Campus Maintenance Planning and Service Levels

The maintenance of the grounds of the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus is a complex task that requires careful planning and execution. Long term maintenance planning is done by the Office of University Landscape Architecture. Planning the way that grounds maintenance will be done involves land use inventories, priority levels, maintenance standards, industry time standards, and maintenance plans. Execution of the maintenance plans is done by Grounds Services specialty crews and supervisors. The following are a few fun facts about what we do:

Grounds Services maintains 39,758,277 SF of land in Ann Arbor.

• 6,492,238 is building footprint (16%).
• 33,266,039 is open space (84%).

We maintain 12,251,812 SF of turf.

• If you were to mow this in a straight line using a standard push mower you would travel 1,160 miles or from Ann Arbor to Tampa, Florida.

We maintain 171,357 SF of annual and perennial beds.

• Equal to 11 football fields.

We maintain 2,019,415 SF of planting beds.

• Equal to 42 football fields.

We maintain 3,755,638 SF of sidewalk, plaza, and specialty paving.

• You could build an 8 foot wide sidewalk from Ann Arbor to Saginaw with this amount of paving.

Click on any of the following to learn more about how the grounds of the UM campus are maintained:
Campus Land Use Inventory
Priority Designations for Maintenance
Maintenance Work Plans
Standard Service Level Goals (Adobe pdf 103k)