Highland Forestry

Ahh you've gotta love the storm damage work.. Keeps you and your staff on their toes!

May also be interesting to note that screw-gate karabiners are still used as industry standard in rope access.

We have a huge jensen PTO chipper on a MOG that we use for night shift, it's an immense piece of kit - will take whole tree most of the time.. The only jensen I have come across that I don't like is the 528T. They shred up mobile phones well.... I noticed...

Yellow Pages suck.... have had ads with them in the past, not even a phone call.. absolute waste of time and money. They called me today actually trying to sell me an advert... might be a case of in it to win it, but why bother if it costs you and wont pay itself. Word of mouth is the best advertising anyone can have, word of mouth and extremley good service.

I think it would be just over a ton and a half... something like that..maybe slightly more.

Generally around 20 a day and at least a litre of coffee!!!!!! (I'm generally not in peoples gardens though)

Kinda agree with you. Thankfully it's not my chipper. The one in the picture behind the truck is a 540, which i must say is prooving to be an awesome piece of kit, absolutley love it, seem to get on really well with it. It handles most things we chuck at it, and has somehting like 2000hrs on the clock! We also have another, a 528 (5th pic) which is the most useless piece of s**t i've ever had the mispleasure to use. Everything has to be cut up really small, and then it struggles to pull in clumps of gorse or blackthorn etc. HATE IT!! Yesterday the 528 jamed up and so I had to reverse the rollers to get a heap of blackthorn out of it and whilst doing so it ran a small branch right up under my visor and up my right nostril causing me the mother of all nose bleeds...Then the machine shorted out and fried the battery! I struggled and fought everything through that bi*ch the whole day and my opinion of it is that it's pure evil. The 528 is satans chipper!!

Some random pics of the weeks work. Not as interesting as some of the other pictures up this week but I was pleased enough to get my L200 back from the garage after an extended absense of a month!!

When I'm climbing I'm a tree surgeon, When I'm felling, thinnig etc I'm a wood cutter, When i'm not doing any of that i'm chipping so I'm a chipper bitch!

You're lucky to be alive! lol Not being funny or anything, but looking at it from an employers point of view, if you came to me with a wrap sheet like that there's no way I could entertain using you for any work, not even for sub-contracting. The general idea I get is you know the rules and the good practice, but chose not to use it which was your decision and then you paid the price for it. All of the incidents listed above could have IMO been avoided with propper paperwork, because you would have identified risks involved and also identified controls of those risks or alternative work methods to make sure the incidents did not happen.. That is of course if you pay attention to your own risk assessment and the conditions you set in it.

That's the way I understand it to be also John.

The way I understand it is that if you did something like damaged a property or injured someone when you are cutting a windblown tree and dont have the certificate of competence then your insurance will be void which means you are working with no insurance, which is illegal?? I can feel another phone call to HSE coming on here.. lol

IMO a tree surgeon is somebody who holds more than just CS30, 31, 38, 39, has experience and knows and demonstrates regularly thier skill in all aspects of tree work, both at ground level and in the tree. To me an arborist is somebody who has a degree in arboriculture and does not necessarily carry out tree work always. I hate the fact that so many people have only the CS 30/31/38/39 - and then call themselfs a tree surgeon. As far as i'm aware, if you only hold the above qualifications, you cannot do any work on wind or storm damaged (blown) trees or cut down any tree above guidebar length which I think is about 15'' generally. SO.... That, legally, leaves very little you can actually do!

I missed all of this last night as I was on a call-out till 4am!! Stew - I'm unsure what my answer would be in all honesty - I hope it would be number 3 but number 2 is certainly up there with it!! Regarding RA's - I/we do regularly change them half way through a job if conditions change or the situation changes - quite often depending on weather or terrain for example - can't speak for anyone else but like you say, the risk assessments are there to be used, not just to tick boxes and keep paperwork tidy. Somebody told me once that all the paperwork is to create paper trails which are in turn auditable - i.e. somebody can look at your operation and rip it apart just through the paper trails. Soapbox and drink time!! hehe

Printing as I type.... Will get them handed out to the boys tomorrow morning and get a reciept sheet signed to say I have issued them.. Cheers Arbocop

Dean - some of the items in your list will be covered under PUWER as well as LOLER. IMO I think the time is coming that we will all have to hold our hands up and just get a full inspection of kit every 6 months and have one with it - the LOLER regs and the costs involved in keeping compliant are a total con in my personal opinion, and like most legislation they have created a micro-industry in the form of LOLER inspectors and the like. I have saved that HSE Infoline phone number in my mobile, and will deffinatley be using it as it was a completley painless excersise finding out the facts from the people that really know about it. Where it says in the legislation that kit must be checked by a 'competent person' - the only way to prove you have used a competent person is to have somebody qualified to do it, so we cant check each others kit for example, and it must be somebody independent also so that only leaves paying somebody to do it. I would like to know why none of the LOLER inspectors on this forum have been unable to provide facts about the regulations and the law - if the LOLER inspectors don't know what the craic is then it dosen't bide well for the rest of us. On another note regarding paperwork that needs filled out daily/weekly/monthly - this will vary slightly from job to job depending on what you're doing and will vary for individual companies, the only sure fire way to cover yourself is to get some kind of health and safety bod in to give you advice and to help you put procedures into place. I don't have a choice about my compliance as 95% of work I do is for larger commercial companies, most of which are ISO:9001 and the likes and all paperwork must be in check or either no more work or no payment!! I am forced to be completley transparent and dare I say it whiter than white.. it's just the times we live in, and for me, if I did not do it all I would have no work so I shut up and put up. Health and Safety records, of all different kinds, can in a strange way give you a little satisfaction that you know you are catering for all your responsibilities and I believe that it sets a higher professional plane for your business.

Could be that they were pollarded too close to the main stem and a resulting factor is that the limbs removed will have rotted back down into the trunk and then just disintegrated.

They certainly do look like old pollards, owing to the fact that you cn clearly see new younger stems growing out from the older. Are they all in a row? I think it's a safe bet to assume they've all been pollared at some point in the past. Interesting how the tree in your first picture almost looks to have ripped itself apart, could it be that they were pollarded and the new growth snapped out, causing the damage and then the growth you are seeing now is third-generation? Interesting to say the least!

Interesting looking tree! I take it, it must have had a large limb rip out at some point??

Dean I don't think that necessarily true. I certainly don't fill out all the paperwork just to cover myself.. it's all procedures and protocol that are in place to protect everybody, including employees, the public, property etc. I see it as a duty of care to make sure everyone is protected, not just myself. As for LOLER being a legal requirement the anser is YES. I have just called the HSE Infoline on 0845 345 0055. LOLER and recording LOLER inspections is a legal requirement, regardless of the number of employees under the Health and Safety at work act 1974. the LOLER regulations are statutory provisions relating to this act. Regarding risk assessments, it is a legal requirement to carry out a risk assessment and to record findings of a risk assessment if you have 5 or more employees. If you have less it is not a requirement although it is best practice and you must be able to proove that you have carried out a verbal risk assessment. This is tied in through the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations which are statutory provisions of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. LOLER is seporate to this, and you must document findings of an independent thorough examination which must be carried out by a competent person. This includes usage records. So there you go, direct from the HSE mouth so to speak. I also asked about legal requirements in knowing and being aware of the law and the lady told me that it is an employers responsibility to be aware of the law and to comply with all relevant and current legislation, and this is in connection with the management of health and safety at work regulations. The HSE Infoline is a free service, and it can certainly put things into black and white for you. Hope that helps. Matt

Just spoke to LAS Plant - they've come up with the best price of anybody so far... only problem is their chipper is on hire for a couple of weeks, so might be lucky

Yep, just backs up all my thinking behind the immense ammount of paperwork I do. There will have been legal implications as well as H & S implications surrounding all of those cases. God forbid anything like that will hapen, but when it does, if you are employing someone or even employed by someone, everyone involved owes it to each other to make sure all insurances are valid and that all protocol has been adopted and abided to.

LOL I get lost going to inverness and it's only 25 mins drive! I'm pretty sure Macgreggors would be the Husky dealers, and possibly LAS Plant for chippers as they are Stihl main dealers. I'd not thought of them, i'll have to give them a bell. I did try A Plant on the net - they want £1450 a week for a tracked chipper!!

Shabz - do you mean MacGreggors???

I think everybody who does not know what thier requirements are legally should make an effort to find out because if anything ever happens and you're not covered, you'll be f***ed. A legal requirement is exactly what it says, it's a requirement of the law. JamesW, really professional of you there mate, guess we know your opinion then.