This has required planning to ensure all machinery and personnel are compliant with forestry and CDM regulations.
The project has seen Euroforest engage with the client to ensure that the correct areas have been felled in line with the project timeline. Liaison with internal ecology teams has happened throughout the operation as no team can operate independently.
Felling has been completed with harvester machines, tree shears on excavators and hand felling of some of the hedgerows.
Once all vegetation has been removed the area is levelled before handing over, ready for the next phase of construction.
Forestry can be hazardous if not conducted in line with industry guidelines. All operations have been conducted according to FISA recommended practice.
Safe operations begin with careful planning and briefing at all levels. Euroforest regularly attend briefings to ensure they are aware of current operations around them to ensure their team is operating safely. All team members are trained beyond the minimum level required to ensure compliance and to ensure we operate with the highest level of professionalism.
Euroforest have developed inhouse risk zone management team training. This allows us to form a secure area of operations around our machinery, preventing accidental ingress by the public, actions to be taken in the event of protestors wishing to cause disruption or other workers unwittingly entering areas. Teams are led by a former Royal Marine, who have an intimate knowledge of cordoning and controlling risk zones. Teams are trained to understand the working methods of the forestry machines so are aware of the risks they pose and how best to mitigate it.
A risk when felling trees is the rare occurrence of a tree collapsing in an uncontrolled or unexpected manner, our teams are aware of this and for this reason do not allow complacency to creep in during operations.
All operations are overseen by experienced, qualified, forest work managers who conduct risk assessments before all activities and record site monitoring multiple times a day to ensure all activities are safe and compliant.
This is all backed up by an industry leading compliance team who have been instrumental in producing RAMs for the site and constantly reviewing procedures to ensure they are the best in the industry. All errors in procedure are investigated and reviewed to provide positive feedback and prevent repeats.
