Tree Surgeon Risk Assessment Template: AI Drafts, You Sign Off

Yes, AI can draft the layout, a hazard list and first-pass controls from your site notes, but it cannot see the site. A competent person must visit, add the hazards the notes missed, confirm each control is real and in place, brief the crew and sign. Treat the draft as a starting point, not a safety document.

This is the risk assessment of the work: climbing, cutting, rigging, traffic. It is not the assessment of the tree itself, meaning how likely it is to fail and what it would hit, which is an arborist's report and a different document. Nothing here is compliance advice. What must be written, by whom and in what form depends on where you work, how many people you employ and the equipment you use, so check the rules that apply to you or ask a qualified safety adviser.

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The hazard lists AI writes are usually plausible and often incomplete in the one place that matters, the specifics of this site. A generic draft will list working at height and chainsaws and miss the service cable crossing the back garden. The checklist below is built to catch that kind of gap.

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RAMS, JHA, work plan: what the document is called

The same paperwork goes by several names. "RAMS" stands for risk assessment and method statement. "Job hazard analysis" (JHA) or "job safety analysis" is the term used in other places, and "work plan" or "safe system of work" is common in small firms. The pieces are the same: a risk assessment lists the hazards, who could be harmed, the controls and a rating, and a method statement says how the job will run, in what order, with what equipment, who does what, and what happens in an emergency.

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One document can do both jobs on a small tree job. If you want the generic version first, how to draft risk assessments with AI and what a human must check covers the basics, and a job hazard analysis template, one per job type shows the per-job approach. This tutorial stays with tree work.

What AI is good for here, and what it must never do

The left column is the one worth building a routine around. Controls in the draft should be written from the hierarchy of controls, which occupational-safety guidance orders from most to least effective: eliminate the hazard, substitute something safer, use engineering controls, use administrative controls such as procedures and training, and rely on personal protective equipment last. AI drafts tend to land on the last two. Part of your review is pushing each control up that ladder where you can, for example by using a crane or platform to remove the need to climb a dead stem.

The hazard checklist: what a draft says and what you verify

Each group below has two parts. "A draft usually says" is the vague line AI tends to produce. "Verify on site" is what the competent person actually checks before signing. Use the list as a prompt for your own hazard library, and add to it after every job.

Working at height and climbing

A draft usually says: "Climbers must use appropriate fall protection and be trained."

• Climbing equipment has been inspected before use, and anything damaged or doubtful is out of service.
• The climber is secured with a second means of attachment while working aloft, and stays secured from ascent until back on the ground, as your standard requires.
• The climber has inspected the tree and chosen the access route and anchor points, not the person who wrote the draft.
• If the tree is dead, decayed or storm-damaged, the person who would climb it has decided whether climbing is safe at all, or whether a platform or crane is needed instead.
• Any aerial platform has a trained operator and firm ground, with mats where the lawn is soft.

Chainsaws and hand tools

A draft usually says: "Operators must wear PPE. Maintain chainsaws."

• PPE is named item by item (helmet, eye and ear protection, cut-resistant leg protection, gloves, boots) and present for every cutter on the day.
• Operators are trained for the type of saw and the job, aloft or on the ground.
• Saws are checked at the start of the day, chain brake included, and fuel is handled away from ignition sources.
• The plan says who is within sight or call of the person cutting, and what happens if the only other person is the one in the tree.
• A first-aid kit suited to serious cuts is on site, with someone trained to use it.

Rigging, lowering and felling

A draft usually says: "Rigging to be carried out by competent persons using appropriate equipment."

• The rigging plan names the anchor points, the lowering device and who controls the load, and the heaviest pieces have estimated weights.
• Rigging kit is rated for the loads, with the rating taken from the maker's markings and not from the draft.
• The drop zone is marked and cleared before any cut, and nobody enters it while a piece is in the air.
• For felling, the person cutting has agreed the lean, defects, wind, escape route and hinge plan, and has a separate plan for any tree that hangs up.
• Signals or radio calls are agreed at the briefing, including what "stop" means and who may call it.
• Storm-damaged or tensioned trees have their own plan, because they can move unpredictably when cut.

Overhead lines and underground services

A draft usually says: "Be aware of overhead cables and keep a safe distance."

• Every line and cable in or near the tree is in your notes and photographed. The AI cannot know they are there.
• All lines are treated as live. The plan says whether the work can be done clear of them, or whether the utility must isolate or make safe first.
• Required distances come from your utility or the rules that apply to you and depend on voltage, so no number from a draft is acceptable.
• If a tree, rope or machine touches a line, the plan says nobody approaches until the utility confirms it is safe.
• Underground services are checked before any ground work, stump grinding or ground anchors.

Chippers and stump grinders

A draft usually says: "Operators must be trained in the use of the chipper."

• The operator feeds from the side, not directly in front of the opening, and wears no loose clothing or jewellery that could snag.
• Ropes stay clear of the feed opening, and nobody wears a rope or lanyard near it.
• The emergency stop or trip bar is tested at the start of the day.
• Stump grinding has an exclusion zone for thrown debris, a check for buried services, and ear and eye protection.

Traffic, public and neighbours

A draft usually says: "Keep the public away from the work area."

• The plan shows where the public can pass: a footpath behind the fence, a lane, a neighbour's garden.
• The exclusion zone is marked with barriers or cones and signs, and a named person watches it.
• Work pauses when somebody approaches, and the team knows who calls the pause.
• If the road or pavement is affected, any permit or traffic management the local rules require is arranged before the day.
• Neighbours and the customer's household know what is happening and where not to go.

Ground, weather and the people doing the work

A draft usually says: "Check the weather forecast."

• The forecast is checked on the morning, and a stop-work trigger for wind, lightning, ice, heavy rain or heat is written into the plan. The limit is for the competent person and your procedures to set, not the draft.
• Ground conditions are checked: wet lawn, slopes, soft ground under platform or crane supports.
• Heat, fatigue and manual handling are covered, with shade, drinking water, breaks and shared carries.
• Plants and animals are checked for, such as wasp or bird nests in the crown.

Emergency and rescue

A draft usually says: "First aid kit available. Call emergency services if needed."

• A named person can carry out an aerial rescue, rescue kit is on site, and everyone knows where it is.
• The plan says who calls the emergency services, who gives first aid and who meets the ambulance.
• The site address and the best access route are written on the plan, and mobile signal has been checked.
• The crew has practised the rescue recently enough to meet your standard, and it has been briefed again for this site.

Worked example: a dismantle beside a house, a footpath and a cable

Here is an illustrative job. A sycamore about 20 m tall stands in a rear garden, 5 m from the house and 4 m from a fence that backs onto a public footpath. A service cable crosses the garden at about 6 m height, 4 m from the trunk. The lawn is wet and the side passage is only 90 cm wide. The crew is a climber, a ground worker and a team leader trained in aerial rescue, with a chipper in the lane at the back. The rating uses a simple scale: likelihood 1 (rare) to 5 (almost certain) times severity 1 (minor) to 5 (fatal or life-changing). Ratings of 1 to 4 are low, 5 to 9 medium, 10 to 14 high and 15 to 25 very high, and any residual rating of 10 or more means stop and re-plan. The scale and bands are examples; use your own.

The highest residual rating is 8, so the plan can proceed. The interesting number is the 10 on the service cable before controls. It is one of the least likely hazards on the page, but its severity is the maximum, so it is the one a competent person would most want a second pair of eyes on. That is why the control is not "keep a safe distance": it is a sequence, a marked photo and a rule about who confirms what.

The prompt, the draft and the red-pen edits

This is the kind of prompt that works. It tells the assistant the draft is not final, asks for the hierarchy, forbids numbers and legal references, and demands a list of hazards the notes don't mention.

You are helping a tree surgery firm draft a job risk assessment from site notes. A competent person will review and sign it, so do not present anything as final.
Output a table: Hazard | Who could be harmed | Controls (highest level of the hierarchy first: eliminate, substitute, engineering, administrative, PPE last) | Likelihood 1-5 | Severity 1-5 | Rating.
Use only hazards and facts in my notes, plus a short list titled "Hazards to check on site that my notes do not mention". Do not cite laws, standards or regulators. Do not state safe distances, wind limits, load limits or equipment ratings: write [competent person to set] instead.

SITE NOTES
Job ref T-0521. Sycamore, about 20 m, rear garden, 5 m from the house and 4 m from a fence backing onto a public footpath. Service cable crosses the garden at about 6 m height, 4 m from the trunk. Wet lawn, side passage only 90 cm wide. Plan: sectional dismantle; climber, ground worker and team leader; chipper in the lane at the back.

An illustrative excerpt of the answer, with the problems you should expect:

HAZARDS TO CHECK ON SITE THAT THE NOTES DO NOT MENTION
- Dead or decayed wood in the crown; decay at the base
- Underground services near the work area
- Wasp or bird nests in the tree
- Neighbouring properties and their occupants

RISK TABLE (excerpt)
Working at height | Climber | Ensure appropriate fall protection is used | 3 | 5 | 15
Chainsaw use | Climber, ground crew | Ensure PPE is worn; maintain equipment | 3 | 4 | 12
Overhead cable | All | Keep a safe distance of [competent person to set] | 2 | 5 | 10
Public footpath | Public | Keep the public away | 2 | 4 | 8
Weather | All | Check the weather forecast | 3 | 4 | 12

That draft is a useful skeleton and not much more. The red-pen pass changes every control, as the table shows.

Two further habits improve every draft. Paste your own master hazard list above the site notes, so the AI starts from your hazards and not generic ones. And ask it for a short list of questions it needs answered, then answer them before it drafts.

Sign-off steps, in order

A competent person, for this purpose, is someone with the training, experience and authority to spot the hazards of this kind of work, choose the controls and stop the job. In a small firm that is often the owner or the team leader, and for a specific task such as a crane lift or an aerial rescue it may be a different named person. Legal definitions differ by place, so check yours. The steps:

1. Visit first. The competent person, or someone reporting to them with photos and measurements, sees the site before any drafting.
2. Collect notes in a fixed format: trees, services, access, public, neighbours, weather and ground.
3. Draft with AI from your hazard library and the notes, with names and addresses removed.
4. Review line by line. The competent person edits every control so it matches the equipment and people on the job.
5. Add what AI cannot know: the rescue plan with names, stop-work triggers, utility arrangements, exclusion zone layout.
6. Check against the standard or rules that apply to you, or ask your safety adviser.
7. Sign and date, with name and role. The signature should mean "I have checked this against the site and the crew."
8. Brief the crew. They read it, ask questions and sign on.
9. Review on the day whenever something changes, and record the change.
10. Close out: note any near miss and update the hazard library.

A toolbox talk or briefing sheet built from the signed document is a sensible AI job, because it only rewrites text a person has already approved. The limits of that are covered in whether AI can write toolbox talks and what a competent person must check.

Changing the plan during the job

The signed assessment describes the plan for the site as it looked in the morning. Weather turns, a branch turns out to be hollow, a neighbour lets a dog into the garden, a piece weighs more than estimated. Agree at the briefing that any crew member can call a stop, that the competent person decides whether to resume, and that a changed method means the plan is amended and the crew told. Short notes beat long ones: a line added to the sheet, initialled and timed, is better evidence of a live process than a perfect document nobody revisited.

Keeping client details and drafts tidy

You do not need a customer's name, address or photos to draft a risk assessment. Use a job reference and a general description of the site. Keep three versions of each document: the AI draft, the edited version and the signed one, so you can see what the competent person changed. Over time those differences become your best training material, and a record of where drafts fall short. If the assistant offers to cite a regulation, ask it to leave a placeholder instead and look the reference up yourself.

The same discipline applies if you also write RAMS for other trades. Two sibling tutorials show the sign-off logic for different work: who must sign electrical RAMS and a roofing RAMS template with AI drafts. The tree-specific part is that the hazards move with the weather and the tree, so a plan written on Monday for Thursday needs a fresh look on Thursday.

When the draft is not enough

Some jobs need more than a tidy template and a signature, and the plan should say so. Stop and ask for specialist input when any of these apply:

• A tree or branch is in contact with, or close to, an energised line.
• The tree is storm-damaged, hung up or under tension.
• A crane lift passes over a house, a road or people, or the load is close to the crane's limit.
• The climber is not comfortable with the tree, the method or the rescue arrangements.
• The ground, slope or water makes platform or crane supports uncertain.
• Your notes include the words "not sure what that is".

A person who knows the tree should look at the last one. If the issue is the tree's condition, as opposed to the work, that becomes the arborist's report: what AI can and can't do in an arborist report explains where the line sits. The draft only helps once the hard question has an owner.

Questions about AI and tree work risk assessments

Can one assessment cover a week of similar jobs?

A generic assessment can cover the routine hazards of one kind of work, such as pruning small garden trees, but every site still needs its own check of access, services, the public and the trees themselves. A common pattern is a generic assessment plus a one-page site sheet, completed and signed on the day.

Can I paste a customer's address into ChatGPT or Claude?

Avoid it. Use a job reference and describe the site in general terms, such as 'rear garden, footpath behind the fence'. You do not need names or addresses for a draft, and consumer plans may use chats for training unless you switch that off in the privacy settings.

Does using AI change who is responsible for the assessment?

No. The person who signs it, and the business they sign for, stay responsible for what it says and for the work matching it. The AI draft is a typing aid. Keeping the draft, the edited version and the signed copy shows what the competent person checked and changed.

How often should the assessment be reviewed?

Review it whenever something changes on the job: weather, a new hazard, a change of method, a near miss. Also review your master hazard list after each job or at set intervals, so lessons from one site improve the next draft.

Further reads

• Tree Service Contract With AI: Access, Damage and Debris Clauses to Verify — Access, damage and debris terms to agree before work starts.
• AI for Tree Services: Seven Jobs to Take Off the Owner's Desk — Seven office jobs a tree firm can hand to AI.
• How to Write a Method Statement for a Small Build, With AI Help — Writing the method statement half of a RAMS pack.
• Tree Service Proposal Template: Commercial and Storm Cleanup Bids With AI — Commercial bids that need a safety section.
• Best AI App for a Construction Company: Logging Near Misses — Logging near misses so the next assessment improves.
• Tree Service Scheduling Software: Can AI Rebook Weather Delays? — Rebooking when wind or rain triggers a stop.
• Lone Worker Risk Assessment for Cleaners: Early Starts and Client Sites — Lone-working assessments, from a different trade.
• Lone Working Policy for Trades Firms: Check-In Rules Drafted With AI — A two-page lone working policy for a small trades firm: tasks needing two people, check-in rules, an escalation ladder and an AI drafting prompt.
• Scaffolding Inspection Records: A Digital Form and AI Summaries — A fourteen-field inspection form, photo rules, an overdue register and a weekly AI summary that never certifies a scaffold.
• Tree Service Estimate Template: Itemise Jobs With AI — A filled-in tree service estimate: removal, crane, chipping, stump grinding and haul-away as separate lines, with exclusions, conditions and a follow-up text.
• AI Voice Assistant for Tree Surgeons: What It Can Book and Quote — What an AI voice assistant can capture, book and quote for a tree surgery firm, plus photo requests, access notes and storm-damage calls.
• Forest School Risk Assessment: Site Checks and Session Plans With AI — How to split forest school risk into a site assessment and per-session checks, with weather triggers, ratios and an AI drafting prompt.
• AI for Nurseries: Drafting Risk Assessments Managers Can Sign Off — How a childcare nursery manager can use AI to draft room and outing risk assessments, then walk the space, verify the rules and sign off.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: general occupational-safety guidance on the hierarchy of controls, and published tree-work safety fact sheets on job briefings, rescue planning, weather stop-work, traffic control and overhead lines, read 1 November 2026. This is not compliance advice.