A facilities manager inherits a business park with a car park ringed by mature limes, an access road under beeches and a boundary of poplars nobody has looked at in a decade.
He has no idea whether that is a problem. He will find out on the morning one of them comes down on a parked car.
Step 1: publish that you work commercially
Business parks, estates, schools, care homes, housing sites and local authorities. Managers search for it and find domestic tree surgery.
Step 2: explain the duty in general terms
That owners and occupiers have responsibilities where trees are near people and property, that inspection is how it is managed, and that they should establish what applies to their site.
Step 3: offer a survey
A recorded inspection of the trees on a site, with condition, recommendations and priorities. It is the natural first engagement and it produces the work that follows.
Step 4: explain what a survey produces
A schedule, a plan, a risk rating per tree and a recommended re inspection interval. Managers need a document they can show somebody.
Step 5: explain the inspection interval
That it varies with the tree, its condition and what is beneath it, and that a programme rather than a one off is what actually discharges the duty.
Step 6: explain the record keeping
Because a manager's protection is the record that trees were inspected and recommendations acted on. It is the real product.
Step 7: explain the prioritisation
Urgent, this year, next year and monitor. It lets a manager budget across years rather than facing one large figure.
Step 8: explain the access and disruption planning
Car parks, working hours, pedestrian routes and how work happens without closing a site. It is what distinguishes commercial capability from domestic.
Step 9: explain the documentation you carry
Insurance, qualifications, method statements and risk assessments. Managers cannot appoint anybody without it, as in commercial grounds maintenance contract enquiries.
Step 10: explain the protected tree position
Because commercial sites frequently have them and the checks add time to any programme.
Step 11: offer the annual contract
Inspection, planned works and a response arrangement for anything urgent. Recurring revenue rather than a series of jobs.
Step 12: cover the hedges and vegetation too
Because sites have boundaries, and it is the same contract, as in hedge cutting and maintenance enquiries through the season.
Step 13: understand the lease question
Whether the occupier or the owner is responsible, which determines who can instruct and who pays, which is the same territory as commercial survey and dilapidations enquiries.
Step 13b: explain what happens after a storm
A site with two hundred trees after a bad night needs somebody walking it before anybody parks under anything. Publishing whether a post event inspection is part of the contract, how quickly it happens and what is done about anything found is the provision a facilities manager most wants and rarely has.
Step 14: respond the way commercial clients expect
Promptly, in writing, with a proposal rather than a conversation, which is the professional capture in an AI receptionist for opticians applied to a different sector.
Getting started
Publish a commercial survey and management offer with documentation and prioritised programmes, then capture site details at any hour. SpideyChat for landscaping and tree businesses answers from your published pages, plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator works through the numbers.