About

Your role/position. Forest Production Manager at City Forests. Managing (currently) three harvesting crews cutting 360k m3/yr and approximately 16 full time equivalent log trucks. Other areas under my management include H&S, Roading, Mapping/GIS/UAV, Fire, Harvest Planning, I have 4 others in my team ensuring things go smoothly.

How did you end up working in forestry. Completed the BForSc course at Canterbury… early days in the bush was inventory, then some technical work, then harvest planning, then on to management.

What you love about our industry. I don’t seem to meet anyone that doesn’t like their job? That’s got to be a good indicator. A lot of diversity in jobs, well paid, continuously moving towards better H&S and uptake of technology, forestry is a fantastic land use option.

How do you use UAVs in your work/what interest do you have in UAVs. I have done a Post Graduate Diploma in GIS so to me UAVs provide a means to collect high resolution data to work with. Mainly use the orthomosaics for mapping tasks, have at times used 3D data for road engineering design, video/photos for ETS proof of planting (this included some Full Motion Video), imagery/video for managers, supervisors, principals, training, debriefs. Interest in further UAV potential… fire, plotting work, spraying work, other payload work that may be useful to silviculture or harvesting crews. Interest in overcoming UAV challenges… workflow efficiencies of UAV’s, Deep Learning, weather constraints, quality of data, line of sight, kit combinations, other than camera payload options. We have an RTK Phantom4pro, Phantom4pro, Mavic Pro (and a set of goggles but with limited success). All are reasonably old tech now. Only RGB cameras at this stage. We process/analyse imagery using Drone Deploy or ArcGIS. Plan with either UGCS or GSpro or the controller for the RTK P4.

Why do you want to be involved in TFF. I would like to endeavour to help out with the move forwards in this area, in previous years I have felt too distracted with other tasks, but with my GIS/UAV experience would like to be more helpful going forwards. There is a massive combination of developing technology in UAV’s differing payload options and potential uses in forestry to improve efficiency or safety. TFF are combining interests/efforts and skillsets for the greater good of the industry, which I think is great.

What would you like to do through TFF if you were elected onto the committee. Just endeavour to help out wherever possible… but my thought process would be, is the outcome generally wanted, does it help with efficiency/safety, will the procedure be useable.

What do you think that TFF should be focused on. Just as is being done… uptake of technology into useable procedures to improve efficiency/safety in forestry management/operations. Also, encourage demos/training within the industry.

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