NZC Horticulture Services (Sports Turf) (Level 4) 2021

This course focuses on how to select, set up, operate, service and store sports turf machinery and equipment safely and correctly to complete a specific task to industry standards, building on students’ experience using mowing equipment from the Level 3 programme. It introduces the identification and maintenance of hand tools, and broadens students’ knowledge about the function and operation of a much wider range of sports turf machinery and equipment, for tasks such as soil aeration, seedbed cultivation, and spreading and sowing, etc.  It also covers how two-stroke, four-stroke and diesel engines work, and their servicing and maintenance requirements.

Manage Risk in Sports Turf Operations introduces you to the concepts and responsibilities of a supervisory, turf manager, or groundskeeper role in the sports turf industry. A 'risk management' perspective is used to view the tasks involved and develop the decision-making skills needed to ensure a venue's sports turf is in the best possible condition to meet the playing and event needs across a 12 month season. This course builds on the component knowledge introduced across the Level 3 programme where you developed the skills to carry out tasks independently.

Sports Surfaces Management focuses on developing a deeper understanding of surface performance needs, and how a surface can be altered to meet these needs, not only for the sporting code you're familiar with, but for other codes across the wider sports turf industry, making your skills transferable.

This course builds on the basic knowledge of different turf plants from the Level 3 Botany of Turf Plants course, and introduces examples of different surface media.

Designing irrigation systems for turf is a highly-specialised skillset requiring extensive knowledge over a range of factors including water dynamics, hydraulic engineering, and soil types, which is well beyond the content of this course.

As such, this course focuses on the general principles and factors to be aware of when it comes to the design and layout of sports turf irrigation systems. It provides the knowledge needed to understand the general requirements for a specific sports turf site, how irrigation system layouts can meet the requirements of a specific design to suit a site, and the installation procedures for an irrigation system.

This course builds on the knowledge of the components and operation of irrigation systems developed in the Level 3 programme.