Philip Jackson Arborist & Tree Management Services

Expert witness work in TASCAT and the Magistrates Court is part of the practice at Philip Jackson Arborist & Tree Management Services, which tells you what kind of arborist this is. No trees are felled here and no stumps are ground. The work is advice, assessment and evidence, backed by nearly twenty years in the industry, 20 million dollars of public liability and 10 million dollars of professional indemnity.

The qualifications behind that are worth setting out, because in a dispute they are what the document rests on: a Diploma of Horticulture in Arboriculture from Ryde TAFE, a BSc in Botany and Environmental Studies from UTAS, First Class Honours in Plant Ecology from UNSW, and an Associate Diploma of Applied Science in Amenity Horticulture from CSU. We are a QTRA certified advanced practitioner, licence number 4148, and a certified VALID tree risk assessor.

For development work, our tree plans, preliminary tree assessments and development impact assessments establish what the trees on a site will allow before a design is locked in, and tree protection plans set out how the retained trees are to be looked after once machinery arrives. Construction supervision keeps that honest through the build rather than leaving it to a document nobody reads on site.

Where the question is whether a tree is safe, tree risk assessment and tree inspections answer it to a defined method, and climbing inspections get us up into the canopy where the defects actually are. Advanced structural diagnosis uses sonic tomography to read the inside of a trunk without cutting into it, which is often the difference between removing a tree and keeping it. Where a tree is alleged to have caused damage, our insurance investigation work establishes what actually happened and whether the tree was the cause of it.

At the strategic end, tree inventories and surveys, tree management plans and strategic planning and policy work give councils, institutions and large landholders something to manage a whole population of trees against. We provide expert tree advice throughout Tasmania, working out of Hobart, for councils, developers, insurers, lawyers and private owners. If you are weighing up a development, a dispute or a tree you have been told is dangerous, ring 0447 759 865 or email the office and we will tell you what the matter actually needs before you commit to it.