Arbocop

well hear we go ill keep this as short as i can and as well spelt as i can., ive made some note s going throuugh all the posts and will try and focus on what the orriginal question was, and a few that have reared there head along the way. you may all be thrilled to know that variouse reps from AFAG have read this thread including the HSE, large employers reps from TTG etc etc but no one officially representing LANTAR NPTC was at the meeting, because as it was pointed out 'they would have a vested interst in not changing for the better/worse. now i belive in the right education fr the right person, delivered in the right way for them. i also l;ove to se learning taking place, alas i have observed many cources were there was a lot of teaching going on but not a lot of learning.!!!! now trainers are slaves to our tree man back round in so much as we all htink we are the best and no one can be better, and to knoock myself as much as some of my collges we do have a habbit of starting to belive our own propogander!!! this is why i like the fact that every 5 years forthos skills i teach i now have to be re certiifcated, and ive just been through 2 lots and was told quite clearly were i was missing the point. this is a positive change that has happened on the training side and is helping to maintain standards. so what is wrong..... welll to my mind its interesting this thread focused mainly on NPTC nolantra one person mentioned them as the SSC, lantar award work to the standards laid out by the SSC. this is the important bit folks, the education, the spending the time to make sure the student can tie a bow line, can tell the difefrance between wite n red chestnut is able to do a change over in a structured orderd way that limits risk. education is the key a mix of vocational and achademic, formal and informal, all held to gether with soem good old experiensial learning. all testing does be it the NPTC or the PDARB is test a sleection of the learing to a given level, it can never test the full range of any cylibus. this is a big problem as may cources train you to lest say pass your 30 not to have a full range of knowlege on a number of difefrant chains. so that being said i support seperate testing to ensure a consistancy of learning ie NPTC, but i would be uch happier if we all stoped begging for the ticket a few days after the training, have them back for a couple of months befor you send them in for the test, there is nothing in the rule book to say training finish friday test on monday, if you as an employer whants conso;lidation ask your providor to sort it for you, they shouls lsten. so we need good structured unrushed education with time to conso;idate learning, then a seperate test to sample knolege a little whiel after the training has finished ( not dissimilar to know) the candidate passes and then it is their chois what they do with that knowlege, som use it is a spark to grow and as a fondation to build a skillfull career, other revert to type go backwards and ignore and forget all that was taught and some just stay the same. IMHO ths is partly down to the individual and partly to the commitment of the company they are in. peple need to be managed they need somone with experance, skkill, qualifications etc to cheak them anch chastise them whan they are not doing things right, but htat person also needs to make sure that all the tools needed to do a job are present n ot jsut the hardware but soft skills too, being able to listen, advise having the time to help and guide, and as that ' new person ' develops the ability to record this development, by a person with all the skills needed to do that in a fair suppotive and balanced way. give the right fed back in a way that will help people identify where they need to develp without devotivating them. A aprentaship, i was one of thse and a 1 year yts lad, an aprentaship is anything you wsh to make it, yep we have these government things going on, but if you whant to take a lass on and give her 2 years day relase a t college and mix in 30/31/38/39 link their pay to sucsess and monitor them through it and then as it draws near a close discuss how to move them on then hay presto you hav an aprenaship. as for the internals of the system we currently have, i dispared the day NPTC lowered the specif ic requirments to be come an assessor, but applade some of the changes they made to recertification making it harder to just tread water now, at the end of the day we all whant to make a living, the nptc the test center the assessors we all have bills to pay and the costings i see are resnoble for cources, i woould love to charge moor so that we ccan continue to develop new stuff but know that the market wont support it at present, training providors/assessors are in an odd position where they are like the 3 or 4 th sub contrcatoe, just ask your self if you whent to price a job for a contractor who then put his bit on b4 he passed it on to the main contractor who put their bit on befor passing it to the main client how much would the bill be to the client for your £300 prune. so what do i think needs to change well learning moore enphasis on skills for life training assessments well not a lot other than a gap between learning and testing, and also ou interpritation of them, 'they are a basic minimum standard' nothing moore formalise how we monitor progression with a mix of self certified cpd, emp[lyer/supivisor cpd, and genuine obseved performace related assessment on real live jobs but trained experianced assessors. a central way or recording this infrrmation and a lifting of the face of arboriculture froam all bodies including governmaent so people realise the true cost of treee care, good proper tree care, id love to see it a regulated industry like corgy but not going to happen. there you go 1 am and tiem for bed, as a closing note, im in a rare privalaged position were i travel and see many pople and companies doing really good tree work all over the country and our surrounding islands, all saying the same thing, we have the AA, TCIA, ISA as main players in the uk at the mo and also a numberof publications, all work together to try and push this job we love onwards so use them there we go cheers all eek ill say the out come of the meeting till a night later this week

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

PS they are now UAcerts and have a recertification life onn them that requires re audit visits cheers arbocop

hi xpert we do the full range in sunny soffolk if interested contact me off forum cheers kevin

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

well thanks all for the time ill tell you all what was said at the meeting when its not 11pm, but i also need time to digest a lot of what was said, as id love to make some comments on what has been said. cheers kev

hi all the inspector was entirly correct to fail or not inspect hand splices. if you wish to use your hand splices for the comps thtas fine they are classified as sport not work so if it were safe you could climb on a bit of rope you spun your self. with regard to work, your rope is classed as PPE and the type it is means its is critical to life, so the regs say it MUST conform to a reliant CE standard OR be manufactured under a quality assurance standard. with referance to LOW stretch ropes there is at this time not CE standard for the spice, but only strength requirments for for terminations in relation to the ropes strength classiifcation. so what manufactures do is have their factory splices tested as part of that rope standard. certain companies such as new england yale and edelrid did/do operate a QA system were they disect splices and strength test them and 'authorise' the quality of the splice. however the companies are becoming less inclined to do this as it conflicts with their busness plan in terms of selling rope with splices @adding value' so were does this leave splices depending on them to 'authorise' and controll what is going on' well frankly up sh**t creak. so what needs to happen is a quality assurance standard forthose splices. without it the law is clear you do not use them at work. now thats not to say that enthusiastic and very skilled people are not producing good splices and indeed some are pushing that specific skill forward and aiding the manufactures in developing new ropes but like all things if you do it well and you are confident then step up and be counted, be tested . as for the loler inspector, i think the bigger problem is not the chap telling you the cold hard truth of the regs that may not sit well but is the truth, the bigger problem is the crane inspector looking at your rope access gear and having no idear about what they are looking at at all. that is a danger. just a final point IMHO the CE marking should not get involved in standards for splices beyond their strength as that would stifle development, let the manufacturers do that work, there you go cheers

wow thanks all for contributing, i have not been keeping an eye on it as i left for the trade faire last thursday and just had my first day back at home after spending some time in the west doing wild things with winches...... having read through there is a degree of concenus availible about certian thing, and i will take al lof the above points to the AFAG meeting. again thanks, and to all that i met at trade fair and the £T challange hope to see you next year cheers

Hi V i could go on for hours about bracing and planning instalation aims and inspections, but woiuld all get boring, the manufactrers info is fine but nothin like doing it with somone who has done the work before. to that end a shameless plug we are running a 3 day bracing instalation and propping cource in september. covering the instalation and leading to an NPTC assessment in this area. in fairness we were targeting the Cert. Arb people but all are welcome, for more info contact me off forum. as for the differance between Cobra and BOA, lets just say the BOA is fro m one of the key designe guys of cobra who jumped ship, so they are very similar but there are some nice subtle extras. cheers kev

to all that have contributed so far thanks very much i am reading it all and will be taking your comments on the 24th. interesting that no one has said nothing is wrong with it??? but nothing will ever be perfect. as to the comments about me showing mine i will when the poll is closed some people have touched on things i belive in already, hears a clue hands up all those who did a formal training scheme within an employer over a 4 year period gaining CoC's College and practical experience....... cheers all hope to see some of you at the trade fair ill be in the BTS shirt hehehehehhehe

hay nod see you there

it s a good broad range of knowlege covering a wide range of subjects giving you enough information to make a knowlegabel start in the industry as with so many things depends on your lecturer and thier real experiance but the content should be ok, i am bias though, i did write it for them when i worked at the college heheheheh cheers all

stop think relax look use your eyes when cutting when you get to a point that you think 'just a little moor' you are probably deep enough. stop

thank you one and all for your posts so far, i have my own opinions but ill hold out on thos e for the time being. what you may find of interest is the meeting has speciffically precluded those with a vested interest in training (you know who i mean) and focused more on managers companies etc. this is because it is known and felt that the standard model of training at the moment needs modernizing to better serve both staff and employee. keep your thoughts coming, but remember how do u think we can improve the system. thanks again

ummm just a small ppoint but why would you be running a 12mm rope through a 16mm pully leading to flattening of the laid and the issues that can cause!!!! Also i would highly reccomend the Buckingham wrap over a standard porta wrap, much moor user friendly. as for kits i love them to start of with first one came from FK now sorbus second i put together from differant sources. with the trade fair at the end ofthe week i think that would be a good time to really bash a deal cheers

come on folks im genuinley interested, i realy would like to know your opinion on how the vocational training such as NPTC certs may be bettered to serve people in the industry, no matter how radical even if you think we should do away with them all together your feed back really will go to the AFAG group for consultation so dont be shy let me know

just chill and enjoy if you have been taught well you will need all u need to know

well chaps and chapesses, for my sins i have been invite to an AFAG meeting in a couple of weeks that is to focus on where the current systems for training for practical arb & forestry fails the industries ( if it does at all???) and also what can be done to address any short falls in the system. Now i know that this thread has gone round in several shapes and sizes befor but i wopuld really like your input on this??? not just i hate NPTC or LANTRA Sucks, or even there are batter ways...... what i want to know is if you do feel that way what needs to change or what would make it better lets have the debate and ill let you know how things go, if you wish to reply annomosley then my work e mail is below or you can call me at BTS group in the training department. thanks for you help regards

No, not at the moment, the EU tree worker covers variouse practical and knowleg skills for general tree work, and will make you an atractive employee, but our health and safty like the NPTC certificate as proff, ther are ways you can argue certain things but it is easier to just get your nptc for UK, but plese think about the EU cource as will give you loads of good info.

beer valiun beer and good weather then some moore beer, part of the judging team for the skills challange so will need beer

well id love to say yes it is but those people with a post 1/1/1997 leicence hve a rum old deal, in a nut shell if the p[lated weight o the vehicle is is 3.5tonne or less well maybe he can, probably see this INF30 on the DVLA site, that says no he cant but there is an other leaflett availible ill hook out the fer as its in the office at the mo that contradicts inf 30 hope that helps the other thing to say is even if it is a 750kg trailer if vosa tug him then thell weigh it and regardless of pleighted weight thell go on actual weight. its all aright pain in the ass actually trying to sort it out

the only really safe way is to rip it out with a winch then use that to turn and controll the branch. if you only have a little one then pop down the hire shop, speedy hire, hewden etc they all do them. just not worth the risk. had a chap many moons ago takel somthing similar and end up off work for ni on a year the prob lem is u get in ther and nibble and 'get away withit' but all u are is one step closerto the day you wont get away with it

What is it you would like to know???

that seems incredibly res noble for all that training enjoy the course

well done chaps