Leading Arboricultural and Ecological Consultants

The Future of Tree Risk Management

Seminar VI

A 1 day seminar held at Woburn House Conference Centre, London, 15th September 2006

Originally published in the AA Newsletter issue 135 by Geoffrey March

An excellent turn-out of delegates attended this, the sixth seminar in Treeworks Environmental Practice’s ongoing series Innovations in Arboriculture that is pushing at the boundaries of arboricultural knowledge and practice. As usual, Treework Environmental Practice's Neville Fay had managed to unearth real experts in their field to speak about their specialism which, in this case, was not arboriculture but RISK MANAGEMENT in its widest, even conceptual, sense. Although these principles apply across the board, what was being talked about here was the management of tree populations, rather than the risks associated with actually working on trees. In the course of the day, to hear an expert on risk stating that “the slogan ‘safety first’ is not universally supported and is socially undesirable in many circumstances” [D Ball] came as something of a surprise but typified what this seminar came to achieve – the jolting us out of our preconceptions

Defendable not defensive
Starting the session and having introduced the speakers, Neville Fay pointed out the deficiencies of a ‘defensive’ approach to tree risk policies, more than likely driven by past legal cases, and instead looked towards a ‘defendable’ approach and well-tried industry- lead methodology. After all, as tree people we are constantly engaging with and taking guidance from other professions and this shouldn’t stop when it comes to risk management.

The important point was made that perceptions of risk change with other trends. Familiar to all will be the way we now accept the benefits of dead wood – this has led to a change in the perception of risk from this falling. Hands up who hasn’t, in the bad old days, scrupulously removed all dead branches in low-use area, even when the species simply doesn’t tend to drop large dead branches (think oak, sweet chestnut).

Huge advances have been made in our understanding of trees in the 15 years or so (much credit should go to the Research for Amenity Trees series of publications), and it still carries on of course (detection of internal decay being an obvious example). This, combined with an increasingly risk-adverse society, has led to complexity and feelings of vulnerability in case we are called to account.

Mike Ellison, familiar to many for his Quantified Tree Risk Assessment method, started by placing the TARGET centre stage, when most of us constantly hunt around instead for the tree defects present, in our ‘defect led’ approach to management. Trees will continue to fail in extreme conditions, in fact limb shedding is a survival strategy, and so zero rish is not a viable goal.
If trees will continue to surprise and fail, and with budgets that can not be unlimited, we should instead manage by ‘target appraisal’. An unexpected bonus of this should be a very cost-effective management system, as over-specifying of work (by either misjudging the risk or in an attempt to protect one’s position) should be avoided. Furthermore said Mike, legal precedents made on the basis of defective or outdated expert witness, or with little regard to risk management, are unlikely to stand up to scrutiny. To summarise, our response should be proportionate to the risk.

David Ball, Professor of Risk Management at Middlesex University and co-director of the Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management (DARM), spoke on no less than four occasions throughout the day. Fortunately he was the seasoned performer, clear, enlightening and entertaining!

It seems the Enlightenment age (yet again!) takes credit for first analysing risk in the modern way, hand in hand with scientific advance, with the likes of  Halley and Pascal using statistical evidence for specific studies such as deaths from smallpox. This despite religious disapproval of the meddling in the affairs of God and the church… These days of course, risk management permeates industry, health services and national and local governmental bodies. Studying Frequency and Consequence alone doesn’t take into account Cost, and the costs of conducting a risk assessment should be proportionate to the actual risk. So Cost/Benefit comes into play, and all the arguments associated with that. The implication of cost/benefit is not necessarily to save money but to save more lives by redirecting resources.

Into the mix goes ‘how safe is safe enough?’ ‘benefits of hazards’ (think of dangerous sports or risky play) ‘as low as reasonably practicable’ (ALARP) and even ‘the dark side’, where risk managers become preoccupied with their own risk and personal defensibility.

We are all wanting better ways of managing risk, and it is tempting to see the outcome of this and future seminars, and the best efforts of counties others, as providing us with easily useable systems. However a concluding remark by Professor Ball keeps coming to mind: “..safety decision making is best served by the application of intellect rather than prescription. Intellect however requires effort and the ‘system’ has sought to replace that, as before, with pro-formas and prescription. What is needed is the application of intellect”.

 

Trade-offs
Through a lengthy session looking at risk management in children’s playgrounds, it was shown that the emphasis has to be on managing risk and the avoidance of unacceptable risk rather than minimising or pursuing zero risk. For tree managers this surely has to be the guiding philosophy – after all, zero risk can logically only be achieved in a world with no trees.

A risk in the ‘unacceptable’ zone must be addressed but a cost/benefit (or trade-off) analysis can be applied when attempting to reduce risk in the ‘tolerable’ or ‘broadly acceptable’ zone.

Since the Health and Safety at work Act 1974, the law should be on our side in requiring us to do what is REASONABLE, even REASONABLY PRACTICABLE and not more than that. However, what is reasonable is not just your or my idea but should take into account societal pressures, research, strategic objectives and even government thinking (if only it were as easy as ‘just common sense’!). So although ALARP allows us to resist safety measures that are not reasonable, it does bring a constant pressure to look for ways of doing better.

Unfortunately the ALARP benefits of a thoughtful and proactive approach to risk management are undermined by pro-forma style risk assessment and ‘reputational’ risk management aimed not at safety but at litigation avoidance. The world of arboriculture is certainly not immune to this (one thinks of piles of filled-in forms that achieve nothing, other than protecting the person higher up the chain).

In the playground case study, an imbalance between the desire for safety and the value of play led to an almost unstoppable deterioration in play provision (swing being removed etc). This imbalance is not reasonable. Safety is not necessarily placed above all other considerations, all of the time.

David Ball suggested how we should plan, as an industry, to take control of our risk management destiny:

• Form a collective that represents us.
• Decide on a balanced approach to a range of policy issues, only one of which may be risk management.
• Gather and analyse risk data for our sector.
• Analyse how much these risks can be managed by interventions within our control.
• How much effort and resource is already going in?
• What further efforts could be made?
• What would be a) the benefits b) the costs c) the undesirable spin-offs (eg dis-benefits or transfer of risk)?
• Consider whether existing and prospective measures are reasonably practicable.
• Be aware of statute and case law but be aware that the latter is not infallible.
• To balance how far to go, look at established techniques such as compliance cost assessment.
• Prepare written policy statements on how the industry sees risk assessment being conducted.
• Involve other interested parties and seek comment.
• Show that proposals are consistent with national policy, citing referenced documentation.
• Be familiar with academic research on social aspirations. Embed our choice in society’s interests – social aspirations may be much more in tune with our own than the banner headlines might suggest!

John Adams, Professor of Geography at University College, London, sought to bring a hefty does of realism to our concerns over risk. Citing one of his very own department’s risk assessment documents (‘take care working with your back towards a fence – you might back into it’ when walking on uneven ground, look where you put your feet’) scored some easy laughs. Tree-related deaths average about 6 annually, or 1 in 10 million of the population. This places the risk firmly in the ‘broadly acceptable’ region, as HSE regards 1 in 1 million as the borderline between ‘broadly acceptable’ and ‘tolerable’. Even the Prime Minister was quoted as saying “we are in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to risks… the result is a plethora of rules, guidelines and responses to scandals…that ends up having utterly perverse consequences”.

He grasped the nettle and gamely took us through what is everyone's nightmare scenario when, as a local authority [LA] tree officer, he had last inspected a tree that subsequently fell, causing a fatality.

Yew trees cordoned off due to poisonous folilage, conker trees felled – trivial examples are an easy target. However, the NT Dunham Massey Park incident, when a child’s death was caused by a falling Beech, could yet lead to legal pressure to divert enormous resources to inspection AND recording of countless trees that can in fact never be considered 100% safe.

A nasty event can even come about despite a prediction of a ‘broadly acceptable’ level of risk. In a less litigious age this would have been called bad luck, a concept that now enjoys a dubious legal status!

Dr David Lonsdale, the author of Principles of Tree Hazard and Assessment (HMSO, 1999), gave a much more industry-focussed address than the academic speakers. Acknowledging that a defect-led approach can lead to irrational outcomes (eg a 1987 FC leaflet stating that hollow trees generally need to be felled), he also pointed up the potential of ‘best practice’ to induce fears of inadequacy and over-reaction.

The advance of tree knowledge is David’s game, and he took us through the diagnostic advances of the last few years, familiar to us through both Visual Tree Assessment and decay detection equipment. With the latter comes the danger of misinterpretation in inexperienced hand as well as disproportionate cost. Perhaps surprisingly, the case was also made that “the removal of a small proportion of older urban trees…may be compatible with the cost-effective maintenance of a mixed-age tree population” when fully considering the costs of ongoing monitoring or further investigations.

A holistic approach, including the views of society, insurance companies and politicians as to what degree of risk is acceptable, is required. This will inevitably take us out of our own area of expertise and so working with the risk assessment/management profession is essential.

Nick Eden, Director of the Arboricultural Association, spoke on working towards a National Standard for Tree Inspection. He grasped the nettle and gamely took us through what is everyone’s nightmare scenario when, as a local authority [LA] tree officer, he had last inspected a tree that subsequently fell, causing a fatality. At the time he was able to demonstrate an inspection regime that was, apparently, completely lacking in perhaps 70% of other LAs. 15 years on it seems that 30% of LAs have still not inspected their highway trees in the last 5 years. An improvement but leaving, in Nick’s words, about a third of LAs ‘somewhat exposed’.

With this experience behind him, in his subsequent role in the AA Nick raised the issue of a standard way of inspecting trees, and in due course the Basic Tree Survey and Inspection and Professional Tree Inspection courses were set up, firstly under the AA and now coming under Lantra (AA as training provider). The concept of a National Standard can be criticised (could it prescriptive and box ticking, or perhaps an inadequate substitute for real experience?) however there are great potential benefits and I have no doubt that there will be a continuing drive in this direction.

John Watt, Senior Lecturer in Risk Management and Decision Analysis at Middlesex University, made the point again that safety is only one issue in risk management. Through case studies in other fields, thresholds, tolerable levels, values of intervening and lobby groups opposing intervention, were all considered. It was becoming apparent that the more we look into this subject, the more complex it becomes.

Drawing a clear distinction between the responsibilities of the assessor (arboriculturalist) and the decision maker (land owner or manager) will help define roles, and a framework developed by the International Risk Governance Council was shown as an example of how to address this.

Key challenges are a) communication of the underlying complexity of the decision making and b) developing a consensus. This should ensure transparency, public oversight and mutual understanding of the risks and their management. If outcomes were certain there would be no need for risk management. However, since accidents will unfortunately continue to happen, any new strategy must be formalised and recorded.

Conclusions drawn…
We are learning not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, for example felling or spoiling veteran trees in misjudged responses to risk management, but have no consensus yet as to how financial resources should be prioritised when it comes to inspections and surveys. As arboriculturalists, are we straying into areas where we do not have the necessary expertise when, for example, we decide on the frequency of inspection for particular tree? If we recommend ‘re-inspection in 2 years’ what is the basis for this? Should we be deciding when a probability is acceptably low? That a particular target is insignificant? That this tree merits expensive further investigation? Or that a particular inspection regime is an unnecessary expense? Tree Risk Management is clearly in evolution and we can expect more seminars, committees and drafts. The trick will be to have an increasingly clear and simple evolution to a common policy and not an evermore dense and complex one.

“The asking of questions about risk management policy is the sign of a healthy industry”. With these words of David Ball ringing in our ears, we left with the feeling of having attended a good and important start, but with a long journey still ahead.