Tree dossier for a damage claim: what to show

The situation: a tree on the road, a letter on your desk

There was a storm last night. At a quarter past six the report comes in: a beech lies across the carriageway, with its crown on a parked car. Nobody injured. The road authority closes the street, the contractor comes to saw.

A few days later the notice of liability is there. The insurer of the car's owner asks two questions, and they are always the same two. Was this tree inspected? And did the municipality do anything with what was found then?

Whether the municipality is liable depends on the answer. The owner of a tree is liable if they breached their duty of care, not because the tree came down. How that works in Dutch law is in the articles on storm damage by trees and the duty of care for trees. This scenario is about the moment after that: you have to show it, and for this one tree. In IDA Bomen every tree has a tree dossier for that, with a timeline you export as a PDF.

What you have to show for a damage claim

Nobody asks for your management plan. The questions are about one tree, and they are concrete.

The inspections

When the tree was inspected, by whom, and what the outcome was: the Veiligheidsklasse (safety class), the defects, the advice.

The follow-up

Was anything done with that advice? A pruning, a closer examination, a reassessment, with the date and who carried it out.

The decisions

If a tree with a defect was left standing: who decided that, when, and on what basis.

The picture

Photos from that time. A photo of a sound stem base from two years ago says more than a tick in a box.

The provenance

Where each piece of data comes from, and whether it was changed afterwards. A dossier put together after the incident convinces less than a dossier that was already there.

All of that together is called a tree dossier (boomdossier), in Dutch practice also known as a boompaspoort, a tree passport: everything you know about one tree and have done to it, in order of time.

Where the searching starts

With most tree managers that dossier does exist, but not in one place. The last inspection is in the management system or in a spreadsheet. The inspection before that was in the previous contractor's file. The photos are on a shared drive, in a folder made by a colleague who no longer works there. That pruning was done shows from an invoice, but not which tree. And why the tree was allowed to stay after the reassessment was known to the person who decided it.

Putting it together then takes days. In those days the alderman phones, and you do not yet know whether what you find will help the municipality. The greatest risk is not that the work was not done. It is that it was done and you cannot show it.

The tree dossier in IDA

In IDA you look up the tree on the map or by number and open its dossier. The Waarden tab (values) shows what is known about the tree now, grouped the way your inspectors know it from the BVC (boomveiligheidscontrole, the Dutch tree safety inspection). Under each value is the source, with the date: from the original import, from an inspection, or from a field observation that a tree manager approved. The history of a value shows who recorded it.

The Tijdlijn tab (timeline) is the story of the tree. Every inspection, every pruning and every report is in it, with the type, who recorded it, the project, the date and the time, and the values that were filled in then. The photos sit with the record they belong to, because the inspector took them at the tree, in the form.

With Exporteer PDF (export PDF) you turn it into one document: the tree on the aerial photo, all records in order with who carried them out, the photos and the approved deviations. That is what you send to the insurer.

Why this dossier convinces

The difference from a dossier put together afterwards is in three things.

It was recorded at the moment itself. The inspector filled in the form at the tree, on their phone. Date and time come from the record, not from the person who puts the dossier together.

Every change has a name. Whoever changes a value is shown with it. A deviation reported by a contractor enters the inventory only after a tree manager has reviewed it, and that review is in the timeline as well. If the follow-up question is who let the tree stand after the reassessment, the dossier shows which inspector assessed it and what advice they gave.

It is about this tree. Not about the policy, not about the district. An insurer's questions are about one tree, and so is the answer.

The rest of the day

The claim is not the only thing. The fallen tree has to come out of the inventory, a new tree takes its place, and you want to know whether the trees next to it came through the storm well. In IDA you select the avenue on the map and turn it into a project for an extra inspection. The crew checks the trees with the form on the phone, and what they find is in every dossier the same day. Which trees you check first after a storm, you decide with the risk score per tree.

If a councillor asks a month later what was inspected after the storm, you open that project on the map. Every tree with the outcome, a date and photos.

See a tree dossier in a demo