AA contractor or not?

[NickJC]

Thinking about applying although we are quite a young company and although expanding still ony 4 of us full timers. Is it worth the hassle? What doors does it open in terms of contracts etc etc?

[Arbocop]

hi nick

 

how long have you got. i am the lead assessor for southern england with liam mcewan doing the north.

 

if you would like to contact me off forum we can have a chat or we can debate openly.

 

im a great advokate ofthe scheme but it wont bring you loads of work.

 

ill give you moor next week

kev

[PeteB]

Nice to see that the lead assesser for a prestigious organisation that leads this industry can spell!

[Mr Ed]

hi nick

 

how long have you got. i am the lead assessor for southern england with liam mcewan doing the north.

 

 

kev

Really? Just the 2 of you?

I'm pretty certain there's more than you and Liam doing it....

[Andy Collins]

Nice to see that the lead assesser for a prestigious organisation that leads this industry can spell!

 

ASSESSOR!!

[PeteB]

Spell cheque dunt wurk!

[Arbocop]

noted by my absence sorry been arround the country and working my toshhhhh off.

 

ion the first instance pet B sorry if my spelling ditracts from the reply, alass i was born dyslexic, and have worked hard since the age of 7 to combat it, my spelling much better now but as you can see far from perfect. on the up side having bad spelling did not stop me getting my cert, tech and PD arb, qualify as a teacher achicve distintion level in My NB gen cert, and attain one or two other things on the way, so if you do have trouble understanding what im trying to convay, just let me know and ill deal with it but will take much longer to post.......

 

For Mr ed, there is one main point of contact, Mr Paul smith who deals with admin etc who is supported by a part time secratary, then myself and Liam cover aprox 50% of the country, we then have a panel of 10 assessors who we call on to assisst us on inspections as it is always a 2 person assessment.

 

for any one interested in what a AAAC has to go through every 5 years follow this link and have a look, this coveres the serface areas of assessment but the assessors job is to look closly at all areas to insure compliance.

http://trees.org.uk/downloads/aaactcs.pdf

 

As to the question is it worth it. well only you can answer that, i can tell you what it wont do, it wont make the phone ring off the hook,it wont garentee an increas in income or the right to tender for certain contracts, it wont garantee you will never be procicuted, that one of ya teams wont have a bad day and muller some innocent cherry tree (hell no ones perfect).

 

what will it do, well it will show that you have enough coage and belife in your staff to 5 yearly let 2 people in to look at them closly and question them thoughly about a range of topics, it will help audit your current conformaty with a range of legislation and best practice issues, it will help rais e your profile, and there are about 6 councils nationaly that only use AAAC and they are growing slowly but very slowly. it will get you the odd customer who knows alittle bit moore of what they whant the AAs phone at hq never stops ringing every day peoplle looking for tree cutters. and finaly it doe s help you keep up to date.

 

now i must stress that there are many non AAAC out there doing very good work with very good conformity to the law etc who have no desire t become AAAC, but if ou are thinking about it, t me when i was working for an AAAC it was a pride thing, they wornt perfect but they worked really hard at being the best they could, not just at the tree work, nor the staff walfare, or the tools, the vehicles, staff rightsd responcibilities, environment etc they tryed to be the best they could at all that and much more besides and for that reason i always admire nay company willing to try to become AAAC.

 

thoughts ???

 

welcome

 

kevin moore

[arc]

Hi Nick

We went for AAAC in march last year following a lot of hard work and quite a lot of money invested in the business. We are also a fairly young company (6 years on our own) and we had 6 full time staff at the time, we now have 9 plus 2 part timers.

Now it can't all be put down to AAAC as we also acheived ISO 9001 in september last year but the running of the company has become far easier and more effecient as a result.

We've grown in (turnover and staff numbers) by around 20% each year since we started but last year we grew 40% in size and doubled our profitablity. Like I said this cannot but put soley to AAAC but it certainly helps in the day to day running of the buisness.

The fact that a client (or potential client) can see that you have QA systems in place makes you a little more appealing, but like Mr Arbocop has said it hasn't meant the phone has rang any more or we are given any preferential treatment over non AAAC by any of our clients.

The investment in management time is by far the biggest cost but the fact that your conformity with law and best practice is measured by two auditors who see a range of similar companies gives you a bit of peace of mind if nothing else.