EXECUTIVE REPORT
Re-modelling tool hire?
A-Plant is facing the challenge of re-modelling its tool hire business and has a very interesting concept - the Auto Tool Hire Unit - to help the company achieve it. Robert Aplin reports.
We haven’t heard too much from A-Plant in the last three years, so it was a pleasant surprise to meet up with its Business Development Director for Tools, Neil Beglin, recently and start to catch up on the news from the No.7 player in the Tool Hire Top Ten. In our 2012 Report, we estimate that A-Plant’s current tool hire revenue is £37.5m.
Neil Beglin’s challenge is “to grow A-Plant’s tool hire business by developing it in our existing plant depots. My goal is to improve our tool hire operation by investing in the right areas. Our evolving strategy is to perform better with what we’ve already got, add innovative rental solutions and focus on both complementary and different markets like lifting, safety and survey.
“We plan to offer tool hire from the majority of our plant depots. Our location in Bury, north Manchester, for example, has a sizeable tool hire business. In these shared premises, tool hire has a separate counter and a team of three or four people. In the southern region, we offer tool hire from 21 sites, and operate a central tool hire workshop in our Brentwood outlet, which has a good skills base and is close to the M25.
“Our priorities are to improve the availability of our core range equipment and turn it around quicker in our central workshops. In the southern region, we have
The Auto Tool Hire Unit is an ‘innovative rental solution’.
dedicated tool hire operations in Bow in east London, Luton and the recently opened outlet in Croydon.
We are confident that each has the critical mass of its own to remain standalone.We have a great opportunity to build up tool hire in A-Plant.”
An ‘innovative rental solution’ that is helping A-Plant’s tool hire revenue growth is the Auto Tool Hire Unit. This is an automated cabin that can be located on sites, no matter how remote, offering customers instant access to A-Plant’s tools and equipment, pre-selected for that customer’s contracts.
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The customer gains access to the cabin by an electronic key fob, and for maximum security, CCTV records all activity with the unit. All equipment ready for hire is stored on shelves within the unit and each item is electronically tagged using RFID technology.
During a subsequent visit to A-Plant’s accommodation depot in Coleshill, Birmigham, Neil Beglin demonstrated the unit to me. The 9.75m (32ft) cabin had rows of Belle plate compactors, Stihl disc cutters and Hilti and Makita breakers kitted out for a highways contract.
Inside the outer access door is a lobby area containing a large tool vault of blades, gloves, consumables and the like. When you walk through the inner access door, you see equipment on rows of shelving that can be adjusted to suit the weight of the equipment range offered. There is also a red quarantine area to place any faulty items. These tools are monitored and exchanged by roaming A-Plant fitters.Within the cabin, there is also sufficient floor space to wheel in other kit for overnight storage.
According to Neil, “as an item is taken from, or returned to, the shelf, the transaction is automatically registered. The software programme that monitors the RFID tagging system links directly to our MCS software, thus ensuring that the customer only pays for the time used. Using our real time extranet system, the customer can monitor equipment usage remotely.
“We now have a number of Auto Tool Hire Units ‘live’ on hire. With its obvious benefits like downtime savings as gangs are not waiting for equipment to arrive, as well as a reduced carbon footprint, A-Plant is leading the way in hire industry innovation.”
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www.aplant.com
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