Republished with permission of MHD Supply Chain News, April 2023
Story by Jospeh Misuraca
MHD speaks to Dean Molander, National Hire Controller at Conquest Hire, a service providing specialist hard floor cleaning equipment to businesses in the supply chain and logistics space, to optimise presentation, labour efficiency, and safety.
Generalist hirers typically offer a limited range of solutions, supporting a near-enough-is-good-enough approach. While it may seem like the easy option for businesses needing to scale their equipment fleet fast, Conquest Hire says its specialty hire option offers a range of benefits from financial to occupational health and safety, to tailored operator training and the quality to which the machines are maintained.
The supply chain and logistics industry are seeing a shift towards specialty hire to ensure the right advice and appropriate cleaning equipment is recommended to meet the floor cleaning needs of the facility.
While cleaning of warehouses and DCs is a daily requirement for most operations, many businesses don’t recognise there are options for intermittent cleaning needs or turn to generalist hire solutions. The downside to these options is that they don’t fully address niche cleaning challenges such as dealing with dirty hi-vis yellow safety lines, and operators don’t necessarily have the expertise required to select the most efficient cleaning tool for the job.
Generalist hire offers only a handful of cleaning solutions which can only do part of the job while specialty hire features the full range so businesses can select the right equipment to get the most effective result.
EXPLORING SPECIALTY HIRE FOR DEEP CLEANING
“This isn’t the near-enough-is-good-enough solution,” Dean Molander, National Hire Controller at Conquest Hire says. “You’re getting the right equipment to get the task done in the most efficient manner possible, and it includes operator training, delivery, and collection.”
It takes a level of expertise to understand the various product specifications to recommend the right solution to tackle unique challenges.
Conquest Hire has identified four primary reasons for hire of specialty floor cleaning equipment: deep cleaning, end of lease or building make-goods, seasonal scaling and events, and emergency cleaning.
Deep cleaning of facilities is common practice when preparing for an audit, after stocktaking, following construction of a new building, and before moving to another facility when a lease has expired.
Seasonal scaling tends to involve periodic planning in the lead up to, during or after peak trading periods such as Christmas, where they see an increase in vehicle and pedestrian traffic.
“Some of our customers prefer to wait and do seasonal cleaning each quarter or halfway through the year – it all depends on their budget,” explains Dean. “Our equipment gets the job done faster, allowing contractors or operations managers to temporarily scale their equipment fleet and in emergency planning.”
Emergency situations caused by mishaps at facilities such as triggered fire safety sprinklers, or extreme weather events such as flooding or dust storms – these situations are unfortunate, so it’s good to have an option readily available for a speedy recovery.
TRAINING PROMOTES SAFETY AND OPTIMISES RESULTS
Conquest’s nationwide team of service technicians fully maintain its cleaning solutions from each of its depos to ensure the equipment continues to function optimally for every hire.
“The service technicians receive a lot of training,” Dean says. “The service technicians who go out to repair equipment on-site have the same training as those who maintain our equipment fleet, and they’re all trained to the best level. Customers will also receive thorough training from our onboarding team at time of delivery.”
The fleet of machines come with QR codes located on the operating panels. Users can scan the codes with their smartphones, linking them to soft copy PDF operator manuals and training videos that can be referred to in their own time, and resources to support troubleshooting. These backups are all conveniently positioned at the operators’ fingertips.
“We have three designated onboarders who deliver to operators a personalised service. Their job is to ensure the equipment is ready, training is adequate, and that the operators understand and the work, health, and safety requirements,” adds Dean.
Training is paramount to guaranteeing operators achieve optimal cleaning results. “If operators are using a scrubber for example, it’s about ensuring they apply the correct down pressure for that specific floor type, so it’s cleaned properly, but also without causing any damage to the surface.”
Equipped with the know-how to minimise risks and to use the equipment safely, operators don’t pose risk or harm to pedestrians around them, or damage other equipment or fixtures. Many of the machines have specialty safety features such as flashing beacons, and you have the option of electric, diesel or LPG depending on your application.
BENEFITTING FROM HIRE
Two of the most appealing benefits of specialty hire for Conquest’s customers are that paying for the service is tax deductible, and often a more affordable alternative to purchasing capital equipment outright.
“Also, by hiring the equipment, you don’t need to worry about storing equipment in the back corner of your warehouse, gathering dust between use. Space is a commodity these days so why not just have the equipment onsite when you really need it?” says Dean.
“You can hire whenever you need for as long as you need – there’s not fixed or set term, and there’s no ongoing commitment. With short-term hire periods, you get the right equipment for deep cleaning without adding pressure to your labour force.
“You’re better off having one operator using a machine to clean a facility rather than all 10 employees cleaning up with mops and buckets. The greatest asset you have with this service is versatility.”
In an emergency event, ready access to hire equipment can clean the facility easily and quickly, which means workers can return to the floor without significant downtime.
If a machine breaks down on site, Conquest is committed to having a replacement to you soon as possible and boast the largest fleet of hard floor cleaning equipment in Australia.
Conquest Hire’s tagline is: “Don’t clean floors the hard way. Do it with Conquest Hire.” This has been inspired by occasions where they’ve witnessed operations send their entire work crew out with a mop and bucket ahead of an audit.
Some may also call external facilities and cleaners, which can really slow things down and can also be expensive.
Conquest has equipment which can clean a facility in as little as a quarter of the time that manual labour can – and achieve superior results.
It gives customers the flexibility required for the needs of the company for the four reasons of deep cleaning, end of lease or building make-goods, seasonal scaling and events, and emergency cleaning.
“The biggest hurdle for operations in terms of hiring specialty equipment is that they simply don’t know that the option to make their life easier exists,” Dean says. “At Conquest Hire, we offer that option to help them get the job done quicker and is more cost effective – because a mop and bucket can only do so much.”
Read the original article as published by MHD Supply Chain News
