Malaysia, with another three loops of nine next door as well as a nine hole par-3. The first 18 holes was on the Island of Langkawi and required a flight every second Sunday.”

It was a Malaysian Government project aimed at growing tourism in the area and there were also a host to attractions being developed from water parks to Hard Rock Cafes and resort hotels.

“We were a 20-minute drive into Singapore and at weekends would go over as often as possible as Johor Bahru was not geared for ex-pat life.

“But that was probably the toughest role I’ve had, to be honest. There were lots of factors. We were an hour out of the main town in a small village, which presented logistical issues as the daily commute was 90 minutes each way.

There were also lots of different grass types and ages within the 45 holes and with the first being grassed three years earlier than the last, you can imagine trying to open 45 holes at the same time and achieve consistency. We also had 120 greenkeepers on the site and very few ex-pats with greenkeeping experience,” revealed Jordan.

“You’ve got a guy who’d just learned to write his name in English six months before and we were trying to train him to mix fertiliser and apply chemicals, the risks are high”

At the end of his two-year visa, Jordan decided that he didn’t want to apply for another, as that would have meant him working there for a further two years.

“Troon Golf said that they had a job that might suit me. It was in Prague, in the Czech Republic, which would be only an hour’s flight back to Bulgaria. It was to build a new course with architect Kyle Philips, who I’d already worked with back in Abu Dhabi.”

Look at me now!

Look at me now!

So that was the next project and Jordan fell into the routine of flying to work on Monday morning, returning home on Thursday night and spending the three days at home working on the admin side of the job. All very well until Covid – and Jordan was stranded for 12 weeks in Prague away from the family!

It did bring to the fore one of the issues which wasn’t so commonplace in the middle east.

“You would automatically think that coming back to Europe would be easier than in Dubai or Malaysia but it’s not because English isn’t the first or even second language.

“Go to the Czech Republic with a daughter who speaks English and Bulgarian, which school do you put them into, because they all speak Czech . In Dubai, there are so many international schools and English is the first language.”

The Prague course was another to be marked down as a huge success, winning Europe’s Best New Course and the Czech Republic’s Best Course for a few years’ running.

“When I fi nished there, Troon Golf called and ask me if I wanted to go back to Dubai. They had a potential job for me and I could take the wife and kids (number two having since joined the family).

“One of the benefits of working in the Middle East is that the company pays for your kids’ schooling at an international school,” he said.

“So that is where you find me today. I’ve got three golf courses, all different styles – Arabian Ranches,Dubai Hills and The Montgomerie.

We are also constructing another 18 holes on Dubai South, close to a new airport which is being built.”

Asked to describe his day-to-day life you get a genuine feel for how far Jordan has come from the schoolboy replacing divots at Letham Grange back in Angus.

“I’m not the guy who has to be here at five o’clock in the morning. That’s not my role because I’m dealing with stakeholders across different departments which include weekly financial forecast and business review meetings and project development across a wider portfolio than golf. So I take the kids to school at 7.30 and two days a week I’ll come to my office to work on admin solely from a business point of view. For the other three days I’ll head to one property and for the first 90 minutes the Superintendent and I will drive the golf course and we’ll discuss plans for the week, how the current programs are going and share ideas,” said Jordan, adding that the children also go to a Bulgarian school every Sunday in Dubai to keep up with their home curriculum.

“Then we organise to meet every manager from that club from F&B, Security, Golf Operations, Sales and Marketing and we sit down together for half an hour for a coffee. Basically, the accountability of running three golf clubs is split between two of us, myself and a director of golf. A combined 167,000 rounds of golf a year and a membership base of 1,334 including social members,” said Jordan, who added that The Montgomerie alone does 62,000 rounds a year and every one is driven in a golf cart, so there are 290+ carts total, maintenance of which is also carried out by his mechanics.

“At the moment I’ve got 42 people at The Montgomerie, 26 at Arabian Ranches and 36 at Dubai Hills in agronomy plus engineering but I’m currently spending more time with the developers than on agronomy.

The owners are the biggest developers in Dubai and actually built the current tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa.”

With a wealth of experience at this fingertips, Jordan is in the position where he can predict how long it should take to get a golf course to the level it should be.

“I know, depending on the size of the property and the number of rounds that are being played how long it is going to take me to get the course to where an ownership or membership want it. It could be two years, it could be three. Once we have reached the level, in the past, that would be the time for me to get back into the construction side, but now I’m thinking of the family and unless a stand-out job comes along, I think we will be here for the foreseeable future.”

Having worked around the world, Jordan is well-placed to offer advice to anyone who harbours a desire to spread their wings.

Look at me now!

Look at me now!

“I know of people who have decided to venture out of the UK and they’ve gone to France, or they’ve gone to Germany or Belgium and they’ve said it was too hard and returned home within six months.

“It’s not like volunteering at a golf tournament where everything from visas, transport, SIM cards, food and accommodation is laid on for you.

“Take Malaysia as an example. I would leave my wife every day in a city with very few ex-pats and she’d be an hour away from me. She had to fi nd the local doctors, the local post offi ce, the local car registration centre and it’s all in the local language.

“It can be tough, especially if you have a two year-old,” he said, adding that his admiration for his better half knows no bounds.

Wherever he has been he has tried to learn some of the local language.

“I always try and greet people in their own language, even if it is just to say ‘Good morning. Nice to meet you. I’m Jordan’. I then go on to ask if we can continue in English. They appreciate that you have made the effort.”

It would be fair to say that Jordan has come a long way since that careers’ meeting back in the mid-90s. His mum and dad have forgiven him and are regular visitors to not only spend time with their grandchildren but also to enjoy the delights of Dubai.

It would also be very fair to describe his career as exciting, rewarding, demanding and fulfilling.

You would not describe it as “silly”.

You can follow Jordan on social media on Twitter @golfagronomy and on Instagram, golf _agronomy

Avoiding a sticky wicket

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Avoiding a sticky wicket: Scott MacCallum speaks with Ian Smith, Sports Turf Consultant for St Alban’s School, about climate change, sustainability – and the days when meeting Elton John was a regular occurrence.

Think back to last summer and the scorching temperatures.

Avoiding a sticky wicket

Avoiding a sticky wicket

We hadn’t seen anything like it. For many of us we could get by with desk fans and cold showers but for those working outside, and I’m thinking about those in the sports and amenity turf industry, they not only had to cope with the blazing sun, they also had to keep their surfaces alive. Not easy with water restrictions in place.

One man in the middle of it all was Ian Smith, Sports Turf Consultant for St Alban’s School, who, at the time, was also planning the programme for the annual Dennis SISIS Seminar which had been postponed from the previous two years.

“I was going to go down the environmental route with the programme anyway, but then we had the drought last year which made it even more relevant,” explained Ian.

“I had seen (Met Office Meteorologist) Aidan McGivern’s presentation on the 2050 weather forecast and when I was able to get Aidan to appear at the seminar it tied everything in.”

What made Aidan’s presentation all the more impactful was that the “shock factor” of the 2050 forecast was 40-degree temperatures in the UK and what would be the consequences of such heat. Those temperatures were reached in southern England last year – 28 years ahead of Aidan’s schedule.

“That really brought it to a head,” admitted Ian.

That led him to look to shape the day’s programme, which he widened to water resourcing, water capture and recycling, as well as how we should build pitches in the future to retain moisture rather than drain it away and what diseases might become more prevalent in a hotter, drier climate.

The Seminar, which attracted well over 200 turf professionals from around the country, was a huge success but left delegates with a genuine sense of foreboding about what the future will have in store if nothing is done imminently to change from the current course.

But Ian works at a school which has already shown its desire to do the right things when it comes to a sustainable model.

Avoiding a sticky wicket

Avoiding a sticky wicket

“It is something that the school governors are embracing. When we first set up the new site here at the school in 2000 I wanted to install irrigation with recycled water, but at the time mains water wasn’t that expensive and it was felt that with the hassle of cleaning and filtering etc, mains water was the way to go. Obviously in the 20 years since, things have changed.”

Now the school has plans for maximising the water at its disposal including capturing and harvesting rainwater which is something all facilities are going to have to investigate given that the Environment Agency is going to be clamping down on extraction licences for bore holes in legislation which is earmarked for 2028.

“We are looking to capture water from the pavilion roof which should help to reduce what we are drawing off the mains. ln future we are looking at the water which currently disappears in to a soak away on our artificial pitch.

“If we can store that water and re-use it on the sports field or in the pavilion it would be a good way of maximising our water usage,” explained Ian, who added that in an ideal world they would tap into grey water from water treatment plants, but sadly the school is too far away from the nearest one.

Much of the school’s drive towards a more sustainable future is led by the pupils, who have their own Green Council.

“We have meat-free Mondays and they have ensured all our lightbulbs are eco-friendly. From our perspective all our hand tools are now battery powered and when
the bigger pieces of kit come up for renewal, we have been told to look at the battery option if we can.”

There are 23 hectares (73 acres) of pitches at Woollams to be maintained by Ian and Head Groundsman Steve Ascott, Mark, Jason, Riz and Richard. “We are in the same position as most in that
we struggle to find staff . Our last two members of staff employed have not been experienced groundsmen and are of a more mature age, one laid tarmac and the other was a firefighter who had retired at 60 but wanted to keep working. They have both been brilliant.”

It is not just the pupils of the school that use the pitches. The Old Albanians, the school’s old boys’ club, have 30 of the 73 acres some of which they sub-let to Saracens Rugby, with the professional club spending quite a bit of money ensuring their two pitches were well-watered during the drought.

Ian’s own path to a top grounds management job started in familiar fashion, and familiar surroundings – an unhappy school classroom. So many successful turf professionals struggle academically until a light goes on in their heads when they discover a subject which really makes them click.

“It was classic really. I was no good at school. Both my kids are dyslexic and I think I was too. But I was just told I was stupid as pupils were told bluntly then. I was the invisible kid in the classroom who spent his time looking out of the window, because I’d far rather have been outside,” he recalled.

Avoiding a sticky wicket

Avoiding a sticky wicket

“I’d have loved to have been a professional sportsman, but I never made the grade. However, Watford FC was my big passion and in the school holidays they used to take kids on to do jobs, like painting the crash barriers. Some of the jobs were just horrible but rather than get £2 a week doing a paper round, I was getting £25 a week.”

There is one particular job which remains stuck in Ian’s memory – and not for any good reasons!

“There was an old wooden stand, and this was just before the fi re which burned down the wooden stand at Bradford and people had been dropping rubbish through the gaps in the floorboards. The Fire Officer said that it was a real fi re risk and that we had to clear it out.

“So I spent six weeks, the whole of the school holidays, being lowered down between some floorboards that had been removed and picked up rubbish. The pile was taller than I was. I had to pick it up, put it in a bin and then pass it back up through the floorboards. I looked like a panda when I got out.”

He loved all the work maintaining the stadium, but particularly when he got out onto the pitch.

When he got to 16 and everyone else returned to school or went into sixth form he just turned up again at Vicarage Road.

“They asked why I wasn’t going back to school and I just said I didn’t fancy it. So they said that they might as well keep me on then. I signed a contract and that was that.”

Ian was at Vicarage Road for two and a half years before moving on to North London Polytechnic which was the Watford Training Ground where he worked for a further six years.

There can’t be many who get a reference from an England football manager, but Ian did – from Graham Taylor, while he was also on-hand to see that famous football club owner Elton John at first hand.

“Elton had a football pitch in his back garden which we used to look after. He was always around the club, popping into the tearoom. He liked it because we all treated him like a normal person and took the mickey. He loved that we treated him like one of the lads.”

Ian used to cycle the 18 miles each way from Luton to Watford to work and it was this journey which was to open the door to his links with St Alban’s School.

“I used to cycle past this beautiful little sports ground which belonged to St Alban’s School and I always looked at it with envy. Then I heard on the grapevine that the school wanted a bigger site – this one was just 16 acres – and being the cocky, confident person, I was I went to the school and said that I gathered that they wanted to build a new sports ground. I was the man to do it for them. I was 23 or 24 at the time.”

The bravado paid off as, armed with his Graham Taylor reference, the school bursar was impressed and said that there was a deputy groundsman job available and that the Head Groundsman, had two years until he retired.

“That would give me two years to prove that I could do what I said I could do.”

All went to plan up until the part about moving to the new site when three public inquiries stood in the way of a swift build. It wasn’t for a further nine years that it was finally finished.

“I was involved right from the start, working with the STRI and the Head of Sport to decide the requirements of the new facility and where everything should go,” said Ian.

He was also to sit in on all three inquiries alongside the school’s barrister so, if required, they could counter the arguments put forward by the local council.

Avoiding a sticky wicket

Avoiding a sticky wicket

“It was a fascinating few years,” he said with genuine understatement. Such heavy involvement did mean that when construction finally got underway, he was front and centre when it came to pitch construction so what he was left to maintain was exactly what he had specified.

Construction started in 2000 and finished in 2002.

“The pitches are still performing 21 years on. We did think that they would start to give us problems by now but we have installed secondary drainage and Sand master a couple of pitches each year. In many ways its strength is also its weakness because it drains so well all the time, drains are at four metre centres and we ameliorated lot of sand and then top dress every year. So we do get the situation we found last year with the drought. But you very rarely call a match off because it’s too dry.”

Ah yes, that drought. With Saracens using two of the pitches, the grounds team were using mobile sprinklers for two pitches on the old Albanian side and two on the school side, every school match was played on those two rather than the usual six they would have at their disposal.

“They had to amend match timings and they were played one after another starting at 9am and going on well into the afternoon.”

So, what happened to that original playing field which caught young Master Smith’s imagination and caused him to move away from his beloved Watford?

“That’s sad. I worked on it for 13 years before we moved to the new site and I put my heart and soul into it. It’s covered in houses now. The day the diggers came in, as a joke, I lay across the square with banners saying, ‘Save My Square’,” he laughed.

But for now, Ian is planning how to save his newer responsibility from the ravages of climate change and the rapidly increasing temperatures.

Feast of knowledge at Dennis & SISIS seminar

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Feast of knowledge at Dennis & SISIS seminar: For more than 10 years Dennis  Sisis have held pre-season  indoor seminars so it was fantastic,  after an enforced absence since  2020, have it back in the calendar.

The “Cricket Pit­ Maintenance in a Changing Environment” Seminar at St Albans School Woohham Trust,  one of the regular hosts, offered the 200 delegates a feast of knowledge and a genuine sense of normality.

Feast of knowledge at Dennis & SISIS seminar

Feast of knowledge at Dennis & SISIS seminar

The programme was devised by the school’s Head of Grounds, Ian Smith and for the morning session at least, hit delegates like a sledge hammer.

The extremely polished Robert Ja‑ , of Howardson Group, was the Master of Ceremonies and he did an excellent job all day of keeping to time and pit­ ing in comments and questions to ensure a smooth running show.

A weather forecast for 2050 and information that abstraction licenses may be revoked or restricted in 2028 offered a glimpse into the future that turf managers would perhaps describe euphemistically as “challenging”.

The weather forecast came from Met Office meteorologist Aiden McGivern who delivered his paper via video. He admitted that the projections he had included were two years old but that already some of the extremes in temperature had been rea­ched.

He talked about regularly topping 40 degrees in the UK – a level that created a new British record last summer – but that it would become a common occurrence. Aiden also said that temperatures in India would hit the high 40 degrees, and that there would be bans on outdoor working whi­ch would impact farming and, of course, sports turf maintenance.

Aiden was followed by Andrew House, of the Environment Agency, who broke the news about the changes to extraction licenses whi­ch will be brought in in 2028. Anyone hoping that this might result in a more beneficial outcome for turf managers would undoubtedly be viewed as optimistic at best.

Ton Hanson, Managing Director of Environmental Solutions International, and George Warren, Anglian Water’s Integrated Water Management Lead, looked at what we might be facing over the next few years and what water might be available to the amenity sector, or not, as the case may be.

With the picture painted it was time for two well known faces to come up with solutions.

Alex Vickers, now a turf consultant but with 25 years of experience at TGMS and as Director of the MSc programme in Sports Surface Te­chnology at Cranfield University, and Dr Christian Spring, the STRI’s Group Principal Scientist, spoke on “Root Zones for a Changing Climate” and “Pests and Diseases of the Future” respectively.

Complete with red bucket and a sponge Alex was able to illustrate how water operated in rootzone while Christian identified whi­ch diseases and pests would thrive in hotter dryer summers and wetter winters.

The morning was a well balanced and thoughtful session and perhaps was a case of better off knowing what we are likely to be facing in the short, medium and long term, than innocently thinking that everything would remain mu­ the same and that the weather we have been experiencing lately is nothing more than a blip.

After lunch­ provided by the s­chool catering staff , the afternoon session ki‑ ed off with Dr Iain James, the ECB’s Head of Facilities Services. Iain spoke on “What Does Sustainability Mean for Grass Roots Clubs?” and covered everything from recycling old kit whi­ch carried old sponsors names to stripping parts from no-longer-used mowers.

There could be no better duo to deliver the final formal talk “Cricket Pit­ Preparations – difference between north and south” than Vic Demain, Head Groundsman at the Durham CCC, the most northerly Test ground in the world and Karl McDermott, who was Head Groundsman at Hampshire CCC, the most southerly Test Ground in England, and now Head Groundsman at Lords.

Vic and Karl know each­ other inside out and were able to josh and joke while offering the assembled gathering some insights into both their jobs. In Vic’s case the earlier and earlier start to the season is an added factor while Karl spoke of the complications created by the slope when watering the most famous ground in cricket.

The day ended with a Q&A Session with Vic and Karl, as always, sharing their knowledge on a wide range of subjects.

Sponsors for the day were Turf Matters; Stuart Canvas Group; DLF Seeds; RT Machinery; Boughton; SIS Grass; Grounds Training; Mansfield Sand; Origan Amenity Solutions; Turf Tank and White Horse Contractors.