Tree Surgery for Facilities Management
A tree surgery subcontractor for facilities management companies in County Durham and North Yorkshire. Onboarding answers, response tiers and one report.
Send the PQQ or supplier questionnaire, the sites in scope and your required response times. We’ll complete the pack and tell you plainly where we don’t meet a requirement.
What our customers say
“I was recommended Ross to cut down and trim a large conifer hedge.”
“He came out quickly after getting in contact to assess what needed doing and provide a quote.”
“Very professional and educated me what was the best way to do the job.”
“He was quick, efficient and did a great job of clearing away.”
“Will definitely be using again and recommending to others.”
- NPTC qualified
- LANTRA qualified
- £10M public liability insurance
- Constructionline Gold certified
- RAMS as standard
Tree surgery as an FM subcontractor
If you run FM contracts you aren’t buying a tree job. You’re adding a trade to an approved list, then calling it off across several sites under a service level you’ve already promised somebody else. This page is about that: onboarding, response times, call-off and reporting.
The tree work itself, the documentation set and how a site assessment runs are already written up on commercial tree surgery and commercial tree maintenance. Rather than repeat them, this page covers what your procurement and helpdesk teams actually ask us. We cover County Durham, North Yorkshire and the Tees Valley.
Getting through your approval process
What the questionnaire asks, and what we can answer
- Company and competence
- NPTC and LANTRA qualifications with certificate numbers and expiry dates, per operative and per unit of work rather than a single company claim. See what a qualified tree surgeon holds.
- Insurance
- £10M public liability, with the certificate and renewal date. Tell us at onboarding if your contract requires a higher limit or your client named on the policy, because that’s a broker conversation with a lead time.
- Third-party accreditation
- Constructionline Gold. If your PQQ scores an SSIP scheme by name, tell us which one you accept and we’ll tell you whether we hold it before you spend a stage on us.
- Health and safety management
- Site-specific RAMS per task, accident and enforcement history, equipment inspection and LOLER records for climbing and lifting kit, and a named responsible person.
- Commercials and admin
- Company, bank and VAT details, payment terms, works order and purchase order handling, and how invoices reference your job numbers.
The two things we can’t tick
We aren’t an Arboricultural Association Approved Contractor, and Ross isn’t DBS checked. Both appear on FM questionnaires and both are sometimes mandatory, particularly where a portfolio includes schools or care settings. We would rather you know at question one than at award. Everything else on a standard arboriculture PQQ we can evidence.
Keeping the pack alive
Approval lapses quietly. Insurance certificates, qualification cards and accreditation expire on different dates, and most FM approval systems suspend a supplier the day a document goes out of date, usually the week you need them. Give us the portal and a contact and we’ll upload renewals as they’re issued rather than when your system chases. Where you run periodic re-approval, tell us the cycle and we’ll diary it.
Response times across a portfolio
Priority tiers that mean something for tree work
Generic FM response tiers translate badly to trees, so it’s worth agreeing what each one means before it’s tested. Making a hung-up limb safe, cordoning an area and clearing an access route are quick attendance tasks. Felling the tree, grinding the stump and clearing the arisings usually aren’t, because they need the right kit on the right day and sometimes a road closure. We would rather commit to attend and make safe inside an agreed window, then programme the completion, than agree one figure covering both and fail on the second half.
Out-of-hours and reactive call-off
Storm work arrives outside working hours by definition. For call-off we need three things per site: the address and access arrangement, who can authorise spend at 2am and up to what value, and who holds keys, gate codes and alarm codes. Without the second, the crew sits in the yard waiting for an email. What attendance involves and how we prioritise between simultaneous call-outs is on emergency tree work.
Planned works against the budget year
Most tree work on an FM contract isn’t urgent, so it competes for a service charge or planned maintenance budget with a year end. Trees ignore that: the best pruning window for many species is winter, which straddles it. Send the portfolio in autumn and we can split a programme so safety-critical work is committed in this budget year and discretionary crown work is priced and ready for the next. Ranking work by what sits underneath, rather than by tree condition alone, is covered on tree safety inspections.
One contact and one report across the sites
The problem with multi-site tree work isn’t the trees, it’s that nobody can answer what has been done where. You get one number and one email address, not a call centre queue. Every visit is reported the same way against your own site references and works order numbers, so a report can be forwarded to a client or a landlord unedited. Across a portfolio we consolidate those into a single schedule showing, per site, what was inspected, what was completed, what is outstanding and what is next due. Where a site needs a formal tree schedule instead, see tree surveys, and there’s wider context in our article for site managers commissioning tree surgery.
How we price for a portfolio
We quote per site after an assessment, and for call-off we can agree fixed rates against defined tasks so your helpdesk can raise an order without waiting for a quote. What drives either is access, the equipment the site forces on us, traffic and pedestrian control, waste volume and disposal, working hours, and how many sites can be sequenced into one mobilisation. Travel between scattered sites is a real cost, and clustering visits is the easiest saving in a portfolio. Nothing is priced from a photograph and a postcode alone.
What we don’t cover
We’re a tree, hedge and vegetation contractor. We don’t provide grounds maintenance, grass cutting, winter gritting, drainage, fencing or building fabric work, and we won’t hold a soft-landscaping line on your contract that we can’t deliver. Arboricultural and ecology surveys are separate. Clearance ahead of construction sits under commercial site clearance.
Commercial cover. NPTC and LANTRA qualified. Constructionline Gold certified. £10M public liability insurance. Site-specific RAMS and written completion reporting. Not ARB Approved and not DBS checked.
What customers ask
Common questions
Will you complete our supplier questionnaire and portal registration?
Yes. Send the PQQ or portal invitation and we’ll complete it, upload certificates and give a named contact. If a mandatory requirement is one we don’t hold, we’ll tell you at that point rather than let it fail at approval.
Are you an ARB Approved Contractor or DBS checked?
No to both. We hold NPTC and LANTRA qualifications, Constructionline Gold certification and £10M public liability cover. If your contract makes either of those two a condition, we aren’t the right subcontractor for that portfolio.
Can you meet a fixed response time on a reactive call-off?
We can commit to attend and make safe within an agreed window. Full completion, including felling, stump grinding and clearance, depends on equipment and any traffic management, so we agree that as a separate target rather than promising one figure for both.
Can one order cover several sites?
Yes. Send the site list with addresses, access arrangements and site contacts. We assess and price them together, sequence visits to cut travel, and report each site separately against your own references so the paperwork still matches your system.
Who authorises extra work found on site?
Nobody, until you do. If a crew finds work outside the order, they photograph it, stop at the ordered scope and it comes back to you as a separate quote. Give us an authorised contact and a value limit if you want out-of-hours decisions made faster.
Send us your onboarding pack
Send the PQQ or supplier questionnaire, the sites in scope and your required response times. We’ll complete the pack and tell you plainly where we don’t meet a requirement.