Forestry Audit Services

Some of the largest forest industry frauds have been committed in the scale house by falsifying the data in some way and directing payments towards the scalers benefit. One of the largest documented frauds in the US was for $6.7 million dollars.

• Scaling is the process of measuring the volume of any wood products delivered to the mill.
• The measurement can be done by weighing the truck or using standard forest metrics to directly measure each tree.
• Each load delivered is recorded on a scale ticket that provides the details to the driver and to the mill who is to be paid for the wood.

How Does a Scale House Audit Work?

• These Audits include observing scaling procedures as wood is delivered, reviewing scaling reports and auditing the inventory procedures.
• Audits include both manned and unmanned facilities.
• Regular scale house audits ensure your company operations are compliant with company policy and procedures.
• A systematic audit process also communicates a great anti-theft and fraud message to all employees and contractors.

The objective of a Harvesting audit is to provide management with assurance that harvesting on their timberland is meeting and surpassing company and environmental guidelines as the harvests are planned, executed and completed.

Areas reviewed include:

• Forest management plans
• Silviculture activities
• Road construction activities
• Fire protection activities
• Site preparation.
• Tree planting
• Merchandizing
• Tract closeout procedures.

How Can We Help?

With years of experience in managing harvesting jobs and conducting comprehensive harvesting audits Dendro Resource Management Inc. is able to provide top-notch service to all its clients throughout the United States. If you are on the lookout for a reputed, reliable, and experienced forestry audit company, get in touch with us today and one of our experts will be there to assist you!

CONTRACTOR RISK ASSESSMENT

Dendro Resource Management, Inc. has perfected a comprehensive contractor risk assessment process to provide our clients with a risk rating for each contractor working.

In the past, contractor risk assessments were accomplished by utilizing a standard set of questions ranging from crew composition to timber security system utilization. Data gathered from the 18 years of conducting this process has been instrumental in creating an objective risk model. DRM partnered with Stang Decision Systems, a company that specializes in decision science technology, to build this risk model and assist DRM in keeping the database objective and learning into the future. As more data is gathered the risk model becomes even better.

Benefits of a Contractor Risk Assessment

• Once the contractors are interviewed the data gathered is entered into the model which in turn generates a risk rating for each contractor.
• That rating is an objective score that simply quantifies the operational risk any contractor brings to your operations.
• Ratings are reported to our clients who can utilize the scores as a tool to assist them in managing risk across all operations.
• This risk model adjusts to account for who is being interviewed, size of the organization, regional differences, crew characteristics and production trends that impact overall risk.
• The risk model “learns as more data is gathered” which continually provides better and more accurate ratings to clients.

How Can Contractor Risk Assessment Help?

Contractor Risk Assessments are an important tool in raising the theft and fraud awareness throughout your operations and is a key component of our theft and fraud deterrence package.

INTERNAL AUDITS

DRM can assist your internal audit department by supplying 32 years of operational forest industry experience. Those years of operational auditing mean we can assist by making the complex forest industry supply chain, wood procurement systems and inventory management processes easy to understand and audit. Hiring a subject matter expert from DRM to supplement your internal audit staff can greatly enhance the internal audit team of any company.

And if your company does not have an internal audit department, DRM can act as your internal audit services company. Services include:

We Act as Your Internal Audit Department

• A review of scale house operations
• An audit of the entire wood procurement department processes
• Policies and Procedures auditing
• Business control environment testing followed by recommendations to enhance any weak controls .

A company’s policies and procedure manual is designed to clearly express the operating parameters for any company. In forest operations, the manual covers everything from contract execution expectations, purchasing limits, expenses account processes and forest practices to be followed. And many other items too numerous to mention here.

A compliance audit is designed to compare and contrast the operating principles in the manual with the actual business practices in the field. When discrepancies are found, the audit report will recommend methods to re-align the manual with current business practices.

Additionally, a compliance audit will communicate to those within the company the importance of the policies while at the same time providing management the assurance that operations are working as designed.

Designed for those with pension funds invested in TIMO’s these audits provide you the investor that timberland operations are being conducted in a way that meets their fiduciary responsibilities.