Harvest planning workshops a big success

In its first major series of hands-on and face-to-face activities since Programme Leader Mark Brown joined the team, the Harvesting and Operations Programme and guest international instructors have just concluded a successful series of practical workshops in Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia.

Internationally recognised instructors from Oregon State University, USA, led 90 participants through harvest planning for the Australian forest industry, from the impacts of establishment planning through to scheduling of operations.

Lead instructor Professor John Sessions visited Australia exclusively for the workshops, bringing international experience in forest harvesting systems, harvesting and transport planning, and the development of analytical tools and software to assist forest harvesting operations management.

Co-instructor Professor Loren Kellogg is six months into a one-year secondment with the CRC for Forestry and the University of Melbourne, bringing a unique blend of practical forest operations experience and technical forest engineering skills, with international experience in forest harvesting systems.

Loren was also lead instructor for a cable logging workshop that was offered in Tasmania only.

The workshops demonstrated:

• Technical tools and analytical methods for eucalyptus and pine plantation establishment; and for harvest planning of plantation and native forests.
• Harvest planning software and discussion of practical applications.
• Applications of workshop concepts to forest management decisions and problem solving, such as plantation establishment, resource protection and harvesting management.

Real local operational questions were addressed and worked through, resulting in outcomes that everyone could easily relate to and translate to their daily work, including helping a contractor develop a solution to a maintenance scheduling problem; a future study location for thinning productivity and biomass recovery and transport; and participant interest to take on a postgraduate project.

The workshops also represented an opportunity for industry participants – ranging from plantation establishment foresters, plantation harvesting planners, regrowth thinning planners, native forest harvesting planners and logging supervisors and contractors - to interact together. This resulted in some useful discussions and contact building that will no doubt be called upon in future to assist the industry to be more effective and efficient. 

As for all Programme Three activities, these workshops only succeed with the full support and engagement of our industrial partners.  We would like to thank our partners for their support for these workshops and for supporting their staff to attend and actively participate.  We look forward to further strengthening the relationships established in these workshops in future with field study and other technology transfer activities.