Simulator opens up a new branch of forestry

Damian McCarney

The money to buy the heavy duty machinery used in harvesting forests doesn’t grow on trees. Ballyhaise Agricultural College currently has the perfect solution for training in the use of these hi-tech machines. Courtesy of a loan from John Deere, the Teagasc college is the only educational body in Ireland to have a simulator enabling forestry students to hone their skills at harvesting and loading timber in a safe and cost-effective manner.
Forestry lecturer Marianne Lyons gave the Celt a crash course on the simulator on Friday afternoon - had it been on a real harvester, the crash course could have been more literal than a figuratively speaking. But that’s the beauty of the simulator, you can give it a go without repercussions.
“You can see, from the people who have tried it out, how quickly some of them can pick it up,” explains Marianne. “Within two or three goes they’ve got the grasp of it completely; then other people can take it or leave it. So already you are identifying people who have an aptitude for this, and it cuts through a lot of the messing and the expense of putting them up onto a real machine initially.”
Has Marianne an aptitude for it?
“I don’t think I’d employ me,” she modestly quips.
Ballyhaise students can log onto the simulator system and monitor their progress through a range of exercises, such as loading and unloading. The system’s software thoroughly assesses their competence in this skill. And it really is a skill.
Marianne climbs aboard and cranks her up with a starter button. Suddenly the simulator’s engine awakens and quickly settles into the hypnotic purr of idling heavy machinery. An enormous flatscreen becomes our windscreen and we’re transported into a forest ripe for chopping.
“This replicates exactly what’s in a cab of a John Deere cab,” she says. You’d almost expect to find a biscuit tin of sandwiches and a flask beneath the seat.

Knowledge
This John Deere simulator works as both a harvester and a forwarder. Put simply, the harvester enables the operator to cut down trees and strips off the heavy branches leaving uniform trunks ready for collecting. It is much more mentally challenging than it sounds and requires many hours of training, coupled with expert forestry knowledge.
“It’s not just operating a few levers, opening a grab and closing it again,” says Marianne over her shoulder to an on-looking Celt as she calibrates the simulator for length and diameter of trees. “You also have to manoeuvre around a forest, not damage the existing trees, in some cases you have to choose trees as well, follow harvesting plan, follow safety regulations, environmental regulations - you’ve got to know about all that - water quality, buffer zones, exclusion zones for archaeological sites, timber measurement, calibration. It’s a multi-skilled job and you can see how hi-tech it is.”
The sophisticated hardware generates a huge volume of information which monitors production levels.
“Everything is recorded then,” says Marianne, “how much timber is cut, what volume, what diameter. This is all GPS tracked - some of them have real-time feedback to the mill or the harvesting contractor-owner, so they will know exactly the level of productivity. It’s very tightly monitored.”
Once the trees are felled, the forwarder - basically a trailer and crane - collects the trunks and transports it to the roadside within the forest and unloads the cargo for a haulier to bring it on to the sawmill. It’s the forwarder setting on the simulator that Marianne loads up for the Celt to try.
You rest each forearm onto the ergonomically designed controls ladened with keyboards, but the primary controls in this instance, are two ultra-sensitive joysticks, which direct the boom crane and triggers that allow you to swivel and pinch with the grab.

Smooth
Watching the Wexford native deftly direct the grab to select a felled tree from a stack of trunks and load it safely onto the trailer is a carefree, smooth process. When the Celt clambers aboard, the grab is somehow mutated into the fun fair game where you move a metal claw to try to clasp a teddy bear by the cranium, and just when you think you have it squarely between the metal prongs, it scuffs off to one side and you’re left empty clawed. When finally the Celt does grab a trunk, it’s too close to one end and it rears up like a tossed caber.
As the Celt fumbles with the controls and topples over neat piles of timber, Marianne explains that it is recommended that operators become a forwarder before become a harvester.
“It gives you an appreciation for the forwarder driver... if you work as a forwarder you appreciate how somebody has cut and left the timber, so that will carry through.”
If you perfect the art of using a simulated harvester or forwarder, training still isn’t complete.
“If you get to level five on this, which is as good as you can get, you would probably go in at level two on a real machine.”
Progressing to a real machine involves one-to-one or one-to-two training and, as a result, is very expensive.
“Because of safety issues around this, nobody is going to let a student to have a go, whereas here, anybody can have a go. In this it is a controlled environment and you’ve nothing to lose, so it can build confidence. You can imagine if you had a go on a machine, you would feel - at least I know how these buttons work, at least I can use the grab.
“We’ve had a Coillte harvesting operator here using it, and he was so fast and so quick, and he agreed it was a great training tool - that’s what it is, a training tool. It’s not the be all and end all but it is another way of introducing students to an area that they wouldn’t always have access to.”

Generous
Demand for Ballyhaise College’s Level 5 FETAC Certificate in Forestry and Level 6 Advanced Certificate in Forestry has increased over the last decade and graduates enjoy good employment prospects.
“Students don’t seem to have much of a problem getting jobs,” Marianne happily reports. “They go into the forest management route, contract work, and then the likes of Greenbelt will take students on work placement, and do maintenance, planting, spraying, fertiliser application, and then others might go into tree care - Cavan Tree Services have four past students from here working for them. Others go to Waterford, to continue to do a degree, we’ve had students go on to do Masters and PHDs as well.”
Harvesting contractors are traditionally run as family businesses, so this simulator is helping to open this branch of forestry up for students as another possibility. The good news for anyone who does develop an aptitude as a harvesting machine operator is that the sector is crying out for them.
“John Deere were very generous allowing us to use it [the simulator], initially for a month - that was the agreement.”
How long has Ballyhaise had it now? “I’m hoping they’ve forgotten about it,” she says with a laugh. “It’s gone over the month, and they might leave it here a little while longer.”