LIVING LANDSCAPES

Interviewee:

(Director) Location: Staff: 15

Micha Mahler

Auckland

It’s pretty tricky. What we’ve found is the ‘best’ solution is to leave an area unfinished, carry on with the next, and then come back and complete the unfinished areas once the trees, plants or other materials arrive. But because there is such a shortage, we find we have to move on again and again, leaving several areas unfinished and spending a lot of time coming back to finish them later.

This isn’t ideal, because it’s not efficient at all and someone ends up bearing the cost; it just depends if the job is quoted or charged up. We’re pretty fortunate at the moment, because 80% of our staff are working on a massive lifestyle block, so while it’s still time-consuming, at least we don’t have to move onto a different property and job.

Material shortages often result in other, smaller jobs being pushed back, which isn’t great news for those clients, but there’s not really much else we can do. We’ve been trying to recruit more employees for ages and it’s so difficult at the moment.

The only good thing is that, because the material shortage issue is nationwide, everyone is in the same boat and clients seem to understand that there’s nothing any of us can do about it, which is unfortunate but also kind of nice.