Hire and Rental News - February 2019

ACCESS IN ACTION Maximising valuable assets across New Zealand To provide valuable insight into asset utilisation and operator behaviour, as well as a way of tracking the hire equipment going in and out of his yards, Sean Reid, the National Sales Manager for Preston Hire NZ installed Teletrac Navman’s Qtanium 400 GPS tracking devices into its new fleet of mini-crawler cranes. S ean can now remotely manage and track fleet telematics on specialised construction equipment anytime on his mobile phone across Preston Hire NZ’s four locations: Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington and Tauranga. He chose Teletrac Navman because of the excellent and responsive advice. “It came down to the support and the fact they listened and understood the business and our goals,” Sean said. The system, set up in September 2017, is set up to track each crane whether the outrigger legs are in or out, the boom is lifted or dropped, and whether the engine is in use. “It’s already contributed thousands, through being able to accurately bill for the on and off hire dates,” Sean said. Over the 2017/18 Christmas holidays one of Preston Hire’s cranes was on a customer’s site, but was on a stand down period and was not intended to be used until the agreed hire start date. The crew were ahead of schedule and, unaware, started using the crane before the scheduled start day. Sean said he was able to see when the crane was in use and charge accurately and fairly. “They weren’t being deceptive, but just had it on site and needed to get on with business,” Sean said. “With the GPS-based insight, I was able to accurately and fairly bill an extra couple of thousand dollars for the extra period our equipment was in use.” He said having objective data makes it easy to have conversations with customers and stay transparent about the transport, use and return of hire equipment. “The data takes the emotion out of it. You can’t argue with the numbers. “I don’t just want to know the location of the cranes, but the behaviour of the operators – which is important for health and safety,” Sean said. To safely traverse the 10 tonne mini-crawler cranes across a jobsite, operators need to lower the boom but may not actually fully retract the four outrigger legs. Construction sites are often full of activity, but Sean said: “It can be a safety hazard to have horizontal pieces of steel (outrigger legs) traversing across a jobsite. With Teletrac Navman, I’ve got an opportunity to let my clients know when, where and how the cranes on their sites are not being used according to best practice.” This allows his clients to proactively manage their health and safety compliance. Sean has also made use of the live site tool to set a boundary around each of their yards, giving him transparent, real-time insight into the movements of their equipment. “I’ve geofenced our yard so I can remotely track the exact time and date a crane exits or enters the yard, and I get email alerts to track it all. The live site tool is invaluable,” he said. The feature offers him an extra layer of security for Preston Hire’s high-value equipment. GPS tracking also gives him insight into the transportation of their assets. “I can see when a crane is in-transit and when it arrives at a customer’s site. I can even attribute delayed delivery to slow moving traffic, for example, or a delay in loading the crane at the yard.” Sean also plans to use Teletrac Navman to feedback insights into machine utilisation to assist customers in operating an efficient site. “I can see the frequency of use, the time of day, whether the operator is starting and stopping; there’s a lot of useful detail. By the time a customer has several mini-crawlers on site, I can show them where inefficiencies are, and whether they can better utilise an existing asset to save on hiring another machine.” Preston Hire NZ is growing rapidly, with capex committed to plans to double its hire equipment fleet by the end of 2019. “We’ll be bringing in even more cranes as well as adding specialised tracked scissor lifts and spider booms and we’ll be monitoring all of the new equipment,” Sean said. n Visit: www.prestonhire.co.nz Teletrac Navman’s Qtanium 400 GPS tracking devices are working in a new fleet of Preston Hire NZ’s mini- crawler cranes P32 ACCESS IN ACTION FEBRUARY 2019