The contract involves executing arboricultural tasks throughout Winchester, including tree felling, pruning (such as deadwood removal, crown reduction, and crown lifting), and planting, which includes sourcing and supplying the necessary trees.
All work is completed to BS3998: Recommendations for Tree Work Standards.
Our highly skilled team of arborists are proficient and comfortable with pruning tasks so excel in these operations, taking great pride in their work.
Recognising the importance of public engagement, we regularly ensure the allocation of additional resources to maintain site safety and to keep residents and other interested parties informed and updated on ongoing work.
As part of this contract, we are responsible for watering over 600 newly planted trees, on a weekly basis, from May to September. We have completed this for the past 3 years.
Our most recent contract with Hampshire County Council has allowed us to work and gain experience with working on more sensitive worksites such as schools and community sites. Due to the locations of the specified works, we ensure that contact is made with the premises on the day of the projects being passed to ourselves so that we can ascertain the requirements of working on the sites promptly to ensure effective plans can be made.
As the majority of the schools are Woodland schools, the woodchip and timber are often left on site to benefit the pupils. Where this is not possible, we ensure contact is made with other local schools to offer these products as we aim to keep the byproducts of our operations within the local area to benefit the wider community.
Effective programming and communication are key within the contract due to the varying risks which need to be mitigated before working on site. This can range from varying working hours to be flexible around the busiest times of the day on site to presetting cordons to allow our teams to swiftly move between the working areas.
A set programme with specific requirements is always discussed and issued to the client prior to the works starting allowing all parties to raise concerns which are mitigated promptly.
Due to the variety of sites the team attend for the council ranging from police stations, art centres, ambulance centres, schools to highways it has allowed the company to further create universal habits that are built into daily routine to ensure no matter the variaty of sensitive site that is being attended all members present are being respectfull to the regulations whilst following our methods to ensure no control measures are being missed.
For the past five years, Climbers Way Tree Care Ltd has been a trusted contractor for Fareham Borough Council, providing arboricultural services under a framework agreement which was renewed in 2023 for a further 4 years. This strong partnership has resulted in mutual respect and collaboration, especially in problem-solving involving tree care issues. Within the framework we carry out various works within specified timeframes ranging from urgent to 6 months.
Often the work packs allocated are spread across various locations, leaving only a small amount of work in any given area. Recognising the inherent inefficiency this caused we have worked with the council to develop a more streamlined approach to manage such tasks.
To ensure all work is completed efficiently, we consolidate work into larger packs based on the resources required which improves our efficiency significantly. This consolidation not only reduces the time required but also allows for better resource allocation, which includes appropriate equipment and skilled personnel. As a result, we are able to complete a larger volume of work in a shorter time frame, providing the council with a more cost-effective solution.
As the work within the packs are often within close proximity to properties, community engagement is key in ensuring that we are able to carry out the specified work first time with minimal disruption. When we survey the work, we always ensure contact is made with the residents who will be affected so that we can programme the works at a convenient time.
Through working with the council for many years we have formed and adjusted many habits in company to facilitate a quick response to deal with a range of issues that can come up at short notice. For example, we have logged and saved plotted trees on maps throughout the council on a platform that all team phones have access to. When a call or email of urgency comes through from the council, we have been able to offer a quicker service than others on the framework to facilitate the work through the steps the office team follow. Practitioner teams are preset with equipment and maps ready to access this straight away. If the trees are new or not on the mapping system they can be added remotely, tagged for the teams ready on arrival.
The contract delivery includes the provision of ongoing arboricultural safety works across the county which we have been completing on behalf of the council for the past 7 years.
The primary focus is on trees presenting potential hazards to heavily trafficked public footpaths and highways alongside regular maintenance work which is often issued in packs as large as 500 trees. All works issued to us is managed inhouse and programmed to ensure timely completion with minimal disruption to the public.
Due to the highly populated areas we work within, we have to ensure that public engagement is maintained throughout the duration of the works. We are required to liaise with interested parties on a regular basis, including community engagement where works may interrupt events taking place or access to properties and businesses. This has included letter drops to properties within the vicinity of scheduled works, contacting local business owners and utilising community Facebook groups to inform the public of upcoming projects. We have also utilised this method to advertise woodchip and timber for schools, allotments and community groups to ensure that the work carried out has a positive impact on the local community.
As part of our operations, we implemented traffic management strategies following the Chapter 8 guidelines, “Traffic Safety Measures and Signs for Road Works and Temporary Situations”. We survey all projects allocated to ourselves to ensure that potential risks and additional requirements are highlighted before our teams attend a worksite. As part of this, our surveyors would specify on various packs if Traffic Management is or isn’t required, from this our office team would seek the appropriate licences for the resources required on set dates.
As part of our most recent contract for Oxfordshire County Council, we undertook the project of planting over 300 trees throughout the county. This involved dealing with members of each parish council to agree the locations of each tree. In a couple of parishes, we took part in community engagement days in which we assisted members of the community with planting their trees in the green spaces and advising them on the ongoing maintenance required.
All works were completed in accordance with BS3998: Recommendations for Tree Work Standards.
The work we do tends to be very noisy so most of the time we work during the day but sometimes it’s actually less disruptive for us to work at night.
Ash Dieback is a big problem at the moment. It’s a serious fungal disease that has killed a lot of ash trees across the UK.
An infected tree becomes weaker and can end up being a safety hazard, especially along a highway.
We recently had to remove 80 mature ash trees, that were succumbing to the disease, from the side of a busy road in Hampshire.
Due to the size of the trees and the machinery required there was no way we could this without closing the road so to minimise disruption to road users we worked at night.
It took us 3 nights to remove all 80 trees. You can see some highlights of the work in this video.
We started at dusk and worked throughout the night, lit up by generator powered flood lights and headtorches so that we could see what we were doing.
The road provided great access for us to use a crane grab saw with a 16m reach and elevating cab. As you can see in the video this piece of machinery is great for cutting off the top of an ash tree.
80 trees produce a lot of waste. We rapidly filled up articulated lorries with woodchip produced by an Albach Dimante 2000 Chipper, the best in its class, and renowned throughout the arb world for its innovation and technology.
We had a lot of fun on this job and are pleased to have played a part in keeping this road safe to drive along.