BPOAI News / AI Vendors & Tools
A Melbourne arborist is building a custom CRM and LiDAR-style tree scanning with LYRIQ.AI. Here is what it means for your time, your money and your peace of mind.
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Walk onto any building or landscaping job and count the people measuring the same patch of ground. Owner. Designer. Builder. Landscaper. Arborist. Certifier. Council.
Each one measures. Each one charges for it, or loses time doing it. And each one ends up with a slightly different answer. At TLC, a Melbourne arborist and landscaping business, we think that is broken. So we are building two things to fix it.
“Less chasing. Less re-measuring. More transparency.”Bobby Pallier / TLC, November 2026
Sources: SBS (September 2026), Insurance Business (February 2026), Eurobodalla Shire Council and SmartCompany (October 2026).
What we are building
Our partner on both is LYRIQ.AI, a team that delivers AI service solutions, from strategy to deployment. One runs the business. The other sees the site. Together they are about four things: saving you time, saving you money, being open about what is going on, and quality assurance you can actually see.
The headlines
Trees, land and approvals are in the news every week. Read these together.
Different stories. One pattern. Somebody acted, or somebody waited, without a trusted, current picture of the land and the trees on it.
Finland is the extreme version. Closer to home it shows up as a delayed permit, a wrong quote or a fence-line fight.
Evidence before action. That is the whole game.
The thesis
Here is my thesis. The problem on most sites is not measuring. It is measuring again.
Seven people, seven versions of the same site. Each one paid for, each one slightly different, each one out of date by the time the next person reads it.
That is where the time goes. That is where the money goes. And when the versions disagree, that is where the arguments start.
Measure once. Share with everyone. Argue about the design, not the dimensions.
Now imagine this
Imagine standing in a backyard with nothing but the phone in your pocket. You walk the site. That is it.
That is what we are building towards: a 3D picture of the property within minutes. Trees, fences, slopes, distances. Ready to share with your builder, designer, arborist and council.
The technology behind this is called LiDAR, short for light detection and ranging. It fires thousands of tiny, harmless laser pulses and times how long each takes to bounce back. Time becomes distance. Distance becomes a 3D model.
Utilities, councils and surveyors have used LiDAR for years, with expensive gear and specialist crews. We are working with LYRIQ.AI to make the same kind of insight faster, simpler and far cheaper, so it reaches homeowners, small builders and local arborists.
How it works under the hood stays in the workshop for now. We are in development, and we will share more as we build.
Not a crew booked for next month. A picture in your hand today.
Quality assurance
Here is where we think it gets powerful. A scan is not just a one-off survey at the start of a job. It is a daily habit.
Imagine every person along the chain scanning at the end of every work day. The arborist after the prune. The excavator after the dig. The landscaper after the planting. The builder after the pour.
Each scan is time-stamped and shared. Each one shows what was done and by whom, and how it compares with the plan and with yesterday.
That is the plan, and it could change five things at once.
“The cheapest fix is the one you make before the next trade arrives.”Bobby Pallier / TLC, November 2026
Emergency tree services
A storm hits. A limb is on the roof, a trunk is across the driveway, the street is dark. The phone rings.
Today the crew often arrives half blind. They do not know what the tree is resting on, where the powerlines run or how to get machinery in.
Here is how we see LiDAR helping. Someone on site scans the scene from a safe distance, never under a hanging limb and never near a wire. Within minutes our team has a 3D picture of what has fallen, what it is touching and where a truck can get in.
The crew is briefed before the engine starts, and the scan lands in the CRM with the job.
Where a tree touches powerlines, only the network operator and authorised electrical workers go near it. The scan helps us see the hazard and call the right people. It does not replace them.
In an emergency, minutes of good information can save hours of risk.
Safety first
Tree work is dangerous work. Powerlines, leaning trunks, steep slopes, tight access and fences all hide in the detail.
Today a crew often finds out on the day. We want them to know before they arrive.
The idea is that the scan becomes the job plan. The crew can see the powerlines, the slope and the access before the truck leaves the yard.
The same scan can help flag trees that look hollow, leaning or close to powerlines, so a qualified arborist inspects those first. After a storm, a quick scan could give a priority list of what to clear first.
Nothing replaces a qualified arborist's eyes. The aim is to point them at the right tree sooner. That is why our reports are written as observations reviewed by a qualified person, never as a promise that something is safe.
Where it could be used
We are starting with our own jobs, because that is where we can test it properly. These are the uses we are developing towards.
| Use | How a scan helps | Who checks |
|---|---|---|
| TLC quotes and crew plans | Measurements, access and hazards known before the visit. Fewer pricing misses. | TLC arborist |
| Tree protection on building sites | Regular scans show tree condition and whether the protection zone has been breached. | Project arborist |
| Large clearing projects, such as construction and mining | Map trees and canopy before clearing. Rescan after to show the cleared area matches the approved area. | Arborist, ecologist or accredited assessor |
| Council street and park audits | Scan a street in a morning, flag the few risky trees, inspect only those. | Council arborist |
| Emergency and storm response | A fast priority list, and a crew briefed before they arrive. | Qualified arborist |
| Schools and aged care | A dated record of grounds and tree condition for the people responsible for them. | Arborist |
| Proof of completion | A dated before-and-after scan. Evidence for the client, and for us if there is a dispute. | Client and TLC |
One number rules
Ask any arborist which measurement matters most. They will say trunk diameter, known in Australia as DBH, short for diameter at breast height.
Under AS 4970, the Australian Standard for protecting trees on development sites, it is measured 1.4 metres above ground. Some newer guidance, such as Hobsons Bay Council's, now calls it DSH, diameter at standard height. Same 1.4 metre point, new name.
That one number drives the tree protection zone (TPZ), a radius generally worked out as 12 times the trunk diameter. It also feeds into permits, footings and driveways.
Victoria's canopy tree rule uses the trunk circumference at the same 1.4 metre height. Different measure, same spot on the trunk, and a lot of room for people to get confused.
A 50 cm trunk gives a 6.0 metre zone. Misread it as 40 cm and the zone shrinks to 4.8 metres. That 1.2 metres can be the difference between a footing that gets approved and one that does not.
Measure that number correctly, and as fast as possible, and everyone downstream wins.
Let me put a picture on it. This is an illustration, not a quote and not a price list.
Take a mid-sized residential project where seven parties each take their own measurements, re-quote when numbers change and pay for rework when something is wrong. Add the waiting. $32,000 of repeat measuring, rework and delay is not hard to imagine. Measure once and share it, and the same project could look more like $3,200.
The ingredients are real. A Melbourne land survey commonly costs $1,000 to $3,000. A 2005 Australian study put rework at about 6.4 per cent of contract value directly, plus 5.9 per cent indirectly.
Seven in ten builders now charge for quoting. And 62 per cent of small business owners surveyed say quoting, invoicing and scheduling eat up more of their week than the work.
The cheapest measurement is the one you only take once.
Save time. Save money. Save the argument.
Fast, but never unchecked
Speed only helps if people can trust the answer. So we are designing it with the software doing the first pass and a qualified person checking what matters before anything is relied on. Every decision gets logged. Where the law needs a licensed surveyor, they still sign.
The skilled people behind that check come from networks like BPO.AI, which pairs AI tools with verified humans.
Over to you
If you own a home, run a site, quote work, assess trees, process applications or insure any of it, you already know what repeat measuring costs you.
So here is my question. Where in your world do you pay for the same information twice?
Tell me. The answers will shape what we build next.
Bobby Pallier is a co-founder of TLC (Trees Landscaping & Cultures), a Melbourne arboriculture and landscaping contractor.
His career started in law school, with jobs at Uber and Deliveroo that included launching new markets across Queensland. It taught him how fast things break when the process behind them is not built properly.
He then spent more than seven years in private practice at national law firms, advising on major transactions including the $10.3B Tabcorp demerger. He also advised Edmund Rice Education Australia, a charity and education group turning over more than $1B a year.
He moved in-house as General Counsel at a property developer and at CFMG Capital, a funds management business. But he had always wanted to own a business, not just advise one.
In the trees industry he saw a lot of good work being done, and plenty of room to improve efficiency, communication and workflows. He co-founded TLC to give contractors better systems, clients a better experience, and the work done properly.
Graphics redrawn by the BPO AI Editorial Team from TLC's originals.
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