Forestry

Skogkurs is intended to be the common body for competence in business development and management of forests and other land resources. Through its activities, Skogkurs will contribute to increasing competence among actors in the forestry industry, and disseminate forest and nature knowledge to schools and the public. Skogkurs has 36 member organizations. “Active forestry” is a nationwide offer with courses aimed at forest owners, forestry workers and forestry operators. The courses are also relevant for other groups that use forestry tools, either professionally or in their spare time. The courses provide practical guidance, have a small group size and skilled authorized instructors. These are short, targeted, locally adapted courses that are given close to home or in the workplace. The teaching program “Teach with the Forest” offers lessons from kindergarten to higher learning educator programs.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Food contributes significantly to the financing of the activities. About half of the development projects where Skogkurs has project management are partly funded through one or more of the forestry's own funds. Adult education funding, funding from the Norwegian Environment Agency and project funding from other partners also make important financial contributions to Skogkurs' activities.

The objective of the project is to provide a set of tools adapted to the needs of very small forestry and logging companies. ForLog is a forest site management software connected to a remote database accessible via the web. The software allows structured messages to be sent to field teams (mission orders) and customers (sales slips). A mobile application on a smartphone allows to enter data concerning construction site activities. The service offer is proposed to companies in the form of a subscription.

It is an innovative solution to improve the quality of silviculture and forestry operations accessible to very small, poorly computerized companies, and a solution that enhances the possibilities offered by the web, mobile Internet, computerized mapping.

All operations concerning the commercial (estimates, invoices), administrative (site declarations), operational (site maps, digitisation of exchanges between operators and site managers) and financial (site balance sheets) management of the sites are proposed by ForLog, which is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) adapted to the organisation of very small forest companies. The objective of the tool is to limit the time spent on site management and improve the economic performance of forest companies. User feedback highlights:
- Easy handling of the tool;
- Time saved during administrative tasks;
- Ability to quickly access summary data on team activities (working hours, productivity, progress);
- Significant savings in travel time to access construction sites and locate boundaries;
- Improvement of the company's image towards its partners.