Progress at Davey's SEED Campus

Dan Herms, vice president of research and development at the Davey Institute, and Dan Joy, executive vice president and assistant to the president, talk about their experience leading development of the Davey Tree SEED (Science, Employee Education and Development) Campus.  

In this episode we cover:  

• What is the SEED Campus (0:45)
• Dan Joy's role with the SEED Campus (1:45)
• Sustainability on the Campus (2:53)
• Tree planting on the Campus (4:37)
• Tree canopy walk (6:10)
• Timeline of the Campus (7:23)
• Research on the Campus (8:26)
• The legacy of the SEED Campus (11:27)
• How Dan Joy became SEED project manager (13:12)
• The most challenging part of the project (14:19)
• Future hopes for the Campus (15:20)
• Dan Joy's future plans (16:52)
• The most fulfilling part of the project (17;20)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.  

To learn more about the SEED Campus, visit our SEED Campus webpage.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
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Facebook: @DaveyTree
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YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!    

Transcript

Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer.

I'm joined this week by Dan Joy. He is Executive Vice President and Assistant to the President for the Davey Tree Expert Company, and Dr. Dan Herms, Vice President of Research and Development for the Davey Institute. Today, we're talking all about Davey's new SEED Campus. Both of these Dans have been on the show before talking about the SEED Campus, and I want to start with Dan Joy. Let's just do a little bit of review about what the SEED Campus is.

Dan Joy: Sure, no problem, happy to do that. SEED Campus, the SEED is the acronym that stands for Science, Employee Education, and Development. The campus's really purpose is to provide greater opportunities to expand upon the research and development, to help our field forces do their trade out across the country, and to provide a place to expand upon our training capabilities as we do a lot of training, bringing our folks in from across the country for all types of training, horticultural training, best practices training, sales training, the whole bit. The campus is designed to just provide a really great place to give that type of education and training to our employees.

Doug: Discuss a little bit about your role in putting this campus together.

Dan Joy: I think the easiest way to explain it is I'm the project manager, the owner's representative on the project. It's a 200-acre campus. It's because of the fact of Davey and who we are, it's a unique approach because there's a lot of the work that's being done on the campus that we're self-performing versus contracting out. It really does have the need for someone in-house or a representative from the company to really be on top of that and coordinate all the activities that we're doing in-house in conjunction with the activities that are being done with our contract manager because there's a lot of overlap and coordination efforts that needs to take place there.

Doug: I'm going to pick your brain a little bit about that later on in the show because it sounds like a daunting task to me.

Dan Joy: It is a full-time job, I'll put it that way. [chuckles]

Doug: Dan Herms, let's talk a little bit about sustainability of this building.

Dr. Dan Herms: Sure, Doug. Sustainability has been a major pillar of the project from the very beginning. The building will be LEED certified at the gold level, be very energy efficient, will have traits that contribute to a healthy work environment, be very energy efficient. In fact, the entire campus will be a net zero energy efficient. We're installing a large solar panel array that will provide all of the energy to the campus, will be an electric building. There will be a gas line brought in to the property.

Things like stormwater runoff from the parking lot is highly managed, so we'll be pursuing site certification for the landscape around the building. That will involve sustainability items such as native plants, sustainable pest management practices, soil restoration and preservation, stormwater management. No stormwater will be leaving the property. We're located in an environmentally rich and sensitive environment. With the Cuyahoga River, we've close to a mile of river frontage there and a really nice bog and a couple other wetlands associated with an oxbow in the river. We're protecting those from stormwater runoff. We're installing a pond system to capture all of that.

There's just a whole number of elements integrated with the building and the landscape that will make this very sustainable project.

Doug: Then there's a tree planting also, like a huge tree planting, right?

Dr. Dan Herms: There has, so there's a very large number of mature trees on the former golf course that we've preserved and maintained. We've planted a large number, over 500 trees into research plantations. Then we're also establishing a 40 acre arboretum that we'll be planting hundreds of other trees. That arboretum will be open for the public as well as a training facility for our arborists.

Doug: Dan Joy, about those trees that were already on site, was that a difficult thing to work out as far as the planning for a building to try and keep as many of those trees there as possible?

Dan Joy: It wasn't, I wouldn't say difficult, but it was certainly, something that we had to take into consideration as we developed the master plan for the site. Fortunately, it was a golf course. You had basically the fairways in open space that meandered throughout the property. By design, we tried to place most of our infrastructure, things like roadways, parking lots, building pad, utility corridor, all within those open fairway areas in an effort to preserve as many of the existing mature trees as we possibly could.

Doug: The canopy walk with fairways and greens, is that like new fairways and greens or is that some existing fairways and greens? How was that put together?

Dan Joy: The canopy walk?

Doug: Yes.

Dan Joy: The canopy walk is still a future item, but I've had some consultants out to take a look at it, designated an area where we would like to see it. It is something that, when we get around to building that, it will be within the trees actually because the whole purpose of it is to be able to provide an experience of being up into the canopy of a tree for those that, perhaps might not have the skillset to climb one.

It could be utilized not only for just that experience, but also in a more utilitarian purpose for Dan's group to be able to do research up in the top of the canopies of the tree, for our instructors or trainers to be able to be perched up there while they have people in the trees and be able to call out instructions and help coach them on proper techniques. The canopy walk serves multiple purposes, but it is actually-- The purpose of that is to be within the trees and close to the trees.

Doug: What is the timeline on the campus?

Dan Joy: We're currently on a timeline to occupy the building in the first quarter of 2025. The vast majority of the campus will be done at that point. We're still working through the main entrance with the City of Kent on Route 43, and in conjunction with ODOT. Again, one of these coordination efforts because there's a lot of stakeholders that would like to find some improvements on that traffic flow on this stretch of Route 43, so we're partnering with the City of Kent and the Kent City School District and Department of Transportation and currently in process of trying to design what that intersection is going to look like for our main entrance into both this campus and across the street at our corporate office.

Doug: Dan Herms, let's talk a little bit about what research will you be doing there and what are the facilities going to be like? Do you know?

Dr. Dan Herms: We do know. We'll be conducting research across a number of areas that support the various service lines of Davey Trees. Of course, tree healthcare will be a primary focus, pest management, stress, physiology, soil, nutrition, soil fertility. We're also conducting research on, for example, pollinator habitat to support the work that our utility vegetation management group is doing in right-of-ways where they're creating pollinator habitat. We'll be doing some applied research in our indoor climbing center on testing climbing equipment and techniques and evaluating new equipment with our climbing skills trainers.

We'll be conducting research on environmental sustainability. We're developing a strategic plan to guide our research. As far as facilities, we have established over the last three years a really nice network of experimental tree plantations, 10 different species of trees planted in replicated tree plots that consist of species that have different physiologies, different growth habits, so everything from conifers like blue spruce to Crabapple trees, to oaks, maples, elms, river birch. All of that is supported by a state-of-the-art irrigation system where we can manage water and do water management research and drought stress physiology research. We'll have a greenhouse that will be used for conducting research and a container nursery area where we can do research with potted plants as well to support trials. That's just some, I could go on and on about some of the research facilities that we'll have. It'll be I think a state-of-the-art facility that any university would be envious of.

Doug: Then talk a little bit about the excitement of having a facility like that for somebody like you.

Dr. Dan Herms: I've been conducting research on trees since 1981. Over the years, I've always thought about, boy, it would really be nice to have that, it would be really nice to have this, and now I'm going to have that, now I'm going to have this. I'm not going to be around for that many more years, so I'm trying to set the table for the younger scientists that we have working at Davian that we will have. It's very exciting for me though. It's a legacy project for me. I think Dan Joy feels the same way.

Doug: Dan, let's talk to you a little bit about that, about the legacy of this campus is pretty immense.

Dan Joy: Certainly, it's actually difficult to put into words. It is a legacy opportunity that just would come around realistically once in a lifetime for someone. I put a long career in with Davey Tree. Nearly 47 years I've been here and to be able to wrap up my career on a project such as this, and it's going to be everlasting for well into the future, long after I'm gone, is certainly-- It's hard to put into words how happy and proud I am of what we're doing. It's hard to call it work. It's just fun. I'm out here doing something that I thoroughly enjoy and know at the end of the day, it's going to be something that's going to have a big impact on the future generations of Davey Tree.

Doug: You say it's fun, but boy, when you start explaining dealing with ODOT, and the traffic, and the water, and all that, it sounds just so overwhelming to me. How long have you been doing this, working on the campus?

Dan Joy: I would say in earnest, I got started in the planning process in 2018 when we did the master plan. Now, I guess it's 23, so I guess we're five years, but believe it or not, it's hard to imagine that it's gone by that fast that we're already five years into it, but that's what it's been.

Doug: I guess what I'm getting to is, why you for this job? How do they know or how do you know that you can handle all this, do all this? Again, it sounds so complex.

Dan Joy: I just think throughout my career, I've held a lot of different positions within the organization. I had the opportunity to be exposed to large construction projects throughout my career, just had that good being of being. I spent about a decade in the DC market and we associated with a lot of large construction projects there, World War II Memorial, USA Today corporate headquarters, and this and that.

Then down at Easton in Columbus, I was involved with constructing that on the landscape side of things. I just was always exposed to construction and land development throughout my career and big jobs. I just think that skill set lent our leadership to look my direction when this opportunity came forth.

Doug: What do you think has been the most challenging thing for you with this project?

Dan Joy: Patience. I'm one of those guys that has the vision of being able to see things before they're done, so I just want it done. I want it done faster than it can get done. That certainly is keeping myself in check and not getting frustrated with the amount of time it takes to get things accomplished because by the time you get through design and then you've got to go for city review, then you get back, and they've got comments, and they don't want to approve it, and you've got to battle through that to get your permits, everything takes longer than I care for it to take. That's my biggest challenge is keeping my patience level in check and just keep things moving forward.

Doug: Dan Herms, before I let you go, what do you hope for the future when you think about your colleagues working in this, again, state of the art facility?

Dr. Dan Herms: The Davey Tree Expert Company is a science-based company that offers research-based solutions. My hope is that we'll continue to advance the science of tree care, in the legacy of the tree doctor, John Davey, the founder of the company, continue to understand tree care and develop solutions that can be implemented by our service lines. Beyond that, I hope that we will be the leaders in the industry when it comes to advancing scientific tree care.

We're going to be hiring a new scientist next year. We'll already have a bigger scientific staff focused on arboriculture than any land-grant university that I can think of focused specifically on arboriculture. I think that we will be the leaders in this facility, will help us advance the research. That's not even to talk about the education and training that will help Davey Tree provide even better service to our clients.

Doug: Dan Joy, what's next for you? You've already been five years on this project. It's going to continue. What's it going to be like for you when this is done and ready to go?

Dan Joy: I think I'll actually finally retire is what I'm going to do. [laughs] That's the plan. When we button up this project, I'm going to head off to the sunset.

Doug: I asked you what the most challenging thing is. What has the most fulfilling thing for you been in the process of this project?

Dan Joy: I think the most fulfilling thing has been just that I was chosen to have this role. To me, I view it as probably the greatest compliment I've gotten in my career because I know how important this piece of property and this campus is going to be to the future and to be the one chosen to ramrod getting it done is very fulfilling.

Dr. Dan Herms: I'll just add to that, Doug, if I could, that Dan is-- I stand in awe of watching him work and what he's accomplished with this. He is the right person for this job at the right time in the history of this company. He's understated I think the complexities. I just look at it, I see it's overwhelming. Dan thinks it's going slow. I can't believe how fast it's going. That's probably because I come from a university where it takes a year to decide which corner of the conference room to put the trash can. This project has Dan all over it. It always will. I don't know how Davey could have advanced this without Dan and his experiences.

Dan Joy: Thank you, Dan. I appreciate that.

Doug: That's a good way to wrap things up, guys. I sure appreciate what you're doing. For somebody who drove by that golf course every day on the way to college at Kent State, I am looking forward to seeing [laughs] this amazing campus come to fruition. Thank you both for spending some time with me today.

Dan Joy: Thank you, Doug. Stop by anytime I'm here. I'll give you a tour. Okay?

Doug: Great.

Dr. Dan Herms: You're welcome, Doug.

Doug: Looks like I'll have to go back to my old stomping grounds to take a look at this pretty incredible project and get that personal tour from Dan. Now, tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I am your host, Doug Oster. Do me a favor, subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss a show. If you've got an idea for an episode, maybe a comment, send us an email at podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@D-A-V-E-Y.com. As always, we'd like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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