My saw tears through the last bit of holding fibers of a dead Ash tree on the far end of my cut. There is a release of pressure that I can feel down through the entire body of the tree, a muffled crack, poof, the vibrations reaching my own nervous system through my sunken gaffs. A weight has been lifted, but only by a mere sixteenth of an inch, and the twenty-one hundred pounds of wood now floats above my kerf like an enormous plumb bob ever so slightly circling around its vertical axis. Tied to four dead-eye slings, the crane operator cables up and swings his boom slightly to the right and I watch as the dead top floats away like a frozen marionette puppet, dancing no more.

For crane assisted removal work, and also in general tree rigging operations, I find that measurement plays a critical role in both safety and efficiency.

IBM executive H. James Harrington said that “Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”

But what exactly are we measuring?

For starters, we are measuring the general weight of a limb or section of tree we are about to rig. Whether rigging to a crane, rigging in the tree in a tip-tied situation, or negative-block rigging on a spar, accuracy in our measurement of the piece we are about to cut free into the rigging will have a direct effect in our efficiency in controlling that piece. In fact, our entire understanding of how a rigging system will work is based on that initial measurement of weight and the force in can potentially generate. By correctly measuring the weight of the tree limb or block of wood, arborists can solicit more control of it in the rigging, which ultimately leads to safer operations. A green log weight chart can be a vital tool in accurate measurement. Not to mention how vital a resource a crane operator’s scale can be for measurement accuracy and reference. Correct measurement leads to a more complete understanding of how a rigging system will operate, and possibly how to improve upon it in the future.

But weight measurement isn’t the only thing that concerns us as arborists developing a rigging plan or a worksite. We need to consider things like actual linear size as well (height and width). For example: the footprint of a crane and how we can safely project that footprint onto a jobsite. Is there solid footing for each outrigger, how far will that outrigger sit from a foundation, a drain field or a retaining wall, what kind of lifting capacity is the crane good for at the location, would another size crane be more efficient on a different footprint located somewhere else on site, etc. These types of linear measurements can have profound impacts on the performance of the tools we are utilizing on our job sites, as well as on the overall safety for bystanders and the infrastructure of a property as well.

More consideration on linear measurements leads me to questions like how big is the landing zone in a rigging operation? Is there enough space to lower pieces sized at the safe capacity of the crane’s lifting capabilities or a rigging systems capabilities? Is there enough labor power to process those pieces efficiently during the turnover for the next pick or the next rig? These are all questions that deal somehow with linear measurement and how critically thinking about those measurements will affect the our production and safety as arborists.

And what about the measurement of our actual rigging hardware and ropes? Are our dead-eye slings or round slings long enough for the potential size picks we plan on taking? Is there room in a rigging system to inject more rope, or more friction points that may help in dissipating forces better throughout the architecture of the tree. Will the tree’s architecture be able to withstand the amount of force a rigging system will exert on it? These questions can all start to be answered by accurate measurement.

Thinking about measurement in tree rigging operations should play a vital role in our planning as arborists. Careful and detailed measurement is the key in unlocking our understanding of safe and efficient rigging. To reiterate Harrington’s claim, in order to control something, we must be able to accurately measure something. This leads to a more thorough understanding of the systems we are dealing with as climbing and rigging arborists. And will inherently lead to better improvements in the future.