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I've a quote to thin two areas of mixed broadleaf and coniferous woodland planting, about 15 years on an old old gravel pit. It covers about 20,000 sq m. Access is good and it's easy flat terrain.

How much should I be taking out?
Do all the self set saplings need to come out?
How long do you think it would take?

The brief is simply "selective thinning to remove suppressed trees and allow ring of daylight around retained trees"

That spec is pretty straight forward, you need to walk the site and quote accordingly, IMO.

you need to get a little bit of guidence from the client regarding what they wish to retain.

The none suppressed trees, according to the spec.

Depending on conifer species...they can be useful "nursery" tree affording broadleaf successful establishment

I've walked the site, but never commercially done this sort of work before. The trees are all very closely packed together, you can’t easily walk through it.

They are all suppressed by each other to some degree. I’m sure they don’t want to remove 80% of the trees which you would need to do to “allow a ring of daylight around the retained trees.” Should I be creating space round the trees to give them space for the next 5 years, 10 years.... or the life of the tree? Is it just a what feels right sort of thing?

The conifers are not nursery trees just a big old random mix.

What is the rational for it? It's a nature reserve so not for timber. Natural succession will weed out the suppressed trees why am I there to help?

As to “pricing accordingly,” like all tree work quoting it’s an educated guess, I was hoping that someone with experience might help making it more educated- i.e. a 3 man team should be able to do x hundred sq m a day.

Sounds like Ed's advice is the way to go.

Or you could check in with land use in surrounding locale...establish precedent ( conservation areas/biodiversity whu) planning usage..proposals from lpa pending perhaps...work out what fits the area best and correlate with best scenario for resource ( ie, potential that woodland represents...my guess is that its pretty versatile and your decision could steer the eventual development trend for the wood anyways...) Consider the recent showing of woodland/forestry in UK on T.V. where the view that woodland could/should be made to return a revenue from public use ( recreation ? ) There are a number of grants available to woodland owners for conservation/biodiversity/education schemes....
There must be a number of angles you could look at this from!!

I had a work with the client who has given some further advice:

"I would say that there should remain 1.5 – 2m between each same age tree with the felling of the poorer trees to ground level. Understorey species should be retained where it is not interfering with the growth of a retained tree."

Still a wild guess at how long it's going to take? I'm going with 4 men 10 days... sound reasonable??

20,000 sq m......what is that in real money?? If its 80 hectares , you gonna get burned!!
40 man days 80 hectares
each man 2hectares per day ( 1 hectare = 2.47 acres )
1 man x 5 acres a day......I wouldnt do it if you paid me!! But then I havent walked the site....!