Project Arborist NSW — AQF Level 5 On-Site Supervision Under DA Consent Conditions

Both pathways are common — and both work. Same-arborist continuity is the natural choice when the original consultant offers on-site supervision, has availability across your build duration, and is geographically suitable. You get continuity, one document-interpretation point of view, and one accountable AQF5 from the original assessment through to the occupation certificate.

Fresh AQF5 supervision is the natural choice when the original consultant doesn’t specialise in supervision (many report-focused consultants don’t), isn’t available across your project timeline, or when the build team simply prefers a different on-site presence than the report author. A large proportion of our Project Arborist engagements are exactly this — clients with existing AIAs from other consultants who specifically want a fresh AQF5 with strong on-site experience to supervise the build.

We deliver both pathways equally well. Send us your AIA, TPP and consent conditions — we’ll tell you exactly how we’d supervise it, regardless of who wrote it.

Depends on the project. Small residential builds with a handful of retained trees might need supervision only at pre-works mobilisation, at a couple of TPZ-impacting trade visits, and at handover — three to five visits across the build. Large civil projects with extensive retained vegetation often need scheduled fortnightly or monthly inspections across multi-year construction, plus ad-hoc response when something unexpected happens. We’ll estimate frequency at scoping based on your consent conditions, project staging and build duration.

Yes — that’s one of the reasons monthly retainer and project-fee engagement structures exist. When something happens on site that needs an arborist now (root damage during a services trench, storm damage to a retained tree, accidental fencing breach, unexpected pathogen evidence on a heritage tree), our retainer clients get same-day response and a written assessment within 24 hours. Per-visit clients can call us in for an ad-hoc assessment at the per-visit fee. Either way, we don’t leave you waiting for two weeks while a tree-related crisis derails the build programme.

The actual tree work (removals, structural pruning, protection-works installation) is performed by qualified tree contractors — not by us directly. What we DO offer, through our Tree Works Management service, is sourcing, scheduling and supervising those contractors as a paired engagement. So if your Project Arborist supervision triggers a tree removal, we can coordinate the qualified crew to execute it under our supervision, on a fixed-fee basis. One accountable AQF5 across the document, the supervision and the delivery.

Yes — this is one of our most common engagement types. Many builders, project managers and developers prefer a fresh AQF5 with strong on-site supervision experience to enforce plans they’ve inherited, particularly when the original consultant is a report-focused practice that doesn’t specialise in on-site work, isn’t available across the project timeline, or when the build team simply prefers a different on-site presence than the report author.

When we take on the supervision of an AIA we didn’t write, we review the existing AIA and TPP carefully, flag any clauses where the consent-condition interpretation might benefit from clarification or a brief amendment, brief the build team on the protection regime, and then deliver the supervision against the existing document. For larger or longer projects we’d sometimes recommend a TPP refresh to align the document with how it’ll actually be enforced — but this isn’t always necessary.

Per-visit, monthly retainer, or whole-of-project fixed fee — whichever fits the project shape best. We do NOT bill hourly except in exceptional cases (e.g. an emergency engagement that doesn’t fit any of the structured options). Hourly billing creates the wrong incentive structure for everyone, and procurement-driven buyers (government, ASX-listed contractors, large civil) generally won’t accept it. Fixed-fee structures give you cost certainty and us delivery certainty.

Pre-works baseline inspection report, scheduled-inspection compliance certificates, ad-hoc inspection reports, formal sign-offs on excavation-within-TPZ approvals, TPP/TPS amendment documents when scope changes, hazard/incident reports when something goes wrong, post-construction tree condition assessment, and the consent-condition discharge documentation your certifier needs for the occupation certificate. All photo-stamped, GPS-tagged where relevant, and formatted for council and certifier audiences. The complete document set across a build typically runs to 30–100+ pages.

AS 4970-2025 (Protection of Trees on Development Sites), AS 4373 (Pruning of Amenity Trees where pruning of retained trees is required), Arboriculture Australia Minimum Industry Standards, and IACA STAR for retention value assessments. Project Arborist supervision specifically operates against the consent conditions of your individual DA — the standards are the floor, the consent conditions are the contract.