The situation before
Revision Solar has spent almost nine years maintaining utility-scale solar farms up and down the East Coast. Alongside erosion control and electrical work, its mowing operation runs around 30 zero-turn mowers and tractors and covers roughly 10,000 to 12,000 acres a year. In the busy season, crews load up early on Monday, work sites across several states all week, and come home on Friday evening. A typical crew is four or five people on a truck with a supervisor; the biggest sites can have up to 15 operators on the ground at once.
From the office, the only view of that work came through texts and phone calls. The team's clock-in app showed a rough location that jumped around the map, so managers relied on their supervisors' word. When a client claimed an area hadn't been mowed, there was no way to prove otherwise. On a large solar farm, finding a stuck operator could mean someone driving around for an hour. And an operator who wasn't pulling his weight might only be discovered at the end of the season, after a full season's wages.
It's a very good system. If you're looking to expand your fleet and monitor it properly, it'll save you a lot of headaches, and it saves you a lot of money.
Why they chose FarmBackup
Owner Landon Woods first wanted a simple way to find the machines and the people, and Apple AirTags were on the list. The team soon wanted more: real-time data on every mower, and a way to check performance against their target of about 15 acres per mower per day on the larger sites. Vice President JT found FarmBackup. The deciding question was whether it would pay for itself, and the answer was yes if it caught underperformers weeks or months sooner.
What changed
Proof for clients. Route playback shows exactly where each mower has been. When a client questions whether an area was covered, Revision Solar sends the playback or a screenshot. On one subcontracted job where every party was blaming another, the GPS data showed Revision Solar had done its part. Some clients now ask for progress screenshots as a matter of routine.
Finding people in minutes, not an hour. Instead of driving around a large site, a supervisor gets a screenshot of the operator's exact position. Live speed shows whether a machine is moving, and operators now message in themselves when they get stuck.
Fair, data-based performance conversations. End-of-day reports draw on each machine's tracks. When a supervisor flags an operator, managers can check the data and settle the question. "Before, it was just a supervisor complaining. Now we have the data to say, this person really did not perform." On one client's sites, where the standard calls for two or three passes to get a golf-course finish, the tracks show the extra passes were made.
Better morale. Sharing progress maps with crews shows them how much of a site they've finished, which helps them finish strong.
What's next
Over the winter, Revision Solar plans to give supervisors their own view on tablets, limited to the machines they run, and to use FarmBackup's service-interval alerts so oil and hydraulic changes happen on time. The company is also growing its erosion control work and may track that equipment as it buys its own machines.
