When it comes to sidewalk snow clearing production, we need to evaluate the importance of the production worker. It is difficult, at first, to accept the reality that the production worker in snow removal operations (often the lowest paid and generally an on-call part time employee) should be the focal point of our management systems. A production unit for sidewalk snow removal is a crew that includes labor, equipment, material, and transportation. The labor for one production unit usually consists of one crew leader (or working foreman) and one or more crew members.
The crew leader has emerged from the eighties and nineties, as the specialist of the new millennium, with an expanded role in managing the snow removal on sidewalks and ice melting on any specific site. The difficulty and expense of communication links and direct supervision of mobile service crews, coupled with the need to have an experienced, knowledgeable employee on the property at all times (as is the case with most on-site crews) has reshaped the value and job description of the traditional working foreman or crew leader. Organizations that recognize this expanded role for the crew leader will streamline their organization by eliminating the middle managers and production supervisors. They will redistribute these assets all the while upgrading the role of the modern day sidewalk crew leader.