Using Phoenix Connect Roads in a Community Forest

September 1, 2021

The original conversations with the Logan Lake Community Forest team happened in Spring 2021 before wildfire hit the community in August. We are thankful to be able to say that the town of Logan Lake was spared in part through the hard work of firefighters and Logan Lake residents.

Logan Lake Community Forest (LLCF) was formed in 2007 and its day-to-day operations have been managed by Forsite Consultants since 2015. Forsite is responsible for all day-to-day planning, harvesting, silviculture, and other post-harvest activities of the Community Forest licence. In addition, Forsite is involved in other work such as the expansion of recreational trails, First Nations engagement, road rehabilitation, and other special initiatives.

We reached out to Randy Spyksma and Lindsay Hill at Forsite Consultants, about their decision this year to start using the Phoenix Connect Roads module to track road activities in LLCF.

"Community Forests have a responsibility to manage the landbase proactively and sustainably. Maintaining social licence is also a key part of what we do - we have a lot of stakeholders to report out to", says Randy who leads the Forest Management Team for the LLCF. While the management of blocks and silviculture is the most onerous from a data point of view, he sees roads as the most critical factor to manage from an environmental point of view. "We wanted to up our game when it comes to the tracking and organization of our road management because roads have the potential to impact water and watersheds if not managed properly. Internal and external audits across the province have shown roads and road management are more likely to be a challenge. Questions get asked like: Do you know what conditions your roads are in? Are you actually doing the maintenance on time? We wanted to avoid issues being raised and the actions falling through the cracks and not being followed up on, because everyone is so busy. That's why we are implementing a more structured tracking process."

In her role as Forestry Supervisor at Forsite, Lindsay oversees the operational implementation of blocks and roads and what she appreciates is the ease of use of Phoenix Connect, especially for writing customizable site plans. "Forsite has staff working at different offices or from home from time to time, and our staff need to stay connected and coordinated in the work we do. Phoenix Connect is super easy - you just go onto the web and log in. No need to install an app or download anything."

She appreciates the convenience of the roads module for the Forsite team. "For us, managing roads is really important. The LLCF does not have as many roads as a bigger licensee would have, but it is so easy to keep track of everything using the roads module. We want to know what roads or features need to be inspected. I can run a report in March on what I need to inspect that year and it comes out so easily. I cannot imagine a better way to manage the roads tasks that we need to do. We have historically completed this ourselves, using excel and it doesn't work well as there is just too much information. You end up wasting time trying to sort everything and then looking through all the data. With Phoenix Connect, it's literally just a button - you run a report and you have it all there right in front of you immediately."

"We see Phoenix Connect Roads as a valuable investment for the LLCF business. Having all our roads information in one place, knowing that we are doing our due diligence on a regular basis, being able to generate reports easily - this just made good business sense for us."

Reach out to info@drsystemsinc.com or call 778-251-2089 to book a demo to see Phoenix Connect Roads in action.

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