Orion is pleased to announce that we have joined the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA). Our foresters, pre-inspectors, arborists, tree safety professionals, botanists, and tree risk assessors look forward to being a part of this widely recognized professional organization.

Ms. Dari Burbano is the Field Operations Manager for Orion Managed Services vegetation management programs. Dari oversees all aspects of Orion’s field operations, including staffing, quality assurance, production, scheduling, and continuous improvement. Dari also serves as Orion’s primary client contact for vegetation management and related program service needs. Dari draws upon more than 15 years of prior experience where she has served in senior positions as a data and quality assurance lead, GIS specialist, supervising forester, and project manager.

Mr. Jason Hilker is the Safety Manager for Orion Managed Services, LLC. Mr. Hilker brings over 18 years of experience overseeing the safe implementation of construction and investigation/design/remedial solutions to impacted sites in a variety of industries, including power, chemical/pharmaceutical, mining, government, and transportation. Mr. Hilker specializes in guiding sizable, cross-functional teams in the design and implementation of safety solutions and mentoring young professionals.

Ryan is an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist and brings years of experience in the arboricultural industry, specifically within the utility vegetation management sector. He has experience in leveraging new technology in utility vegetation management, including GIS, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence to improve efficiency, safety, and reliability of operations. In the role of Quality Assurance and Quality Control Manager, he applies this experience to develop innovative solutions regarding client-side deliverables and to develop internal performance and safety tracking systems.

​Ryan earned an MSc. Arboriculture and Forest Resource Management from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and lives in Berkeley, California. He enjoys maintaining his small bonsai collection and home fermentation projects.

Mr. Roy Courtright is the Director of Program Management and Engineering Services for Orion Managed Services, LLC. Mr. Courtright brings over 25 years of experience in engineering design, construction, QA/QC, and investigation/design/ implementation of remedial solutions to impacted sites in a variety of industries, including power, chemical/pharmaceutical, mining, government, and transportation. Mr. Courtright specializes in providing value added solutions to challenges on large capital projects and in mentoring young engineers.

Colin Barry has broad experience managing and directing complex commercial, industrial, and residential demolition and remediation projects. Colin has overseen bidding, construction contracting, subcontractor selection, scheduling, budgeting, QA/QC, and federal, state, and local guideline compliance for these projects. He has extensive experience training and mentoring project managers, superintendents, foreman/operators, and schedulers. Building on his construction experience, Colin has expanded his competencies to include contaminated site management and operational oversight of large, multi-disciplinary operations, maintenance, and field programs.

​Colin currently directs and oversees Orion’s construction management and field services programs. Before joining Orion, Colin directed large demolition and remediation projects for a large multi-national consulting firm.

Orion Managed Services is pleased to announce our new offices and yard in Fairfield, CA. These facilities are ideally located to serve our Bay Area and North Coast field operations.

Ryan Suttle (Orion Managed Services, UMass Amherst Department of Environmental Conservation) and Nasko Apostolov (UMass Amherst, Department of Civil Engineering) presented a collaborative research initiative titled “Artificial Intelligence for Tree Risk Prediction” at the 2021 Annual International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) Virtual Conference on December 14th.  This pilot study represents an exciting new use of technology in arboriculture, and highlights the power of interdisciplinary cooperation towards innovation in the industry. Over 1100 people tuned into this presentation to learn about this motivating research initiative. Ryan assisted in conducting this study while pursuing a Master’s degree in Arboriculture and Urban Forestry at UMass.

Through research, technology, and education, ISA fosters a worldwide awareness of the benefits of trees and promotes the professional practice of arboriculture. This conference is their largest of the year, bringing in industry leading practitioners and researchers from around the globe to present their work, host educational workshops, and network with fellow professionals in the arboricultural field. Presenting at it is a true honor.

Ryan’s presentation introduced a pilot study into the potential for use of artificial intelligence networks to identify high risk trees in proximity to overhead electrical lines with the idea that an effective model could reduce inspection costs, increase inspection efficiency, and increase reliability of electricity distribution. Vegetation management is typically one of a utility’s largest budget items, and even small utilities spend millions of dollars annually to mitigate tree-caused outages. Across the United States, outages also cost billions of dollars in lost business revenue. Presently, identification of high-risk trees near utility lines is labor intensive, time consuming, and costly. This presentation described a machine learning approach which trained a novel convolutional neural network (CNN) to automatically classify trees, using only a single photograph and with a high degree of accuracy, into likelihood of failure categories. The CNN’s high degree of accuracy demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence to automate risk assessment and consequently to reduce costs. Preliminary results were extremely promising for future study and improvement, particularly through training better models with more data, and mapping visual cues learned by the CNN to physical defects in tree structure.

Mr. Robert Knutson has 25 years of experience in research, utility operations and maintenance, and environmental planning and permitting and is the Vice President of Environmental Services for Orion Managed Services, LLC. Mr. Knutson is primarily responsible for continuing development of environmental consulting services, applying his many years of experience as a utility industry consultant and business owner.

Mr. Knutson has earned a B.S. degree in Biological Sciences from California Polytechnic State University and a M.S. in Entomology from the University of Missouri. He currently lives in Coeur D Alene, ID where he enjoys keeping bees, running chainsaws, and shoveling snow.

Orion is pleased to announce that we have recently completed a risk assessment on behalf of one of the nation’s largest private equity firms. Orion was engaged to assess risks posed by wildfire and seismic events for a portfolio of large commercial properties in Napa County, California. Orion’s risk assessors identified specific mitigations to alleviate the identified risks, facilitating a sound asset acquisition.

Orion’s staff of consulting utility foresters, master arborists, tree risk assessors, management consultants, and seismic engineers continue to apply their real-world experience to advise boardrooms of business risk and to identify practical, cost-effective risk mitigation measures. We are honored to be part of our client’s due diligence team and to advise their board of directors on sound investments.

Orion brings solutions and enables sound decision making: We Drive Better Results.