McArdle & Sons Arboricultural Services

A tree standing over a school playground, a council clearance a development is waiting on, an insurance claim after something came down overnight: none of those get settled by a price to cut it. They get settled by an inspection and a report from an arborist qualified to put a name to it. McArdle & Sons Arboricultural Services has been doing that work from Tamworth across 60 years of continuous service, founded in 1956 by James Arthur McArdle and carried on into the fourth generation of the family, with Dan McArdle running it today.

Everything shifted in 2014, when Dan, the oldest of the sons, turned the business towards consulting arboriculture. He had identified a strong need for regionally based certified arborists with real industry exposure to carry out tree inspections, specifically in public and private schools, and the training behind that ran from 1998 to 2014: AQF 2, 3 and 5 Certifications in Arboriculture, alongside a Diploma in Agriculture. He has been an active committee member of the Tree Contractors Association of Australia since 1999 and has spent several terms as its President, and since 2003 we have directly assisted with the development of the Arboriculture Codes of Practice, Regulation 221 for crane access to trees, and the Industry Skills Council training packages used to train staff Australia wide.

Arboriculture consulting from us covers Tree Preservation Orders, hazard remediation and the options around it, risk assessments, insurance claims and pest management. Our inspections are carried out by AQF5 qualified arborists using industry developed inspection documentation and risk assessment tools, with government and school hazard inspections a particular speciality. Our reporting is written to satisfy the relevant law and regulation, and it identifies heritage and environmental issues, native vegetation, and rare and endangered species, along with the Tree Protection Zones and Structural Root Zones that a development site turns on. That work goes out through Tamworth and the New England, across the North West and Central West, through the Hunter Valley and down to Sydney.

The physical side of the business never stopped. Our tree management is project management of the vegetation on minor and major development sites, schools, hospitals, holiday parks and domestic home sites, putting the risk controls and the hazard remediation into place on the ground. Tree care and contracting take in remediation and tree removal where a tree genuinely cannot be kept, and we have been delivering that since 1956. We are fully licensed and independently audited, and we carry workers compensation, public liability, professional indemnity and accident cover.

Our clients run through every level of government, from Education, Roads NSW, the CSIRO, National Parks, Lands, Housing, Health, the SES and the NSW Fire Service to councils and State Significant Infrastructure, as well as commercial strata, building and construction firms, insurance companies and private residential owners. If what you need is an independent written opinion on a tree, ring 02 6769 0372 or 0418 165 650 and we will arrange the inspection.