Rolan Brickell

Said the following about Stuart Jackson:

“Stuart Jackson, the incumbent Commercial Director for BCM Construction Limited was challenged to innovate with a view to developing a viable business idea, to present to the board.

BCM Construction Ltd specialise in Rail, Electrical, Civil and Signalling installations. These projects were satisfying their plant requirements by either directly purchasing the items of plant or hiring them. BCM were concerned that the purchased pieces of Plant and Equipment were not properly maintained, serviced or recorded by the project teams. Some of the equipment was known to go missing. In addition it was recognised that the BCM fleet of 60 vehicles was ageing and was not managed as well as it should be. With vehicles being returned in damaged and dirty condition, with little accountability for this.

As the procurement is a department in the commercial function Stuart had visibility of BCM’s spends on Equipment and Plant and realised that there was a potential opportunity to not only rectify the issue of owned assets, but also to centralise and track all of the plant and equipment using a hire model as a stand alone company.

A business plan was developed using historical and forecasted data based on purchase price of plant, vehicles and equipment hire out rates, anticipated utilisation and depreciation. An overhead budget was also developed as it was quickly identified that there were many trade bodies and accreditations required in order to make this proposal a success.

The business case was presented in May 2016, the boards enthusiasm was around the compliance and safety improvement that the proposal would offer. Providing a much greater view on the quantity and location of plant, Equipment and Fleet being utilised across the company and its condition. Included in the proposal was sophisticated tracking equipment that enables the collection of an impressive array of data from the plant and vehicles, including location, number of hours used, the way the plant is used, behaviours etc. It would enable us to monitor the condition of the plant remotely.

With the boards full backing Construction Hire Solutions Limited (CHS) was established in June 2016.

The plan was to purchase all of BCM’s current Plant and Equipment whatever its condition, to have a plant and equipment amnesty to enable all of the equipment to be accounted for. It would be thoroughly itemised/tested tagged and made ready for external hire.

The company started from a set up in our East Grinstead office, run day to day by our existing procurement team. They were best placed as they were situated in a location that already had a Yard and a workshop, it was initially estimated that the running of this company could be undertaken as part of their day to day duties.

In July 2016 CHS procured hire specific software called Insphire, which manages all of the front end activity, tracking all the plant and equipment, its lifecycle, sales and invoicing etc. It also enables the realtime business performance to be monitored remotely.

CHS achieved several accreditations for provision of plant, including Achilles RISQS.

CHS now employs 3 staff full-time with a 4th joining by end of year two and will achieve the HAE Safehire certification by the end of 2017.

The biggest success however is the improvement in the standard of plant utilised by the BCM construction teams, they now have confidence that any plant they are using from CHS will be certified and inspected, effectively safe to use. Each item of plant has user instructions and the latest inspection certificate. We also have a portal where information on each piece of equipment is maintained for operatives to view.

CHS also specialise in lightweight battery equipment for rail use and have successfully rolled out several new items lighting being the most beneficial to our main client. Li-Ion powered LED towerlights are replacing all of the existing Smithlights providing a much better product that is easier to transport.

From a Fleet perspective we have fitted a sophisticated fleet tracking system to all of our vehicles, allowing realtime information on number of hours/miles driven per driver, dashcam footage, driver behaviour and fault monitoring. We have achieved the Bronze FORS accreditation on behalf of BCM and completed our Fleet IMS.

We have started developing external business with a view to delivering 10% of our projected revenue from external sources. We have recently attracted external clients including Network Rail and also some smaller SME’s.

Going forward we recognise that using IT to minimise the number of office staff required is a worthy investment, so we are looking at investing in a Microsoft Dynamics Nav ERP system with the hope of having this rolled out by the end of this financial year to help track and monitor commercial aspects of the business, this will be integrated with some of our larger clients own operating systems allowing e-invoicing reducing their own administration time.

CHS also hopes to achieve ISO9001 and 14001 along with our own FORS certification and gaining a HGV O-Licence.

We are also exploring how small/unpowered tools and equipment can be tracked, as these are the items that are currently most likely to go missing.

Retrospectively CHS has come a long way in a short time, we have certainly developed an innovative approach to solving problems and have certainly made a very positive impact to BCM.“