SPORTS & PLAY
A MARK OF SUCCESS:
HOW GROUNDTEL LINE MARKING CAPABILITIES SERVICE 150 SCHOOLS
Groundtel Ltd is a family-run business with a proud reputation for precision, reliability and service. With over 150 schools on its books, the company has become one of the region’ s leading grounds maintenance providers.
At the heart of operations is Danny Perkins, Contracts Manager and member of the founding family, who’ s helped steer the business into the next generation of efficiency with the help of robotic line marking machines.
“ We were already delivering a high standard,” says Danny,“ but the TinyLineMarker robots have taken us to a different level. They’ ve paid for themselves ten times over.”
Each season, Groundtel’ s team prepares a wide range of sports markings across school playing fields. For summer months, this includes 100m, 200m, 300m, and 400m running tracks, complete with relay boxes, rounders and softball pitches, and throwing areas for javelin, discus, and shot putt. In winter, the focus shifts to football pitches, rugby pitches, and training grids, all initially marked and then overmarked throughout the season as required.
The 20-strong grounds team has a significant workload and has a twoperson team dedicated solely to line marking. Historically, that meant traditional pedestrian machines, such as push-along markers, a Fast Liner, and plenty of manual setup.
“ That’ s a lot of tape measures and string lines,” Danny comments.“ It was time-consuming and hard to keep up when schools need everything done quickly and precisely. Once we brought in the TinyLineMarker robot, everything changed.”
Groundtel took delivery of their first TinyLineMarker Pro X in 2021, followed by a second robot 12 – 18 months later. Both are now integral to operations, running daily from late February to July.
“ With the robots and some long hours, we have been known to overmark over 100 schools in 7 to 10 days. Before, it would take about four weeks. However, on average, we run the robots for six to eight hours daily.”
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