A chainsaw can sever a femoral artery in under two seconds. You have four minutes to call for help. We give the watch six.
FISA 302 chainsaw pre-checks, Type-A PPE gate, LOLER climbing-kit inspection, wood-chipper and brushcutter pre-use forms — plus the one feature no panic-button app has: Apple Watch chainsaw-cut auto-detection that fires SOS on fall + HR spike without the operator pressing anything. what3words location + nearest-forest-road RV included in every alert so the ambulance can actually find you.
- 30 sAuto-SOS · fall + HR spike
- <5 minChainsaw femoral bleed-out
- FISA 302/304Compliance built-in
Forestry has the second-highest fatal injury rate of any UK sector (HSE), and tree surgery sits at the top of the activity-specific tables. The job combines the four hardest conditions for lone-worker tech to handle: no GSM under canopy, life-critical kit (climbing rope and harness), a tool that kills in seconds (chainsaw on a femoral artery), and a 20+ minute rural ambulance response. FISA 302 (chainsaw) and FISA 304 (lone working) demand documented pre-checks and a 30-minute cadence — most contractors run those on paper. We move them to an app gated by the worker's Apple Watch heart rate and movement, so a kickback that knocks the operator unconscious still triggers SOS within 30 seconds — watch a real shift play out on the live Apple Watch demo below.
See it live — Apple Watch demoSix real scenarios, 30 seconds, no install needed.
The pain points your existing stack misses.
- Chainsaw femoral strike: <5 min bleed-out — too fast to dial 999 yourself
- Tree surgeons work 8–15 m up with a saw running — kickback or harness slip leaves them suspended unconscious, ground-level man-down apps never trigger
- Wood-chipper entanglement kills 3–5 UK workers a year — and the chipper is still running when they're pulled in
- FISA 304 lone-work cadence (30 min) is run on paper at most contractors — no audit trail, no auto-escalation
- Most UK woodland has zero GSM signal — consumer panic apps fail at the moment of crisis
- LOLER 1998 demands daily climbing-kit inspection + 6-monthly cert — most teams have no system to track either
- Ambulance crews can't find you in a remote stand of timber — they need what3words + nearest forest-road RV, not a postcode
- Tree-surgery clients book on the side of a hill with no address — operators improvise GPS coordinates by hand
Built specifically for forestry & tree surgery.
Apple Watch chainsaw-cut auto-detection
Combines CoreMotion fall detection with HealthKit heart-rate spike + drop pattern (shock response to blood loss). Both signals inside a 30-second window auto-fires SOS without the operator pressing anything — the only signal-pair that catches the failure mode that kills solo arborists.
FISA 302 chainsaw daily pre-use
Documented inspection: chain brake, chain tension, throttle interlock, anti-vibration mounts, muffler, fuel mix, bar oil, trauma kit. Mandatory items block clock-on. NFC tag to autofill saw serial.
Type-A PPE gate (EN ISO 11393)
Six-layer chainsaw kit check — helmet + visor + ear def + chaps + gloves + boots. Optional selfie evidence for RIDDOR audit.
LOLER climbing-kit inspection
Daily check for harness (EN 813), rope (EN 1891 Type A), karabiners (EN 362), mountaineering helmet (EN 12492), rope adjusters (EN 12841). Tracks the 6-monthly competent-person cert date.
Wood-chipper pre-use
Feed-roller emergency-stop bar test, anvil/drum inspection, hopper guard, discharge angle, wind-direction check, exclusion-zone confirmation. Designed around HSE WIS18.
Brushcutter pre-use
Cutting head selection (line vs blade), blade damage check, harness, throttle interlock, guard, anti-vibration. Per EN ISO 11806.
Daily task list with GPS / what3words navigation
Jobs pushed from dispatch with site coordinates, what3words RV point, and nearest forest road. One-tap navigation to Apple Maps / Google Maps. Push notifications when a job is added, rescheduled or cancelled.
Clock-on / clock-off register
Time-stamped, geofenced, signed — for HSE audit + payroll. Auto-locks the saw/climbing screens until clock-on. Auto-pings the supervisor if a worker hasn't clocked off within their planned window.
Fire kit + comms check
FISA-mandated fire extinguisher, beater, spade, plus today's DEFRA Fire Severity Index. Whistle + sat-phone + PMR446 radio range test. Red-flag days block saw start automatically.
30-min FISA 304 lone-work cadence
While the saw or climb mode is armed, the app pings every 30 min for a tap-to-confirm 'I'm OK'. Miss two pings and the cascade fires — no app to open in a crisis.
what3words + nearest-road RV in every SOS
Every alert pack includes the worker's three-word location and the nearest navigable forest-road meeting point, so the ambulance crew knows where to pull in.
Satellite-fallback SOS
When GSM drops under canopy, the app routes SOS over Iridium short-burst messaging or Apple/Android satellite-direct. Works from any UK woodland — no cellular dependency at the moment that matters.
The platform underneath the Forestry pack.
Sector packs add the workflow; this is the operational layer every customer gets regardless of vertical — billing, comms, AI dispatch and trust signals.
Multi-channel SOS cascade
Push + SMS + WhatsApp + voice fan-out in parallel. AI re-ranks responders by distance + role + rationale before dispatch.
AI Virtual Watcher
Three Claude-powered flows: SOS narrative + mandatory ack, PPE/cert gap detection, proactive welfare pings.
Comms allowance + bundles
Monthly SMS / WhatsApp / voice quotas included. Overage auto-bills; pre-buy bundles for cheaper rates. SOS always sends.
Admin broadcasts + inbox
One-to-many alerts to any worker subset, ack-tracked for regulator evidence. Per-worker channel prefs respected.
Trust + verify panel
At-a-glance integrations status and a dry-run test SOS so you can prove the dispatch before betting a real shift on it.
Audit ledger (HMAC-signed)
Every action stamped to ID + timestamp + UUID. Regulator-ready PDF export with one click.
Stripe billing + Customer Portal
Per-active-worker pricing. 14-day trial, no card up-front. Self-serve plan changes and bundle top-ups.
REST + Webhook API
Push incidents into ServiceNow / RIDDOR-to-HR / SIEM (Splunk, Datadog, Elastic). GraphQL on Enterprise.
- FISA 302
- FISA 304 (Lone working in forestry)
- FISA 805 (Brushcutter)
- FISA 1101 (Fire risk)
- BS EN ISO 11393 (Chainsaw PPE)
- EN 813 / 1891 / 362 / 12492 (Climbing kit)
- LOLER 1998
- PUWER 1998
- HSE WIS18 (Wood chipper safety)
- AFAG 805 / 308
- Control of Vibration at Work Regs 2005 (HAVS)
Watch a chainsaw kickback auto-trigger SOS in 30 seconds.
Animated watch face — six real forestry scenarios. No install needed.
An Apple Watch app that calls for help when a kickback knocks you down.
Wrist-mounted CoreMotion + a two-stage classifier listens for the chainsaw vibration signature, then watches for the violent jerk a kickback produces. If you don't dismiss the 3-second "Are you OK?" haptic, the SOS cascade fires — exactly as if you'd pressed the manual button.
A real chainsaw kickback, second by second.
- 1
You start the saw
Toggle Chainsaw Mode on the watch face. CoreMotion subscribes to the accelerometer at 50 Hz.
- 2
Vibration baseline locks
One-second variance window exceeds 0.15 G² — the detector now knows the saw is running.
- 3
Kickback hits
Bar tip catches → arm jerks > 2.5 G in 120 ms while baseline is active. Two-stage match fires.
- 4
3-second cancel
Amber sheet + double haptic on the wrist. Tap green check if you're fine — silenced, no alert.
- 5
SOS cascade fires
If you don't cancel, full Vygard escalation runs: AI ranks nearest responders + blasts push, SMS, WhatsApp, voice.
Same dispatch path as a manual SOS button-press. The kickback gets its own badge in the dispatcher dashboard so the responding crew know to bring the trauma kit first.
Works as a companion, or standalone.
Apple Watch + Vygard Forestry iPhone app
The watch sends the kickback event to the paired iPhone via WatchConnectivity, which holds the worker session and POSTs to the API. Phone also pushes back to the watch — who's signed in, shift status, and inbound alerts (buddy SOS nearby, dispatcher acks) all surface on the wrist.
- Any Apple Watch Series 6+ (GPS or cellular)
- Phone within Bluetooth range (~10 m / 30 ft)
- Worker name + employer shown on watch face
- Live alert feed in the watch's Alerts tab
Cellular Apple Watch on its own
Phone in the truck a mile away? No problem. The watch stores its own short-lived JWT (pushed from the phone last time it was paired) and POSTs the kickback event direct to the Vygard API over LTE. If the direct post fails, it falls back to a durable queue that delivers as soon as the phone wakes up.
- Apple Watch Series 9+ or Ultra (cellular)
- EE / Vodafone / O2 / Three eSIM plan
- Works fully out-of-coverage of the iPhone
- Auto-fallback to phone-via-WC if both available
Same chainsaw detector code in both modes. The watch picks the right transport automatically — operator sees a tiny indicator on the watch face: Linked / Direct mode / Offline.
Tech specs that matter to the buyer.
- Sensor
- CoreMotion accelerometer, 50 Hz, wrist-mounted
- Detector
- Two-stage threshold (variance + peak-G)
- Cancel window
- 3 s haptic sheet with green-check + red-X options
- Battery cost
- ~5% per hour with chainsaw mode active
- Network
- WC sendMessage → direct HTTPS → durable WC queue
- Auth
- Bearer JWT pushed from phone, rotated on refresh
- Backend route
POST /v1/wearables/chainsaw-event- Incident type
- chainsaw_kickback — amber badge in dispatcher UI
See the Forestry pack on your own data.
Try the live demo or book a 30-minute call. We'll show you the workflow your team would actually use.