QTRA...is it worth it?

[daltontrees]

Hi Jules

 

What goes on the QTRA forum stays on the QTRA forum because it is not for public access. However, as you've brought it up here, I'll give the other side of the story.

 

Any comments about how QTRA can be improved are very welcome and debate about them is encouraged. What is not encouraged is individual adaptations and customisations, particularly when they are highly questionable, that depart enough from QTRA guidance the tree risk assessment is no longer a 'QTRA'.

 

As you point out eslewhere in the thread. You won a tender to undertake a QTRA. I very much doubt they were after your 'improved' version of QTRA.

 

Cheers

 

Acer ventura

 

Acer, are you the spokesman for QTRA, I can never tell if you are officially speaking on its behalf with the authorisation of QTRA, asn int eh past yo hav esaid you have no connection to it?

 

My client wasn't after my improved version, but at interview it realised that my adaptations of it took it from an adequate service to one that did exactly what it needs. That is I think why I won the contract in direct competiotion wiht another QTRA user, QTRA in isolation wasn't going to deliver. The client knows how and why I have amended it and approves. It is still QTRA but it is QTRA+.

 

I'm not ging to sit around and wait for QTRA to take upo improvements I suggest, or even let it plunder them for commercial benefit. I can do that myself, thankyou. I'll share them if and when I see fit.

[daltontrees]

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of chat about the course on the thread so far. Perhaps Kevin and Jules could let you know, on or off forum, what they thought of it.

 

I did the training last year. Mike Ellison himself delivered it. It was very intensive but clear, and included a session outside applying the system to real trees and just as impoirtantly to real places and real people and roads and cars. I has already been using my own quantified system and so I already understood the really important point that making realistic and proportionate recommendations about tree risk is only in small part about the tree, it's really about harm and damage and cost. But the training allowed me to refine my approach to recording and assessing situations. The training was well worth the money, but I sure wish it had been a bit closer to Scotland as it took a lot of time and money to get there and back including an overnight stay.

[Acer ventura]

Acer, are you the spokesman for QTRA, asn int eh past yo hav esaid you have no connection to it?

 

Hi Jules

 

I've never said I have no connection with QTRA. Self-evidently, as a QTRA trainer for the last 10 years, and one of the people that’s helped develop it to where it currently stands, I do have some connection. I have no idea what your agenda is in falsely claiming I’ve said otherwise.

 

My client wasn't after my improved version, but at interview it realised that my adaptations of it took it from an adequate service to one that did exactly what it needs.

 

I very, very much doubt this, but I invite you to persuade the forum otherwise with details of how your ‘adaptations’ managed to take QTRA from an ‘adequate’ tree risk assessment system to exactly what they needed. The ‘adaptations’ you pitched on the QTRA forum were far from adequate, and were ill-thought out, if not backward. Perhaps your staggering sense of self-importance blindsided you to the fact that absolutely no one on the QTRA forum said, “You know what Julian, you’re onto something here”. Just to repeat that, in the unlikely event it might sink in. No one, of all the QTRA Users around the world, posted a supportive comment about your proposed ‘adaptations’ and ‘improvements’.

 

You’ve regularly bragged on here, and the UKTC, that you have a method of quantifying tree risk that is superior to QTRA, yet constantly refuse to disclose anything about this marvel, and bristle with indignation when asked. Such a boast is an empty suit without any evidence. Who knows, if you walked the walk and showed it, rather than endlessly talk the talk, it might turn out that you have superior tree risk assessment method to QTRA. However, given the lacklustre stature of many of your comments on here, the UKTC, and now QTRA forums, about quantifying tree risk, I would be incredibly surprised if that were the case.

 

That is I think why I won the contract in direct competiotion wiht another QTRA user, QTRA in isolation wasn't going to deliver. The client knows how and why I have amended it and approves. .

 

The word on the street is that you’re cheap. Very cheap.

 

It is still QTRA but it is QTRA+

 

This is profoundly depressing. I do hope we’re not going to get another ‘Poll’ or ‘Laman Street’, and the associated reputational damage to QTRA, because of your hubris. I’m going to draw a line here on this public forum, for the benefit of other QTRA Users who may stray across it, and reaffirm my previous post.

 

“Any comments about how QTRA can be improved are very welcome and debate about them is encouraged. What is not encouraged is individual adaptations and customisations, particularly when they are highly questionable, that depart enough from QTRA guidance the tree risk assessment is no longer a 'QTRA'.”

 

If you doubt me, email mike [email protected], and he’ll tell you exactly the same.

 

Cheers

 

Acer ventura

[David Humphries]

Play nice fellas !

 

 

Let's try and keep this one as close to the OP's original question as the thread was intended please.

 

 

 

Other 'issues' should stay off the forum.

 

Thanks

 

 

 

.

[swinny]

Wow

[Acer ventura]

Play nice fellas !

 

Let's try and keep this one as close to the OP's original question as the thread was intended please..

 

Hi David

 

Point taken, and apologies offered for having to put on your moderating pants. I could, and should, have clarified the facts here with less fruity prose.

 

Cheers

 

Acer ventura

[daltontrees]

Hi Jules

 

I've never said I have no connection with QTRA. Self-evidently, as a QTRA trainer for the last 10 years, and one of the people that’s helped develop it to where it currently stands, I do have some connection. I have no idea what your agenda is in falsely claiming I’ve said otherwise.

 

 

OK one tyhong at a time here. I have no interest in wasting Arbtalkers' time turning what should be a mutually beneficial expansion of arboricultural knowledge into a petty slanging match. They can skip the bits they are not interested in.

 

So, on this point, I have always wondered why you come on to Arbtalk other than to promote QTRA. And looking back through your contributions to Arbtalk, I se tha you contribute noting else. People can make up their own minds about your motives.

[daltontrees]

I very, very much doubt this, but I invite you to persuade the forum otherwise with details of how your ‘adaptations’ managed to take QTRA from an ‘adequate’ tree risk assessment system to exactly what they needed. The ‘adaptations’ you pitched on the QTRA forum were far from adequate, and were ill-thought out, if not backward. Perhaps your staggering sense of self-importance blindsided you to the fact that absolutely no one on the QTRA forum said, “You know what Julian, you’re onto something here”. Just to repeat that, in the unlikely event it might sink in. No one, of all the QTRA Users around the world, posted a supportive comment about your proposed ‘adaptations’ and ‘improvements’.

 

 

You are nothing short of personally insulting, and I think you have crossed the line from constructive debate to pathetic personal jibes. And I've never even met you, which is probably just as well. We live in a commercially real world. I have an approach to tree risk assessment that is robust, I have been complimentary about QTRA, but it is not adequate in isolation, it's not me that says that it is clients that recognise its limitations and appreciate getting a bit more from it that some one like me gives them.

 

So much for your what goes on forum stays on forum! You have cast aspersions about me that no-one on Arbtalk who is not a QTRA member can check. And it's libellous because it's untrue. In addition people on the QTRA forum are intimidated to say anythiog agaisnt the aprty line. If you're wondering, thats because of you.

 

But you have now plummeted beneath any respect I might have had for you and again I will leave Arbtalkers to make up their own minds about whether to bother with this. No QTRA user has seen my proposed adaptations and improvements. Not even on the QTRA forum. I don't have any sense of self-importance, I share ideas, I run with good ones and share peers rejection of weak ones. That's as it should be, and it's certainly the Arbtalk way.

[daltontrees]

The word on the street is that you’re cheap. Very cheap.

 

This is profoundly depressing. I do hope we’re not going to get another ‘Poll’ or ‘Laman Street’, and the associated reputational damage to QTRA, because of your hubris. I’m going to draw a line here on this public forum, for the benefit of other QTRA Users who may stray across it, and reaffirm my previous post.

 

 

Yep, as I thought, you're a disgrace to professionalism. And I'd rather come right out and say that and risk being censured on Arbtalk than not say it. Would you care to tell me who told you on the street that I'm cheap? And whether the 'very cheap' cheap strap line is theirs or yours? Bet you haven't the integrity to do so!

 

I am in my view anyway very very efficient, I organise big surveys with military precision and exercise them with a ruthless systematic approach. If I win jobs it is nothing to do with your pathetic inmplication that i dont do them properly, it's because I know exactly what to do for every tree before I get there. And when I get there, I do it without distraction, and when I find non-conforming situtions I can adapt to them quickly and reliably because I know how QTRA and risk assessement and duty of care works from first principles. I can motor through big surveys and return a fair professional profit. Don't confuse cheap with low quality.

 

And why should I care about reputational damage to QTRA? That would only happen in the event of me screwing up. Which I won't. Are you going to withdraw the QTRA whip? Oh, that's right, you're just a trainer. If you're profoundly depressed, I'm sure there's solutions for that. Which don't include having a go at one of quantified tree risk assessment's strongest supporters on a public forum.

Edited March 28, 2016 by daltontrees

[daltontrees]

Play nice fellas !

 

Let's try and keep this one as close to the OP's original question as the thread was intended please.

 

Other 'issues' should stay off the forum.

 

Thanks

 

.

 

Sorry David, but I have to defend my professional reputation against this petulant nonsense. I believe I answered the OP's question way back and again a couple of days ago.

Edited March 28, 2016 by daltontrees