Taiga Upland

2 days ago

2025 was the pain year at Taiga Upland!

We rolled out a full stack of new business systems — Monday.com at the centre of it as our single point of reference, Xero running the accounts, UINTA capturing site data on the hill, and new digital workflows for time, project tracking, and delivery. It was a huge amount of change in one year, and everyone who's been through something similar knows what that actually feels like.

We stuck with it. 2026 is the year we're reaping the rewards.

Everything connects back to one place now. Cleaner reporting for our clients, more accurate invoicing, less time on paperwork for the team, and nothing falling through the cracks the way it used to.

Behind all of it is our Business Operations and Systems lead, Otto Sanderson, who designed and built every one of these systems for Taiga Upland. That's real work, real judgement, and a lot of quiet determination to see it through. Credit where it's very much due.

#TeamTaiga #Systemisation #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland ... See MoreSee Less

Taiga Upland

4 days ago

Behind every peatland restoration scheme, every woodland creation project, every big nature restoration job in the hills, there's a track someone had to drive up to reach the work!

Access is one of the quiet foundations of what's happening across Scotland's uplands right now. Most of these projects are in remote country, on estate tracks built years ago for stalking or farming. When the weather takes a section of one out, the wider programme is stuck until it's fixed.

Our team was out on a local estate this month doing exactly that — repairing a hill track badly scoured by a heavy weather event. Skilled operators reading the ground, managing the water so it can't cause the same damage again, and using material found on site wherever possible to keep the work sensitive to the environment around it.

There's a lot of nature restoration happening in the hills these days. Reliable, careful access work is a bigger part of making it possible than most people realise.

#TeamTaiga #Groundworks #HillRoads #ScottishHighlands #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland ... See MoreSee Less

Taiga Upland

7 days ago

Taiga Upland employs its workforce directly. Nearly sixty people across the enterprise, all on our PAYE, all issued Taiga PPE, driving Taiga vehicles, running Taiga kit. No subcontract labour on our jobs.

The part that gets said less often is that it costs more. Pensions, sick pay, holiday pay, BUPA private healthcare, an employee assistance programme, the workshop and finance teams behind it all. Running a business this way is genuinely more expensive than the subcontractor model — and we do it anyway.

The reason is simple. Consistent standards. Programme certainty. Safety systems that mean something. Real career development. And underneath all of it, steady year-round employment in the rural communities we're part of. Proper jobs, with a proper package, that let people build a life in the glens where the work actually is.

Rural businesses flourish when rural communities flourish. And vice versa.

#TeamTaiga #DirectlyEmployed #RuralEmployment #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland ... See MoreSee Less

Taiga Upland

1 week ago

The team is back on the road, remobilising to a remote woodland creation site the winter snow chased us off before we could finish. A long journey back in, across some of the finest country in Scotland!

Before the machines start, the team meet on the track for a pre-commencement discussion. Skilled operators talking through how the job will run — who takes what responsibility, how they'll work together, how they'll look after each other in a place this remote. Standards agreed by the people who are going to hold themselves to them.

It's easy to overlook a meeting like this. But what happens on that track shapes the native woodland that grows here for the next hundred years. Legacy in action, quietly.

Then the machines move to position, and a new season begins.
Good to be back.

#TeamTaiga #Forestry #WoodlandCreation #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland #ScottishHighlands ... See MoreSee Less