!T Happens: Leveraging Technology for Traceable Trail Management

Webinar Outline

SH*T HAPPENS! Trees fall, weather changes, infrastructure deteriorates, trail conditions evolve, and incidents occur. Responsible trail management isn't about pretending we can eliminate every risk, it's about building operational practices that help organizations identify issues, act on them, communicate effectively, and document what was done. This webinar explores how relatively simple technology can help trail organizations move from verbal inspections, scattered texts, spreadsheets and institutional memory toward structured, traceable operations. 

We'll look at practical approaches to field inspections, geolocated reporting, maintenance and corrective actions, volunteer involvement, trail-status communication and the creation of an auditable operational history. Using the real-world Forêt Héritage trail network as a case study, we'll follow the evolution of a volunteer-driven organization that began systematically documenting its trail operations and turned everyday trail work into meaningful operational data. The result wasn't simply better record keeping: it created a clearer picture of how the network was being managed, provided evidence of responsible practices, and ultimately helped the organization demonstrate its risk-management efforts to its insurer. Although the case study comes from a natural-surface, nonmotorized trail network, the principles apply broadly to motorized and nonmotorized trails, urban and backcountry systems, paved and natural surfaces, volunteer organizations, public agencies and larger professional trail operations. The Trail Fairy doesn't exist. The work is already being done by people. The opportunity is to use technology to make that work visible, traceable and defensible.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify operational blind spots in trail management, including undocumented inspections, fragmented communication, informal maintenance tracking, and dependence on institutional memory.
• Understand the role of operational traceability in responsible trail management by connecting inspections, reported issues, corrective actions, maintenance activities, and communications into a documented operational history.
• Evaluate practical uses of technology to improve field reporting, inspections, maintenance, volunteer coordination, trail status communication, and operational documentation without unnecessarily complicating everyday trail work.
• Apply lessons from the Forêt Héritage case study to identify opportunities for improving documentation, accountability, risk management, and operational practices within their own trail organization.

Location

This is a virtual training. See the event website for more details.

Trail Competencies

• Project Planning and Design
• • Operations and Maintenance Plan Development

• Program Administration
• • Communications
• • Inspections/Monitoring

Relevant Trail Types

General. All trail types are relevant.