Taunton School, located in Somerset, England, is a prestigious educational institution that prides itself on offering a wide range of activities to engage its students. With a commitment to continuous improvement, the school has recently invested in new facilities around campus, including improvements to their sporting facilities.
THE CHALLENGE
In the past, Taunton School faced significant challenges in marking and maintaining their sports pitches. The process was time-consuming, labour-intensive, and often resulted in inconsistent line markings.
THE SOLUTION
To address these challenges, Taunton School implemented an innovative solution in 2023: the Turf Tank line marking robot, with the aim of streamlining the pitch marking process, improving accuracy, and freeing up the grounds team to focus on enhancing the overall standards of the school’s outdoor facilities.
✅ 93% Labour Efficiency Improvement
✅ 50% Paint Consumption Reduction
✅ New opportunities
Increased efficiency in line marking
Mark Jolliffe is the head groundsman at Taunton School and he explains the biggest benefit he sees in adopting the Turf Tank line marking is the time savings.
“Time saving is the biggest thing, definitely, and the ease of use is a big thing as well. It’s just freed up our time so much more to do other stuff, stuff that we should be doing, that perhaps we weren’t.”
Marking a rugby pitch
| Manual marking |
| 3-4 hours |
| 3 grounds managers |
| Turf Tank |
| 40 minutes robot marking |
| 1 person for robot setup |
Taking the example of a rugby pitch, Mark makes a comparison between how the process used to be in the past when marking the pitch manually, compared to how it is now with the robot.
Marking a rugby pitch out, it could take three to four hours for three people to mark that pitch from scratch, whereas the Turf Tank does it in about 40- 45 minutes.
Mark Jolliffe,
Head Groundsman
Marking a 400-metre running track
| Manual marking |
| 12 hours |
| 3 grounds managers |
| Turf Tank |
| 3 hours robot marking |
| 1 person for robot setup |
Similar savings are recorded when looking at the running track as well, one of the most time-consuming types of pitches:
“For a 400 metre track, it could take sort of three of us a day, day and a half, to properly mark it out. Whereas the Turf Tank, it’ll mark it out in about three hours.”
“It’s a massive time saving”
“It’s a massive time saving, particularly at a time of year when we’re really busy, at Easter, so it really showed when we did it for the first time this year.”
Apart from the time savings, the robot makes the process more efficient in terms of paint consumption as well.
We’ve only had the Turf Tank for just under a year, but it’s definitely at least halved our paint costs.
Mark Jolliffe,
Head Groundsman
Improved accuracy and facilities standard
nother issue the school faced when marking pitches the traditional way was the inconsistent and imperfect lines. Over time, as lines were repeatedly marked, they would often deviate from their original position, leading to inaccuracies in dimensions.
And Mark is happy to know that now there is no more stress in getting the perfect results the school is looking for.
“The accuracy is phenomenal. It’s arrow straight lines, every time.”
Mark continues: “And that’s something we just can’t do manually when you’re over marking, the line always goes off a bit when you’re marking manually, but the robot is dead straight every time.”
Furthermore, the robot’s precision allows for easy remarking without deviation: “It doesn’t matter if the lines fade out and you lose the pitch, nothing to worry about. You can just send the robot back out and it’ll mark it exactly the same again.”
The improved accuracy and efficiency of the Turf Tank robot not only resulted in better-looking lines but also contributed to an overall enhancement of the facility’s standards. By dramatically reducing the time spent on line marking, the grounds team could redirect their efforts to other critical tasks that were previously neglected due to time constraints.
“The question was asked by the COO here, does it mean we can replace a groundsman or drop a groundsman down to part time hours? But it was just a case of convincing them actually the reason for getting it is, obviously for presentation and accuracy, but also to free us up to do more of the jobs we should be doing that we don’t normally get time to do. So any time we can save through having the Turf Tank marking means we can get on with all the other peripheral stuff and improve the presentation and standards of the site.”
Beyond sports pitches
The Turf Tank robot proved to be a versatile tool, offering capabilities that extended far beyond basic line marking.
One of the standout benefits was the ability to create complex designs and logos: “Since we started marking the logos, they become very popular. They just add that extra touch to the site, particularly on open mornings or if you’ve got a big match on. So having the logo there is really good for marketing as well.”
“Other things we use it for is we mark the stripes out the bays for grass cutting. We also mark out the lines we need to follow for fertilising or spraying. So all that can be done, and that saves using flags and string lines.”
To draw the line
The implementation of the Turf Tank robot at Taunton School has revolutionised their approach to grounds management. By significantly reducing time and labour requirements, improving accuracy and consistency, and offering versatile functionality, the Turf Tank has proven to be an invaluable asset.
