AT THE HEART OF HIRE
WORKING T OGETHER
On the first anniversary of Scotland’s historic referendum vote on independence, this issue has a distinctly Scottish flavour. As part of the campaign to mobilise and excite hirers to visit the Executive Hire Show, our developing series of regional Road Shows brought us to Glasgow for the first time in mid-September.
Several leading manufacturers had encouraged us to take the Road Show route to Scotland’s central belt, and, buoyed by the positive response from a number of leading hirers north of the border in the build-up to the event, we pitched up in Stepps on the same evening that Celtic FC kicked off its Europa League campaign. Thankfully for us, the club was playing an away tie in Amsterdam!
When you turn the page, you’ll read what several of the 46 hirers who attended the event thought of the evening. Hirers were reminded of the former HAE meetings, back in the 1990s organised by the late-lamented Jimmy Martin. We pledge to continue his legacy of bringing Scottish hirers together, and his son, Andy, is still developing the family business at Martin Plant Hire. During our visit, we even caught up with the latest developments at the hire company Jimmy founded. See page 35.
SHARING THEFT AND FRAUD EXPERIENCES
The guest speaker at our Road Show was Iain Anderson, Joint MD of Glasgow-based national hirer, GAP. He also chairs the Plant Hire Steering Group within the Construction Industries Theft Solutions (CITS) Group. In an entertaining presentation, Iain updated his audience on many of the initiatives that GAP is taking to deter plant and equipment theft.
Iain revealed that, between January last year and July this year, GAP itself had fallen foul of theft at 16 of its depots around the UK, the vast majority of the equipment having been stolen from the yard, rather than inside the depot premises. GAP now fits CCTV, floodlights with motion sensors and builds concrete walls under palisade fencing to stop thieves cutting through it. Secure areas have also been created within depots for small, high-value items and, following a recent break-in at a depot where a new mezzanine
floor had just been completed, skylights, through which the intruders entered, had been made more secure.
Iain also shared one of GAP’s more imaginative theft deterrents. Any thief breaking into the hirer’s depots in London will trigger dense clouds of non-toxic smoke in the buildings - although he wryly suggested that his more hard-line brother, Douglas, preferred a less benign substance to be used.
In an honest assessment of his company’s own recent experience, Iain revealed how GAP had been the victim of a major fraud. In April, a company trading as Inter-Scaff, with, according to its accounts, shareholders’ funds of £300,000 and a Creditsafe credit limit of £25,000, opened an account with GAP. Over the next two months, GAP delivered to its Andover yard a total of 82 scaffold towers, three scaffold hoists, and various Stihl saws and cordless drills, with a value of £80,000.
GAP was not the only victim, as Inter-Scaff also opened accounts with Speedy, HSS and Hewden, with Iain estimating that the four hirers’ total loss was a staggering £400,000, as the bogus company disappeared, as did all the kit, without paying a penny.
It was pleasing that Iain Anderson was prepared to share his company’s theft and fraud experiences with the many independent hirers in the audience, rather than just with the national hirers that sit on the Plant Hire Steering Group. There is obviously a need for all hirers to share information on scams, frauds and theft in their local region. It will only happen through trusting one another and starting to work together.
Our series of Road Shows are the ideal place to start. The significance of this Scotland event is that it brought a lot of hirers together for the first time in a very long while. Road Shows are a ‘taster’ event for the main Executive Hire Show and we hope that, as a result of this successful evening, more Scottish hirers will both attend the national event in February and, in the meantime, share ideas and information for each other’s benefit.
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