… and Jon Snow is chopping up Japanese knotweed instead of white walkers: “NO, JON, NO! You’ll cause cross contamination!” OK… so the series hasn’t gone quite that far downhill (yet).
Anyway, now the appalling reference is out of the way, onto the smooth segue – because it’s actually nearly winter, and the Japanese knotweed growing season is coming to an end.
That means that Japanese Knotweed Solutions’ revisits are finished for another year (we’ve completed well over a thousand of them!) and, frankly, we need something to keep us busy. It won’t be a problem finding something, though, I promise you.
Japanese Knotweed Solutions teams will still be out and about around the country doing mechanical Japanese knotweed remediation and assisting clients with other invasive plant problems – as well as completing Japanese knotweed clearance works in preparation for next year’s spraying – as recommended in the INNSA Code of Practice.
But for us in the Operations Department, it’s more than just that – as we need to review our working procedures, safety performance and our effectiveness in the jobs we have completed as well as securing various approvals and certifications needed to be the best in the industry.
We are reviewing all of our completed jobs, and we will be issuing guarantee certificates and insurance backed guarantees for all completed domestic projects, as well as many commercial insurance-backed guarantees for housebuilders and other construction clients.
We will be reviewing incoming and new legislation to make sure that JKSL are fully compliant with all of our obligations and we will look again at industry best-practice to make sure that we are using the best equipment, the best methods and getting the best results in the industry.
We will look at how we work on site to make sure that wherever we can improve safety for the public and our staff, and wherever we can improve compliance with our clients’ and HSE safety regimes, that we are doing this in the most effective and efficient way.
We will also look in to how we can manage the increasing moves towards restriction on chemical herbicides (including glyphosate) that have been integral to the treatment of invasive species in the UK (and EU) for the past twenty years and more.
This winter is shaping up to be one of our busiest ever. In fact, there is so much to do that this morning, I found myself writing a to-do list of the different lists that I need in order to organise my workload over winter!
I can feel another laboured reference coming on…
Chris Oliver, Operations Manager
Japanese Knotweed Solutions Ltd & Invasive Weed Solutions Ltd