Timothy M. Walsh, CTSP.

Like most of us, I didn’t enter arboriculture chasing credentials. I entered because I loved the work: the pace, the responsibility, the crews and the satisfaction of doing difficult work well. But over time, safety stopped being something we “covered” and became something we led.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP) program through the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA). For me, this anniversary is deeply personal. CTSP has shaped not only my career, but also the broader safety culture of our profession.

In the early 2000s, safety in many tree care operations was driven by experience, good intentions and compliance. We followed ANSI Z133. We referenced OSHA. We held tailgate meetings. We responded when something went wrong.

What CTSP did was formalize safety leadership within arboriculture.

It recognized that safety is not a secondary duty or a checklist; it is a discipline. It requires structure, communication skills, coaching ability and credibility. It demands that leaders understand both hazard control and human behavior.

I was extremely fortunate to be in the very first CTSP cohort back in July 2006. As fate would have it, I obtained CTSP certification #00001. This number represents more than the first of many thousands to earn this credential. It was the beginning of a paradigm shift for me. Over time, it became clear that the real value of CTSP was not the number on a certificate. It was the consistency it introduced into our industry.

Teaching – and learning

For a little more than 10 years, I had the privilege of teaching the safety portion of the CTSP program. Those years were formative, not only for the participants, but also for me.

Every class brought together owners, supervisors, municipal leaders, utility vegetation management professionals and new safety coordinators. Some arrived confident. Others arrived uncertain. Many were stepping into formal safety leadership roles for the first time.

We talked about electrical exposure, rigging failures, struck-by hazards, traffic-control setups and chain-saw positioning.

But the deeper conversations were always about influence. How do you coach without alienating? How do you correct behavior while preserving dignity? How do you build accountability without creating fear? How do you make job briefings meaningful instead of routine?

Teaching CTSP reinforced something I still believe in today: safety leadership is not about authority, it’s about trust.

I watched participants leave class and return to their companies with structure and confidence. They improved tailgate meetings. They strengthened investigations. They began coaching crew leaders instead of simply auditing them.

That ripple effect has been the true legacy of CTSP.

From instruction to leadership

Today, as vice president of safety & training for the Townsend Company, I lead safety strategy across a large, multi-brand organization operating in complex, high-hazard environments. Our teams perform residential tree care, utility vegetation management, storm response, pipeline ROW management, utility construction and mechanized operations across multiple states.

The lessons reinforced through CTSP are foundational to how I approach this role. Safety is not a department. It is not a metric. It is not a compliance binder on a shelf.

It is a leadership system.

At Townsend, that means investing in supervisor development, structured field evaluations, serious-injury prevention strategies, meaningful job briefings and continuous learning. It means building capacity, not simply controlling risk.

The discipline and credibility that CTSP helped establish have carried forward into executive conversations, client discussions and industry collaboration. It has provided a common language across operations, safety, training and leadership teams.  Conversations are now grounded in management commitment and employee involvement, worksite analysis, hazard prevention and control and learning and improvement. We speak in terms of developing a safety culture, conducting job hazard analyses (JHAs), strengthening hazard identification, improving accountability systems, reinforcing prework site inspections and job briefings, encouraging near-miss reporting and building a network of safety “coaches” rather than safety “police.”

When those concepts mean the same thing to a crew leader, a safety manager and an executive, alignment becomes much easier.

The cultural shift we’ve witnessed

The tree care profession in 2026 is not what it was in 2006.

We are more structured. We are more data informed. We are more transparent about high-consequence risk. We are less tolerant of “We’ve always done it like this.”

Twenty years ago, safety conversations often centered on injury rates and regulatory compliance. Today, we talk about serious injury and fatality (SIF) exposure, energy-based hazards and leading indicators. We could have another series of articles on “leading” indicators, but for now, a few examples to get us all thinking about it include:

• High-energy hazards identified.
• Effective controls verified.
• Learning teams’ outcomes that change the system.

We’ve moved from reacting to incidents to designing systems. We’ve moved from blaming individuals to strengthening processes. We’ve moved from “be careful” to “let’s understand the energy in this task.”

CTSP helped lay the groundwork for that shift by professionalizing safety leadership within arboriculture.

Looking ahead: Aligning with HOP and Safety Differently

As CTSP moves beyond its 20-year mark, it stands at another important inflection point.

The fundamentals of hazard recognition, regulatory awareness and structured leadership remain essential. But the profession is progressing, and so is safety science.

Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) principles, as Dr. Todd Conklin mentions in the “Do Safety Differently” context, teach us that:

• Human error is normal.
• Blame fixes nothing.
• Learning is vital.
• Context drives behavior.
• How we respond to failure matters.

Safety Differently concepts additionally reinforce that:

• Safety is not the absence of accidents; it is the presence of capacity.
• Workers are not the problem; they are the solution.
• Investigations should start with “what failed,” not “who failed.”
• Most of the “safety data” we track is just noise.

In a profession like ours, where crews operate in dynamic environments with variable terrain, energized conductors, traffic exposure and changing weather, understanding human performance is critical.

As CTSP grows in its next two decades, aligning with HOP and Safety Differently principles is not a departure from its mission. It is a natural progression.

It strengthens what CTSP already does well: develop leaders.

Not leaders who simply enforce rules, but leaders who understand systems, coach effectively and create environments where speaking up is expected.

What CTSP represents today

When someone earns CTSP today, it represents more than passing a course.

It represents:

• Professional credibility.
• Responsibility.
• Influence.
• Commitment to continuous improvement.

It signals to clients, insurers and industry partners that safety leadership in tree care is specialized and intentional.

For me, teaching the safety portion of CTSP for more than a decade remains one of the most meaningful chapters of my career. It shaped how I view leadership. It shaped how I build systems. It shaped how I approach executive decision-making today.

Certification #00001 was a milestone for me!

But the real achievement belongs to the thousands of CTSP holders who elevate our profession daily.

Conclusion

At its core, the goal has never changed: Everyone goes home safely at the end of every day.

Twenty years of CTSP have helped move our industry closer to that outcome, not through slogans, but through structure and leadership.

As vice president of safety & training at Townsend, I see the daily impact of disciplined safety leadership across crews, supervisors and operations managers. And I see the opportunity ahead.

The first 20 years built the framework.

The next 20 years can deepen our understanding, integrating modern safety science, strengthening system design and continuing to elevate leadership across arboriculture.

If CTSP continues to honor its foundation while embracing HOP and Safety Differently principles, it will remain one of the most important drivers of safety culture in our profession.

That is something worth celebrating.

Timothy M. Walsh, CTSP, is vice president, safety & training, with The Townsend Company LLC, a dual-accredited, 48-year TCIA member company based in Muncie, Indiana. He holds two master’s degrees and is working on his doctorate. He has served as a voting member of the ASC Z133 and serves on the Utility Arborist Association as past president, and on the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) safety workgroup.