Awards

 

GC Awards For Innovation: Government to Business

The Forestry Commission's efforts to roll back the paperwork tide through its e-Business for Forestry package won it the Government to Business award in this year's prestigious Government Computing Awards for Innovation. These are the UK's premier awards recognising the people and projects behind the best in public-sector technology.

E-Business for Forestry is an integrated, three-part, electronic package that is revolutionising the sale and haulage of timber and the payment of contractors. It is slashing transaction times and paperwork, reducing errors, increasing flexibility, and reining back on time-consuming travel.

The first component is electronic sales. In the old days, timber sales were conducted by paper tenders or manual auctions. Now, most of it can be done without either party leaving the office, and with hardly a sheet of paper being printed or posted. Buyers receive automatic email notification of timber sales. The parties can exchange all the necessary documents by email, or download them from the Internet. The documents can be filled in on line, with the software minimising mistakes. Finally, buyers can lodge their bids by e-mail, and successful bidders can extract all contract documentation electronically.

The second component is data exchange. This uses the new Electronic Forest Industries Data Standards (eFIDS), which the Commission developed in consultation with customers, to standardise the electronic documents and formats in which business information is exchanged between forest businesses.

Information exchanged between parties to a timber sale no longer has to be manually entered into recipients’ systems; by using uniform document types and data formats across the industry, the data can go straight into them. This enables rapid and efficient timber dispatching, invoicing and payment, and exchange of stock, loading and weights information, all with fewer errors.

The third and newest part of the e-Business for Forestry package is dispatch authorisation by mobile phone. By keying into the Commission’s dispatch systems from their mobile phones at any hour of the day, lorry drivers can automatically receive PIN numbers authorising them to uplift the logs that they or their employer is contracted to haul. The system preserves timber security (i.e. it makes it difficult for anyone with a lorry to fraudulently gain authorisation to uplift logs), while increasing the haulier’s flexibility.

Waste Management at Nant Yr Arian 

The Commission has scooped a major environmental award for the way it manages waste at its popular new visitor centre in Nant yr Arian, near Aberystwyth.

The prestigious Wales Business and Sustainability Awards recognised the efforts of 16 companies and organisations from all over Wales who have all demonstrated a commitment to take care of their environment and have realised benefits as a result.

Andrew Davies, Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, gave the opening address at the awards, which are supported by the Welsh Assembly Government, private and public sector sponsors and managed by ARENA Network, which provides support to organisations on environmental issues.

The Nant yr Arian centre caught the judges' eye for its ground-breaking sustainable features, which include a "living green roof", collection of rainwater which is re-used for flushing the toilets and for the bikewash, the use of recycled newspaper as insulation, a composting toilet system and a wood fuel heating system.

Huntly Peregrine Watch

Feathers are fluttering in the North East after Peregrine Wild Watch, located at Bin Quarry but Huntly, was named as one of Scotland's Top Visitor Attractions at the 2006 Scottish Thistle Awards. Excellence in service, hospitality and customer care in Scotland's tourism industry has been recognised by the prestigious Thistle Awards for 15 years. This year's awards ceremony took place on 27 October 2006 in Edinburgh when representatives of the Huntly Peregrine Wild Watch were thrilled to collect the award: Customer Care - Visitor Attraction of the Year. It was deemed that the Wild Watch attraction had exceeded customer expectations, making a stay or visit more memorable.

Huntly Peregrine Wild Watch is run by Forestry Commission Scotland with both conservation and education as its dual role. Essentially a bird-watching hide, it offers visitors the opportunity to watch peregrines as they hatch and rear their young, through to flight and hunt training. Between April and August 2006, over 6000 locals and tourists to the area visited the hide to marvel at the birds nurturing their young.

Afan Woodland Amphitheatre

An outdoor woodland amphitheatre carved out of the natural environment in a forest glade has won a major landscape award. Forestry Commission Wales asked landscape construction company Afan Landscapes to build the 200-seater amphitheatre, called Theatr Tymaen, in the heart of Afan Forest Park to entice more people to experience the beauty of the woods around them. FC Wales Community Programme Manager for South Wales, Peter Cloke, attended the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI) National Landscape Awards in the plush surroundings of the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane, London recently to collect the prestigious award.

The theatre is licensed for a wide variety of entertainment including theatre, live music and dance and has proved immensely popular since it opened in April 2006. It is ideal for concerts, theatrical performances, story telling, corporate events, product launches and workshops, and has also been used for church services, an arts festival and a woodland festival.

Salcey Tree Top trail

An innovative structure that allows visitors a bird’s eye view of Northamptonshire’s ancient woodland at Salcey Forest has scooped a top environmental design award.

The Tree Top Trail, designed by the Forestry Commission’s Forestry Civil Engineering team, has won the British Construction Industry Environment Award at a ceremony on 26 October, 2006. The British Construction Industry Awards were jointly sponsored by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC); the environment award was sponsored by Atkins.

The judges described the Tree Top Trail as: “delightful and useable” and “a great eco-project, which has drawn crowds of enthusiastic visitors”. They praised the fact that the project uses "locally sourced timber, and gives children and adults alike a completely new experience of trees and forest”

The trail was also shortlisted for the Small Civil Engineering Project Award and for the Prime Minister’s Award for Better Public Buildings.