Snowfighters Institute help raise snow and ice management standards.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

Anchorage sees about 190 inches of snowfall on average per year, according to data gathered from the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport from 1981 to 2010. The first snowfall of the winter typically occurs in October and rarely starts in September. The season's last dusting of snow usually happens in April, and once about every four years, May sees a bit of precipitation.

Seven months out of the year, Anchorage--and much of Alaska--is layered with snow and ice, bringing a necessity for the snow and ice management industry.

Jeannie Schenderline, owner and operator of Jeffco Grounds Maintenance for more than twenty-three years, was the first Alaska contractor--now an eleven-year member--to join the Snow & Ice Management Association (SIMA) based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Schenderline visited Erie, Pennsylvania, for the Snowfighters Institute Inner Circle event in April 2013 for an open exchange of information between snow and ice management business around the nation, helping one another find ways to improve their bottom line. In Pennsylvania she met John Allin, president of Snowfighters Institute and fulltime consultant to the snow industry.

"Not once did [Schenderline] ask for anything for herself out of this," Allin says. "She wants to see the level of professionalism amongst the [Alaska] snow and ice management industry raised for everyone. Rather than just try to raise her own company's profit, she wants to raise everybody's profit, and not at the expense of the customer, but by being more efficient and being better at what they do."

Allin has been involved in the snow industry more than forty years. He founded SIMA, developed the Snow Dragon snow melting system, was key in the formation of the Accredited Snow Contractors Association, and is seen as one of the leading snow and ice industry consultants in the country today. One of his major contracts was the entire snow and ice management contract for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Alaska Snow Symposium

With the help of Allin and Tammy Johnson, executive director at Snowfighters Institute and ISO Specialist at John Allin Consulting, Schenderline arranged a one day training seminar for Alaska contractors in 2013 at O'Malley's on the Green in Anchorage. After the success of the training, Schenderline pursued the idea to hold a trade show in Alaska this year, and the Alaska Snow Symposium was born, held July 16 in Cuddy Hall at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

"The response from the small gathering last year was surprising, and this year has just seen rapid growth; I give it two years' time and it's going to be huge," Schenderline says.

Allin says snow...