Plant Equipment and Hire February 2020 | Page 35

HIRE new. The magazine used to be the official mouthpiece of the association many years ago. The CPHA was established in the 1970s which makes it one of the oldest associations in the plant equipment and hire sector around. It consists of a crane chamber and an earthmoving, small plant equipment, compressors/generator, mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) and insurance chambers. “This is a wonderful opportunity as an association. The CPHA started out with Plant Equipment & Hire magazine many years ago and it is great to once again unite with a publisher in South Africa that is already well-established in the plant equipment and hire space, as well as many other related industries, says Clive Wicks, CEO of CPHA. Brits adds that in the magazine’s quest to share meaningful business intelligence they hope to grow and develop according to the needs of the sector. “We invite all role players to engage and share with us their comments, suggestions and focus areas that could advance industry knowledge, or drive resolution of persisting issues. This is their industry and their magazine - so we want to hear from them,” says Brits. Challenges in the industry According to Wicks one of the major concerns in the industry at the moment is skills development and training. “The CPHA is in the process of creating a database of all legal and qualified operators and developing an industry standard which does not currently exist,” says Wicks. “There are training institutions where operators receive their full qualification after only 60 www.equipmentandhire.co.za hours of training, and this is wrong,” he adds. Despite all the efforts to train up operators in the past, industry remains reluctant to commit fully to quality skills development, primarily as a result of the cost and time involved. It takes up to 12 months to train an operator, and most companies are pressed to deploy their machines on site. Training operators are costly with the result that hire companies start taking shortcuts. Therefore, Wicks and the CPHA regard this issue as critical in their pursuit of improving industry safety and standards. In addition to base training, regular testing, upskilling, and renewal of the necessary licenses is necessary to maintain the required standards. “Statistics show that after about two years, bad habits start creeping in and operators really need to be tested again. Occupational health and safety certificates need to be reviewed annually and industry relicensing bi-annually. That’s what we are looking at. We did some research last year and discovered, with shock, how many operators are working without valid qualifications or unit standards”. Establishing a plant hire company It is not easy to establish a plant hire company and Wicks says that prospective entrepreneurs have to be sure which segment of the equipment space he or she wants to service. “In addition, one has to look at the economy and determine which sectors are growing, which are declining, and try to predict what will happen in the future. The South African construction sector is in the doldrums, but improvement will come. However, it is pointless to buy a big fleet of TLBs right now if the machines are not mobile and just collect rust in the yard because there are no contracts,” says Wicks. He adds that other sectors like crane hire and MEWPs are performing better but are not doing exceptionally well either. Prospective entrepreneurs have to be sure which segment of the equipment space he or she wants to service.” Entering the plant hire industry requires immense capital investment and financial commitment. The funding of start-up companies and financing large capital equipment, has proven to be the Achilles heel of many aspiring companies. Nevertheless, as most successful hire companies would attest, funding has never been easy to come by, and in today’s connected world there are innovative ways to get people to invest in an idea. Membership in an association like CPHA is not mandatory, but certainly an advantage in a very competitive and complex industry. Wicks and his team have many years of experience and represent a highly diversified conglomerate of interest. Being a member of CPHA gives plant and equipment owners access to that institutional knowledge, and the comfort of knowing that someone represents your interest when it matters most. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020 33