I love extracting value from data. It’s my thing and it has brought success throughout my career and I believe that data is an untapped resource within the hire industry.

15 years ago, as a hire controller, I started to send formatted live hire reports in Excel to Network Rail and Carillion rather than filling in circa 25 individual forms. It was against procedure, but much easier for both the customer and me to understand and use.

Both I and the procedures were changed, never to look back.

With my new view, curious nature and critical thinking, I set about applying this approach to other areas and was fortunate to be given some great opportunities to do so.

The solutions I have successfully introduced range from a simple whiteboard, to aid communication between the office and workshop, to a live asset management dashboard for a national hire fleet. Most are still in place years later.

On a contract to manage the maintenance of 45,000 assets, my team and I achieved 97% compliance against a Service Level Agreement of 85%. It was a remarkable feat to administer 500 services and 60 breakdowns daily at this performance level with only 5 of us in the office.

Another challenge resulted in a clear and simple asset management strategy, enabling us to rationalise and modernise a national hire fleet. The quantity of assets was reduced by 12%, NBV (WDV) by 19% and the core fleet age profile also went down by 20%. As a result, total utilisation increased by 14%. We also introduced innovative and market leading products into the fleet.

In search of more challenges and to help more people, I founded Hire Insight. My experience and skills enable me to help companies in the hire industry to make sense of and profit from the huge quantities of data they produce. I help companies unlock value from this untapped resource to improve profit, sustainability and customer service.