RDI is located within the shared, unceded, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations.
K.B. Fairhurst is a Visual Resource Management and Landscape Visual Impact Assessment Specialist continuously involved since 1980: as one of the original Landscape Foresters in British Columbia's Ministry of Forests until 1996 and running RDI Resource Design Inc ever since. RDI is celebrating our 28th year in 2024!
The Stanley Park Preservation Society is challenging the Vancouver Parks Board over its continuing logging of trees damaged by the Hemlock Looper. See our Stanley Park page.
A shocking 160,000 tree salvage operation is continuing in 2024-2025, cutting down 25% of the Stanley Park forest killed or damaged by the looper moth. See Stanley Park tab.
Ken launched his forestry career as a timber cruiser during the summers with BC Forest Products while at UBC Forestry as one of the great class of '68, and as the Reforestation Forester with BC Forest Products following graduation. Ken returned to UBC to earn his Masters of Science (Forestry - Parks and Recreation) awarded in 1980. Pursuing his new interest in Visual Resource Management, he was offered the new position of Landscape Forester for the Vancouver Forest Region, working directly with the original Landscape Forester for BC - W. H. (Pem) van Heek. He formed a precursor to RDI briefly in the '80s called Urbanforest Consultants focused on, as might be expected, urban forestry. He once spent a season as part of the Forestry Crew in Stanley Park. The company became RDI Resource Design Inc in 1996. Much later, while still running RDI, Ken returned to UBC to earn his Doctorate in Forest Resources Management which he was awarded in 2010, intensifying the same theme of his career interests. He has now racked up fully 43 progressive years in his chosen discipline of Visual Resource Management.
The great Forestry Class of '68 had a reunion in October, 2024 at Loon Lake Lodge in the UBC Research Forest. Many grads attended.
Visual Resource Management and Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment have always been key components Forest Landscape Planning, Analysis and Design in BC, USA, UK and further afield. The concept of forest aesthetics was defined by Heinrich von Salisch, a forester who lived in Postel, a hamlet north of Breslau, Silesia, in what was then Germany, in his book Forestasthetik first published in 1885, with revisions in 1902 and 1911 and translated into English by Walter I. Cook and Doris Wehlau (Forest History Society, 2008) and is available at https://foresthistory.org/other-books/forest-aesthetics/. Von Salisch stressed an integrated resource management approach merging the aesthetic with the ecologic when managing the multiple demands on forest and open space resources. The same approach is required when managing urban forest resources.
Now that BC now has a "new" resource management initiative in British Columbia called Forest Landscape Planning, I look forward to continued and increased integration of visual / ecological / First Nations values in the landscape. Though not directly addressed by the panel on Forest Landscape Planning at the 2020 ABCFP AGM, Visual Quality is one of the 11 FRPA values being maintained and likely expanded upon in Forest Landscape Planning.
A new "Visual Impact Assessment Handbook", released in May of this year is available for downloading at: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/forestry/visual-resource-mgmt/visual_impact_assessment_handbook.pdf
A broader consideration - Proforestation - keeping intact forests to ecological potential to maximize nature-based biological carbon sequestration, biodiversity, water quality, air quality, flood and erosion control, public health, low-impact recreation, and scenic beauty - Frontiers in Forests and Climate Change: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027/full
RDI provides practical solutions for meeting Visual Quality Objectives (now VQ Requirements) which are strongly centered in ecological objectives at the forest landscape level.
The Forest Professionals British Columbia (FPBC), back-linked on our Connections page, offers four excellent Visual Resource Management training modules on their website for members. See our VRM Publications page for the link. Included in Module 4 - "Assessing the Design" is a link to the 2018 draft "Guidance for Forest Professionals Practicing in Visual Resource Management". RDI has provided a link to this important document as well as links to ABCFP Ethical and Professional Conduct Standards to which RDI adheres when conducting Visual Resource Management assessments and reviews (see yellow highlighted links below). KB Fairhurst, RPF, has been a Registrant of the FPBC since 1981.
With old-growth forests very much a topic of discussion in BC today, the Wilderness Committee has published a sophisticated interactive map of old-growth deferrals, other old-growth, and related development plans covering the entire province which should help inform these discussions.
You are viewing rdi3d.ca which is our primary website. You can still view our original website at rdi3d.com where you will find more links and great pictures.
RDI has the in-depth knowledge and expertise to derive practical solutions to meet Visual Quality Objectives in landscape & visual impact assessment.
As of March, 2024, RDI has proudly and successfully concluded 14 years of continuous Visual Resource Management contracts with BC Timber Sales, Kamloops Business Area.
As it has since its inception, RDI provides VIAs, in part or whole, or peer reviews for VQO achievement assurance to all our colleagues at our going professional services rates.
RDI's work on IVDPs commenced way back in 1998. Many of our IVDPs can be found under the "Consulting Services" tab. The FIA Standards are also linked there.
See our many VIAs under the VIA tab.
RDI's operations offices are not open to visitors. Our location on Denman Street near Stanley Park is only for mail and package receiving at the reception desk of our accountants, Gohren and Associates, CPA. We will gladly meet our clients at the local Blenz Coffee on Denman Street in Vancouver (our treat).
#116 - 845 Denman Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6G 2L7, Canada
01.604.689.3195 / rdi@rdi3d.ca Websites: rdi3d.ca / rdi3d.com Email: rdi@rdi3d.ca
Open today | 07:00 a.m. – 05:00 p.m. |
View Kenneth B. Fairhurst's LinkedIn page at
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-b-fairhurst-phd-rpf-665628a4
Type in "kb fairhurst" or "rdi fairhurst" in a browser such as DuckDuckGo, Brave, or Google.
You can also find our listings and links with either "fairhurst" or "rdi" and any one of these initialisms, acronyms, or phrases:
vqo = Visual Quality Objective;
vns = Visual Nature Studio;
vrm = Visual Resource Management;
via = Visual Impact Assessment;
vli = Visual Landscape Inventory;
bcts = BC Timber Sales;
wfca = Western Forestry and Conservation Association (USA);
calp = Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning at UBC;
abcfp = Association of British Columbia Forest Professionals,
rdi = RDI Resource Design Inc
flnrord = BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development
(note: many of our listings also show FLNRORD listings).
also search "fairhurst" or "rdi" and visuals, landscape, resource, resource design inc, visual impact assessment, geoptics, professional forester.
These terms find rdi directly: visual apparency, visual landscape, visuals bc, vqo bc, vli bc,
vrm bc, and rdi bc or simply go to https://rdi3d.ca (this website).
Use the tabs below to view more pages on the rdi3d.ca website.
October 21, 2024
According to Stanley Park Preservation Society findings published Oct. 21, 2024, City of Vancouver staff misled Park Board before Commissioners approved logging. In their email of that date, the SPPS stated: During the October 8, 2024, Vancouver Park Board committee meeting considering approval of continued logging in Stanley Park, Associate Director of Urban Forestry/Specialty Parks Joe McLeod and Director of Parks Amit Gandha misled the commissioners by asserting that City of
During the October 8, 2024, Vancouver Park Board committee meeting considering approval of continued logging in Stanley Park, Associate Director of Urban Forestry/Specialty Parks Joe McLeod and Director of Parks Amit Gandha misled the commissioners by asserting that City of Vancouver staff had been in compliance with the applicable procurement policy when entering into a large scale tree removal contract with B.A. Blackwell & Associates on June 21, 2024, without Park Board authorization.
McLeod and Gandha claim that in an emergency, the normal requirement for a competitive bidding process can be legally bypassed, and a sole source contract may be awarded without Board approval. Indeed, this was invoked on September 11, 2023, when City staff declared an emergency based in part upon information provided by Blackwell. Blackwell was awarded a sole source contract without Park Board approval and logged the park from fall of 2023 through spring of 2024, when the contract was completed, and logging was halted for the summer.
But no such emergency was asserted in mid 2024 when a new competitive RFP was issued, and Blackwell was again selected. Because this new procurement was competitive and no emergency existed, commitment from the elected commissioners was required, but not obtained, before staff would have been authorized to sign the June 2024 supply agreement with Blackwell.
The Board approved the motion on October 8, 2024, more than three months after City staff signed the contract without authorization, and Blackwell has now resumed logging.
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