Tech cert Management Day, Who just sat the exam?

[Theocus]

Hey all,

I have just sat the exam for the Tech Cert management day, how did anyone else find it and maybe we could shed some light on the matter for some of the people learning for it next year?

 

So, Tree condition report around the pond!

BS5837 survey, who did what with the Lawsons Cypress!!!

The woodland survey, who spotted the badgers set?

And the tree ident? Easy or a few curve balls?

[stevelucocq]

Hi,

 

Hmm I did say to myself I would not get involved with a thread like this as it will bring up some many questions about the Management exercise. On the other hand it may be good to learn from each other’s mistakes but it’s very difficult to say what’s right or wrong on theses assessments as there very subjective. I feel if you explained your logic then this should give weight to your answers.

 

I felt the exercises where tough (but I suppose this is expected from tech cert) and the questions were broken down into more parts than I expected. This made allocating time a little easier but still there never felt like there was enough time.

 

Woodland exercise – I missed the badger set? but as important this is I would not say you would fail for missing this. I did express about conducting an ecological survey before work being carried out and find out on any designations on the woodland. This exercise was mainly about increasing biodiversity of the woodland with some small-scale timber production. This seemed ok to answer with my general answers being about improving native shrubs/hedge species, hazel coppice for timber, building a pond etc.

 

Plant ID – I felt this was as to be expected but did find I was repeating myself on some of the associated features. Good autumn colours etc

 

Tree Conditioning – Found this tricky as I always felt that I may have missed something but generally I felt the first few trees required the most amount of work. P+D was ok which was something like Fomes, Polyporous Sq, Grifola, Goat moth, Cherry canker?? I think the main thing for this assessment was to produce a report and draw up a schedule of work from your findings. I felt I may have specified to much work as they said budgets were tight but I did place a scale of urgency of work required on what I stated.

 

Tree in Environment – This for me was the hardest and where I know I made a good few mistakes. I did not have the right scale ruler (1:250) but produced a scale 1metre : 4mm I think? The marks for this where not as I expected with only 15 for the BS schedule which would mean about 17 minutes to spend on it. I took measurements for the two cedars and the redwood. Where I messed up was where I placed the barrier fencing, I left some areas where contractors could gain access into the RPA (not good!) and did not place it correctly around the development. I found the writtern questions unclear as what was expected. The method statement I wrote down as many different ways to prevent damage to the trees in a long list? The question before this I did not understand it entirely, I think it was about constraints so I mentioned a bit about RPA etc but felt I was not going in the right direction on this one.

 

So yeah a tough day and my head still hurts. I did hear there might be doing resits in the spring?

 

Good luck to you all and fair play to anyone who has passed the Prof Dip!!

 

Cheers Steve

[Tom D]

I found it pretty tough, at least there's talk of a spring resit so may not have to wait another year:thumbup1:

[Giles Hill]

I saw your van there yesterday Theocus, but I don't know if I met you.

 

My thoughts are similar to Steve's - I found the BS exercise tough and I do a fair bit of BS work. I put my building on top of the Lawson cypress, ignoring the fact that there was a major slope on the site and no-one in their right mind would choose to locate a building in that kind of location and even if they did, they'd never get planning permission.

 

I cocked a few bits and pieces up and couldn't answer one or two of the oral questions, but hopefully did enough to scrape the result. I think that if I fail anything, it will be the BS bit (famous last words).

[Paul Barton]

Well done guys - it's over now so don't stress about it any more. I came away last year feeling like I had made quite a few mistakes but I managed to pass so you never know.

 

Enjoy having your social life back for a bit!!