Due: Thursday February 5th at11am
Hand in via e-mail to with lab number and first names of group members in the subject line.
This assignment is to be completed in assigned GROUPS
Background
On the coast of British Columbia, the selling, buying and trading of logs takes place in the Vancouver Log Market (VLM). The structure of this market works on the premise that the party providing the logs must be fairly compensated. Since a significant portion of coastal lands are publicly owned, it is the government of BC, which must be fairly compensated for public timber.
BC Timber Sales (BCTS) (representing the province) provides the cost and price benchmarks for timber harvested from public lands. Their role is to provide a reliable supply of timber to the market by administering open and competitive auctions; with the objective of maximizing net revenue for the province. Since its inception, the BCTS has sold more than 128 million m3 of timber.
Timber sale auctions hosted by BCTS allow parties to bid on contracts for timber sale licenses (TSL) (standing timber). Registered contractors submit a bonus bid which is the amount (in addition to the appraised stumpage rate) contractors are willing to offer the government to harvest the timber. The highest bonus bid will win the timber sale license and thus obtain the rights to harvest the timber.
Exercise
The BCTS Strait of Georgia Timber Sales Office has prepared a notice that timber sale licence A90250Tsitika Mainline is being offered for sale near Campbell River. This TSL is approximately 72 ha with an estimated volume of 60,331 m3that is composed of Hemlock (48%), Balsam (21%), Cypress (24%), and Cedar (7%), more or less. Your assigned group of four (4) will start a log contracting company that will submit a winning bid for TSL A90250. You will need to determine all costs associated with harvesting the timber and estimate the stand value to determine your wining bid. Commencing the sale of this TSL we will determine which company wins! There will be a total of two (2) group prizes: closest to the winning bid; and highest bid.
Please note that Bill Markvoort will discuss the BCTS and how to prepare a bid during his guest lecture on January 20th.
Material
In addition to Bills’s guest lecture and assistance during lab times, BCTS provides a package of information for each offered TSL. The package for TSL A90250 can be downloaded by searching for A90250 in the official notices system( Within this package you will be presented with a suite of information, some of which is not relevant for this exercise. Areas to pay particular attention to include: the safety and highlights report, volume compilation report, overview location map and road reports. The course website ( will also provide additional information that will help develop defensible cost and value estimates, however, feel free to search for your own methods in literature or contact contractors or other knowledgeable forestry people.
Deliverables
For the purposes of this exercise, you will submit a summary report along with your calculated costs, estimated stand value and bonus bid excel file spreadsheet. The reportshould be a maximum of three pages anddescribe the research of defensible cost and stand value estimates and rational behind submitting or not submitting a bid. Your spreadsheet should be easy to follow and logical. Please use titles, headers, colours, and tabs to organize your spreadsheet neatly.
Written reports and excel file spreadsheets are due February 5th at 11amvia email.
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