Nelson-based FICA member Tom Payne (Rakau Harvesting) can still vividly recall hand falling trees when he started in the industry more than 27 years ago. The boss would literally drop him off in the morning, check-in at smoko and then wouldn't see him again until knock-off.
Even back then, Tom realised this was not acceptable and there must be a better way of monitoring fallers that are working alone.
Over the years Tom has developed a number of electronic solutions to assist with this process. This included the lone worker system developed in conjunction with Nelspecs, that sounded an alarm to the faller to call in every ten minutes.
In the last three years, Tom has developed another manual faller/machine operator electronic check-in solution, that enables him to monitor fallers and multiple machines while getting rid of all the paperwork.
At this stage, the app is called ‘Forestry Monitor’ and has been developed with a local IT provider. The app runs on a tablet and can be customised to harvesting contractors’ needs.
All data collected is time-stamped and data can be exported for further analysis. For monitoring manual fallers, details such as recording tree drives, one on to one, one on to two and request for assistance and tree down can be captured easily by the touch of a screen.
Testimony to the value of the app is that contract tree faller Erik Wardrop and local contractor Willie Waldron (CWL Ltd) have been using it for a number of years.
More recently, Nathan Taylor of MCH has just purchased two tablets from Tom with the app. Nathan says “its bloody good and so simple to use - Tom is very modest about it.”
Good on you Tom – it is great to see our members continuing to innovate. If anybody is interested to enquiring about Tom’s Forestry Check In system/app, please contact him on 027 210 0018.
