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One goal of the company’s new training program is to support internal career advancement for field staff.

You won’t find it written elsewhere this way exactly, but one of the strengths of the 2,500-plus-employee SavATree is organic growth, and one of the building blocks of that growth is its training program, according to company officials. And one of the newer training offerings is its Tree Climber Education Series.

For the record, SavATree, an accredited, 40-year TCIA member company headquartered in Bedford Hills, New York, is a growing, national tree, shrub and lawn-care business “that provides landscape stewardship to residential, commercial and municipal properties.” The company name is tied to the founding desire for tree preservation and environmental care around the time of the gypsy-moth caterpillar invasion in the late 1970s, essentially connecting people and nature and a philosophy of doing good and doing well. SavATree defines itself.

Fast forward to 2025. Today, SavATree operates in more than 40 states and British Columbia, with some intriguing add-on missions, including deer deterrence, tick management and even holiday lighting. Yet, the original philosophy of SavATree, as stated above, remains the core mission.

SavATree is committed to providing opportunities for rigorous training, continuous instruction and professional certification. All photos courtesy of SavATree.

Professional development
The company boasts nearly two-thirds of its employee base as on-site arborists or specialists, and, again quoting from the company website profile, SavATree is “committed to recruiting top professionals in the industry and providing opportunities for rigorous training, continuous instruction and certification in the most progressive methods used to preserve the safety and health of trees.”

That’s where the still relatively new Tree Climber Education Series (TCES) comes in.

“The Tree Climber Education Series consists of three progressive levels dubbed Delta, Beta and Alpha,” says Mike Tilford, director of tree care for the company. “TCES is a skills-based training provided in a controlled environment outside of the pressures of production requirements. This program was developed by Jamie Chambrelli, eastern regional skills trainer, to run in addition to current on-the-job training programs. This is not a replacement for district-trainer roles, it is facilitated by the trainer group.”

Tilford is an ISA Certified Arborist, municipal specialist and tree climber, and also a TCIA Certified Treecare Safety Professional (CTSP). He serves as the International Tree Climbing Championship (ITCC) head technician, is a recently elected director at large on the TCIA Board of Directors, presents and trains at regional conferences and is a voting member of the Z133 committee. So he takes training quite seriously.

He continues, “The corporate safety and skills team recently completed programming for the third level of the series, the Alpha program,” (described below). He reveals, “The program has proven successful, and we plan to expand it.”

Alpha program
Tilford says the goals of the Alpha program are twofold.

“First,” he says, “is to educate enrolled employees on the SavATree safety policy and procedures, including ANSI Z133 & ANSI A300 standards. The objectives are to increase critical thinking and situational awareness to reduce incidents in the field, and also to increase productivity via improved staff skills and competency.

“The second goal is to support and promote internal career advancement for field staff,” Tilford states. He explains that from a strategic standpoint, “The objectives of that goal are to increase production-staff retention, increase self-directed-advancement-program (SDAP) results and lower direct labor costs by leveraging internal growth over outside hiring.”

“We see safety as preservation of value, and nothing is more important to SavATree than our people,” says Mike Tilford.

As Tilford explains, “The Alpha program is a five-day, one-working-week program that enrolls vetted, intermediate climbing arborists and progresses them to a higher skill level with a crew-leader specialty rating by their program completion. Curriculum begins with advanced climbing skills and advanced rigging skills, including safety-
and-compliance topics such as PPE and job-site safety.”

Continuing, he says, “As the program progresses, attendees are introduced to more academic concepts, including tree mechanics, proper tree pruning and tree-removal techniques utilizing technical rigging. Safety-and-compliance education is covered throughout the program, and the program concludes with testing. SDAP levels will be updated via proprietary learning-
management-system software.”

Tilford says, “Attendees are vetted for the program according to specific requirements – a minimum level within our self-directed advancement program, recommendation to the program by either a branch manager or operations manager and six months minimum of production-
tree-climbing experience.”

Assessing success
In assessing the success of the training program, now in its second year, Tilford says that about 100 employees have successfully completed the phases of the program. One noteworthy result, he says, is that, “It has been incredibly effective with respect to improving safety skills and employee engagement with the company objectives and processes. We see safety as preservation of value, and nothing is more important to SavATree than our people.

“Right now, a major objective is to get as many people as we can into the program,” he adds.

“One of the major benefits of a program like this is its effectiveness,” Tilford says. “Because there are no consequences of failure in the controlled learning environment, trainees are empowered to master new skills. Team members complete the program with a positive attitude and can better apply the advanced skills they learned in real-world scenarios.”

Rick Howland is a veteran newspaper reporter and editor, former national magazine owner and editor and retired international consultant in public relations, advertising, merchandising and training. He lives in the upper Hudson River Valley of New York.