Hours before any players ever arrived for their games, one man worked away on the Hockaday athletic fields, pouring dedication, commitment and precision into his art: line painting. Francisco de la Rosa, affectionately known as Kiko, worked the grounds at Hockaday for 12 years leading the team that hand-painted the lines on the school’s sports fields, becoming an integral part of field maintenance.
“Every day that we had any athletic event, he would meticulously line out the fields, set up the field to be spray painted,” Chief Operations Officer Joan Guzman said. “Once he announced he was retiring, we felt like we needed to take a look to see if there was any opportunity to come up with a more efficient way to do this.”
This solution came in the form of an innovative new robot: Kiko Jr., nicknamed “KJ” by the crew, in recognition of De la Rosa’s many years of service. Controlled by a staff member from an iPad, KJ uses GPS technology connected to preprogrammed points to paint all the different types of fields on campus and goes over each of these lines before every game.
“It’s given us immediate savings like the amount of paint that’s being used,” Guzman said. “Because it’s so precise, the amount of paint being used when we’re painting a field is no longer dependent on how the operator is squeezing the trigger on the paint machine as they walk down the sideline. It has significantly improved our timeline and reduced the staff hours being spent on that particular task and it has also allowed team members to focus on other areas of the campus with the time we gained.”
By reducing a six-hour ordeal between two staff members to just 30 minutes, KJ significantly reduces staff involvement and time, while still requiring some human involvement.
“The robot still needs to be taken out of storage, placed on the field, filled with paint and cleaned afterward,” Guzman said. “It’s not like Mr. McInnis just sits in his office and hits a button and the robot just goes out there and does its thing on its own. I don’t know what the future holds, but immediately, what we’re seeing is that it’s allowing us to have a bit more flexibility in the way that we schedule our staff, and it’s helped us become more efficient by allowing the Facilities team to use the time gained on other tasks elsewhere on our campus.”
In fact, he and Wayne McInnis, Director of Facilities, are exploring these new technological advancements for field maintenance and are currently considering a precision robotic mower to help staff better prioritize their time.
“All in all, it has been a very positive experience and outcome,” Guzman said. “The ability of our staff to then focus in other areas that also require their attention has resulted, we believe, in grounds that are in better shape and better looked after.”