After the thaw

Well, all the snow has now gone, along with the ice, and so our surveyors can get back on to the ground and make their assessments with confidence.

Henry and Nick managed to break out of a snowbound Oxford to help me with a couple of jobs, one in Walsall was a BS5837:2005 survey of an industrial site, and the second in Essex was to prepare a woodland management plan for a development proposal that my colleagues are considering.

Expressly interesting
The project for the Registered Social Landlord is still taking shape:
· would-be assessors and surveyors have been approached and one or two tentative responses have been received, I still need more!
· I am waiting for eMapSite to get back to me with a quotation for the supply of the OS MasterMap extracts that the project requires, and finally
· the plan of attack is still being finalised – the job will require us to be very efficient in our data capture, there will be no opportunity to go back to re-visit sites and so we must get it right first time.

As before, if you are a competent tree assessor and you want to know more then please don’t hesitate to contact me direct!

I am meeting a potential assessor for the second job in the Midlands tomorrow, 7000 records to be captured using ARBORtrack, the client team has given me his contact details and so he comes very well recommended.

My offer to the London borough has been despatched, and as always once an offer has gone into the post I begin to worry – was I too cautious, will the price be acceptable, what about the quality assurance suggestions that I have made and so on – hopefully I’ll be put out of my misery soon!

I have contacted a wide range of arboricultural professionals in connection with a presentation I am due to make in April at a Tree Diseases Conference organised by the RFS/RASE. I’ve had a number of very interesting responses so far, but would encourage you all to keep them coming please.

I have also been contacted by the BBC in Birmingham in connection with a piece that they wish to do, to camera, about salt damage to highway trees. Once again, my contacts in industry are coming up trumps and suggesting locations and making contributions to the debate, so my thanks to all of you who have responded on this one.

In practice
The small service delivery contract has been completed, according to the contractor – by my reckoning there is still one tree to be felled!

I spent some time with the architect for the scheme in Nuneaton last week going through the response from the Tree Officer; I hope that between us we have done enough to secure the consent for the proposed development.