This page provides a step by step guide for landowners using OTISS for tree management on their estates.

1. Register with OTISS for a ‘Landowner’ account.
2. Create sites and zones that describe the layout of your land.
3. Do a baseline tree survey – if required, appoint qualified Arboricultural Consultants.
4. Carry out the recommended maintenance work, and record the results in OTISS.
5. Use OTISS day-to-day for recording jobs to be done
6. Plan a rolling tree inspection programme and annual tree works.
7. Use the reports, maps and data to help manage your tree stock.

NB: using OTISS is not an alternative to seeking professional advice from qualified Arboricultural Consultants. Both you and your consultants work together with OTISS.

1. Register for an OTISS account

Free 30 day period to evaluate the OTISS features and services.

• First you must register with OTISS as a ‘Landowner’ account. This creates your ‘estate’ within the OTISS database. This account will be the main administrative account for your organisation.
• If you have staff that also need to use OTISS, then each one should register with OTISS as a ‘Employee’ account.
• From the Landowner account, you can grant your staff access by typing in their login/email address and selecting which level of access they require: ‘administrator’, ‘manager’, ‘viewer’ or ‘tree inspector’.

2. Sites and Risk Assessment Zones

OTISS lets you divide the estate into several ‘sites‘. A ‘site’ could be a park, a field, a groups of fields, a property, a car park – whatever you want it to be.

• Sites are used as convenient ways to manage the trees. Reports and data queries can be based on sites. Surveys are normally carried out on a per-site basis.
• The OTISS site record includes; description, location/address (e.g. for access) and contact information (e.g. key holders).
• Sites can also be used as ‘risk zones‘ as part of your Tree Safety Policy. A site/zone is allocated a Risk Category of high, medium or low. The high risk category is recommended for ‘where there is frequent public access to trees‘ (e.g. in and around picnic areas, schools, children’s playgrounds, popular foot paths, car parks, or at the side of busy roads) – OTISS and HSE guidelines
• Currently OTISS provides online maps to show the positions of the sites and trees. Future versions of OTISS will allow you to upload detailed site plans.

3. Initial Tree Survey

An initial baseline survey is carried out to establish the number, location and basic details of the trees within the property. Once you have created your initial sites, you create an OTISS ‘survey’ for each one and appoint the user(s) who will carry out the surveys.

• You (and your staff) could use the OTISS website and/or Tree Survey (Android) application to plot the positions of the trees on the online maps. If the trees have been tagged, then these numbers should also be entered.
• Alternatively, if you have existing spreadsheets, databases, KMLs or shapefiles with relevant tree or inspection data, we may be  able to load these into OTISS. Please contact us for more information on what can be done.
• It is recommended that you appoint a competent arboricultural professional to survey the health and safety aspects of the trees. Depending on your requirements, the consultant may carry out a range of inspections from a ‘quick visual check’, a Basic Tree Safety Inspection, a risk assessment, or a more detailed inspection.
• You should discuss and agree with the consultant what details are to be recorded for each tree. OTISS has many fields that may not be relevant to your requirements. Groups of trees may initially be plotted as a single unit; particular trees within the group may subsequently be plotted individually if the need arises.
• Although not all the trees will need to have detailed records, using OTISS and GPS enabled mobile phones and devices, it very easy for an inspector to view previous inspection records, to update the records, or simply mark the tree as ‘inspected’.
• In all cases, your consultant will make recommendations concerning safety and long term management of the trees.
• When the survey is complete, a report can be created to view all the recommended actions.
• By setting the survey(s) to the ‘closed’ state, your effectively lock the inspections from further changes.

4. Maintenance of the tree stock

The recommendations from the survey will form the basis of your annual work plans.  The landowner uses their own staff or independent contractors to carry out the maintenance work.

• OTISS provides a standard Work Schedule report containing all the recommendations. Alternatively you can download the data into Excel to construct your own report.

5. Day-to-day – unplanned tree works and inspections

Unplanned events (such as vehicle collisions, gales, etc.) or building works can impact the health and stability of trees.

• OTISS makes it easy for staff to report a defect or to flag a tree as ‘need to investigate‘.
• In addition to the pre-planned inspection and works programme, a survey should be setup each year to catch the ‘unplanned’ incidents. The staff assigned to this survey can create/update a tree’s records at any time and the results are visible immediately in OTISS.
• Staff can access OTISS from their mobile phones (Android), from office and home PCs.

6. Planned Survey/Inspection Cycles

OTISS enables the landowner to plan future surveys on particular sites/zones (e.g. annual, bi-annual, etc). Typically, an entire site/zone would be surveyed, but OTISS allows each tree to have a recommended inspection cycle, so those trees coming up for inspection could be identified.

The landowner appoints a member of staff or an independent consultant to carry out the survey. Only when a survey’s status is marked as ‘active’, can the appointed user(s) access the appropriate information and carry out the survey. When the survey is complete, the landowner protects the data from further changes by marking the survey
as ‘closed’.

7. Maps, Spreadsheets and Reports

• OTISS maintains an audit trail of all surveys, tree inspections and maintenance work. Dates, names (inspectors and contractors), locations, descriptions, results etc. are all recorded.
• The inventory and inspection data can be viewed and updated from any Web browser. The spreadsheet page allows you to search and sort your data using multiple criteria. For example:
  • “show me all trees on a particular site that need work doing on them”,
  • “show me all trees that are overdue for their next inspection”,
  • “list all the oak trees and order them by age class”.
• Reports can be created containing coloured charts, graphs and tables. Summary and Details reports, Work Schedules and Individual Tree histories can be generated at any time.
• All the inspection data can be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet. This can be useful for further detailed analyse or customised reporting.