CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
Josh Butterill
Contracts Manager | Canterbury Tree Services
SPEAKER BIO
Josh Butterill leads Delta Utility Services’ Canterbury Tree Services division and has over sixteen years of arboricultural experience across the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Josh fell into arboriculture at sixteen, taking a job as a groundsman with little idea of what the profession involved. What began by chance became a career built from the ground up, taking him from the rake and chipper into operational leadership. That progression gives him a practical understanding of utility vegetation management—from the realities faced in the field to the strategic challenges of planning, prioritisation, resourcing and delivery.
In his current role, Josh leads utility vegetation management programmes across Canterbury at the intersection of electricity networks, field operations and arboricultural decision-making. This has shaped his practical, field-led approach to decisions around critical infrastructure.
Josh is passionate about understanding both nature and risk, then balancing the importance of each to support the defensible retention of healthy trees and canopy coverage wherever it can be achieved safely. His focus is on helping critical infrastructure and nature coexist safely, sustainably and intelligently through better field information, stronger strategy and more transparent decisions.
TALK TITLE
Tree Regulatory Change and the Operational Challenge
ABSTRACT
The 2026 Electricity (Hazards from Trees) Regulations are fundamentally changing the operating environment for New Zealand’s Utility Arboriculture industry. Expanded Clear to Sky requirements and new fall-zone obligations require utilities and their delivery partners to rethink how vegetation management is planned, prioritised and delivered.
The challenge is not simply doing more work. It is making better decisions about how finite resources—people, time and funding—can achieve the greatest reduction in risk.
How do we understand the scale of the task? What should be completed first? How do we balance risk, cost, operational constraints and community expectations? And how do we demonstrate that investment has improved network resilience?
Drawing on frontline experience, this presentation explores these operational challenges and how field expertise, strategic planning and emerging technology can help address them.
This is more than a compliance challenge. It requires utilities and their delivery partners to share responsibility for achieving the best possible outcome from every intervention. Success should be measured not simply by the volume of work completed, but by the risk reduced, resilience gained and healthy trees retained wherever it is safe to do so.