TurfNet Technician of the Year 2008
Finalist Profile:
Jim Kilgallon, The Connecticut Golf Club
Easton, Connecticut
Like most good golf course equipment technicians, Jim Kilgallon of The Connecticut Golf Club has mastered all the usual aspects of the job. He excels at training employees on proper operation of all equipment, fashioning niche tools and parts in a way that would make MacGyver blush, keeping a tidy shop, maintaining an organized inventory of parts and even helping fellow techs at other golf courses.
But it is his ability to make smart use of time and money where Kilgallon, 43, truly excels says his boss, Mark Fuller, CGCS at the club in Easton. An aggressive preventive maintenance program has helped keep repair costs flat - about $48,000 per year including parts - since 2006, Fuller said.
 "He takes care of everything like it's his own," Fuller said in nominating Kilgallon for TurfNet's Technician of the Year award presented by Foley United. "He takes it personally."
Kilgallon's overall success at managing budget and operations can be attributed to several factors, including his preventive maintenance program, ability to diagnose problems, passion for training new employees on safe and proper operation of all equipment and his early adoption of the Lean Manufacturing concept popularized by Toyota.
The idea of working smarter was brought to all facets of the club a few years ago by a member who instituted the concept at his own manufacturing facility.
Kilgallon has helped streamline operations by training employees to help set up equipment each morning. Every day, one employee comes in 30 minutes early to match each of four greens mowers with a backpack blower, load them onto a trailer and hitch each to a utility vehicle. That worker also sets up triplex mowers for tee work each day.
It sounds simple, but it saves time and helps avoid confusion each morning, Kilgallon said. By the time the rest of the crew arrives, mowers and vehicles are ready to go and operators don't have to scramble around the shop for 15-20 minutes looking for the right mower, right blower, trailer and vehicle, he said.
"On a golf course we're on a tight schedule," he said. "Eventually, there will be golfers out there, and we have to stay ahead of them. Every minute counts."
His preventive maintenance program includes using a service-tracking system that notifies him when all scheduled maintenance is due and an exhaustive offseason examination of every piece of equipment in the shop.
"I go through stuff soup-to-nuts over the winter," Kilgallon said. "If I find anything that possibly could fail, I fix it right now. I change all the items that might not make it through to the end of the next summer. The objective is to make sure that equipment doesn't fail in the summer.
"We're able to do a little at a time and not wait for major stuff to go wrong."
He also inspects every piece of equipment for problems when it comes in from the golf course.
When things do go wrong, parts wear out and things break Kilgallon is a discriminating shopper, not buying anything he until he has researched the problem and solution thoroughly. When the starter on a utility vehicle failed he bought a unite from a parts warehouse that was half the price he was quoted from the original equipment manufacturer. But often times, getting equipment back on the golf course means tearing down those internal parts and replacing only a minor component rather than an entire part.
"He's not a parts-changer. If something in an engine only needs a bushing, he only puts in a bushing," Fuller said. "Because of his preventive maintenance program, we don't have a lot of unexpected breakdowns.
"There is nothing electric or hydraulic that he can't figure out and put back together. He's a great troubleshooter and analyzer. That's what holds my costs where they are even though the cost of the parts continues to go up."
Kilgallon, 43, also is skilled at fabricating existing pieces of equipment or inventing new ones to fill a specific need.
When the club couldn't afford the custom trailers designed for its walk mowers, Fuller's crew transported the machines on trailers the club already had on hand. But it wasn't a true fit and the relatively unsecured mowers bounced around terribly, often losing the height of cut adjustment while being transported to the greens. Kilgallon modified the existing trailers by fabricating plates and tie downs, and adding rebar to keep the rollers in place, preserving the height of cut adjustment while in transit.
When parts of the outflow of the club's irrigation pond recently became corroded, he built a new series of boards that act as a gate helping maintain the water level throughout the golf season.
"He's built and made so many things for us," Fuller said. "I don't know how else to say it other than that he's always putzing around with something."
The Technician of the Year award, sponsored by Foley United, is presented annually by TurfNet to one outstanding equipment manager selected from among those nominated by superintendents, assistants, course owners, members, casual golfers, or staff members.
The winner receives the Golden Wrench Award from TurfNet and Foley United.
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