Hosting a Jobsite Visit

[PAFaller]

My wife is the agriculture teacher and FFA adviser at the local high school. She wants to bring her students out to my job site, seeing as I am actually working pretty close for the next couple months. I have no problem hosting them, and think its good for them to see what goes in to a logging job, but what do I need liability wise? These are mostly farm and agriculture background kids who work on farms, show livestock at the fair and that sort of thing, but I want to make sure nothing happens. Last thing I need is some kid tripping over a stump and suing me because they got a splinter. My wife is looking into it from the school side, and thinks everything should be ok ifs its a school covered field trip and they have a parental signed form, but I'm just double checking. Anyone here ever host a group  on a job or at their mill? Thanks in advance, Greg

[Autocar]

Ive done a number of school programs at the mill and in the woods. Not sure how the law is but the school always asked me and I never charged a fee  so I felt it was a school function and left it go at that. Maybe now a days this might not be a smart move when we did it kids still knew the difference between a acorn and a hickory nut. The last few we did I felt like it wasn't very appreciated by the children. One boy asked me how much longer it was and I asked himif he was getting tired and he said No I Don't Like Getting My Tennis Shoes Muddy  ;D  And the last time at the mill we played the star spangled banner and two boys were slapping each other like one had a bug on him. So when the banner ended I said I was going to tell you about sawmills but instead Iam going to give you my American Speech and went on to tell them how many mem and women died on D Day and Viet Nam and I thank God Iam a American citizen and what it took for our feedom. Not sure if they went away learning anything but all a fellow can do is try. Have a great day Bill

[bill m]

I have hosted site visits at some of my logging jobs and will be doing another in the next few weeks. The school is an agriculture/vocational school and the students need permission slips from parents. Nothing I have to do, the school handles everything.

[Gary_C]

I would say the main thing you have to do is clearly define the safe places the visitors can go and where they cannot go. Probably a good idea to have a safety person to watch over the group so you can talk to the group and not worry about keeping track of everyone.

And make sure all employees are following the safety rules.  :

[Bandmill Bandit]

I have done 2 IA class field trip Demos to my Mill site.

I did a class room visit first with a pictures/video of the site to explain where they could stand while the equipment was operating. I then went through the sawing process and types of sawing and then gave the kids pictures and dimensions of the 2 logs that I would be sawing and asked them to calculate yields and give them to the teacher before the field day.  I then asked that there be one teacher/supervisor present for each 4 kids and no more then 12 kids at a time.

I asked the teachers to come out to the site with out kids a day or 2 before the field day so they would be familiar  with the process and the safety issues. This turned out to be very helpful as they went back to school with that info which they passed on to the kids which resulted in the kids arriving on site aware of what would be happening and with some very good questions.





A couple of Pics of the Thankyou gift from one of the classes.

I gave each class half the wood I cut from the 2 logs that I cut with them on site and challenged them to create some thing use full and beautiful for someone/place special. The logs came from the schools property as a result of blow down.

This box was a demo of basic box construction by the teacher and apparently there are few more projects under way that will be coming my way before the end of the semester.

I enjoyed it and a lot of the kids say hi every week in church now. In a 1200 member church that is pretty significant.

As you can see the box got commandeered before I even saw it.

[wwsjr]

The local community college instructor brings her class to my mill each semester. She has a different group each semester. Several individual students have called me and come back later to learn more. She tests the class on information I cover during their visit. The school provides the van for transportation and is a sponsored field trip. 

[BARPINCHER]

I would give each a JRED saw from the school with the throttle taped wide open and a square filed chain and tell them to go have fun and don't bust up any hemlock and try not to dump anything too big on the JACK or they will forfeit their lunch to you.

[SPIKER]

back when I was in FFA we went to a few places for some Look-N-Learn lessons.   One place had a small spread of tools, samples of the various market trees (cookies & rough sawn & Planed), small wood species cubes, leaves branches ect. for ID with some current pricing paid/value of a log as well if I remember correctly it was by far the best one.   Also they had sawdust in/on ground around the working / Demo area where us bystanders were supposed to stay safe at...

someone mentioned letting the teacher know what the kids should be wearing for the day, proper coat/boots safety glasses ect...

mark