CPA Bulletin

14 CPA Bulletin > August 2020 www.cpa.uk.net The Road to Recovery CPA Chief Executive Kevin Minton and CPA President Brian Jones introduced the online event and the participants included three industry leaders - Andy Wright, Chief Executive of Sunbelt Rentals UK; Brian Stead, Director of Compliance and PMO at Nationwide Platforms and Andy Burrows, UK Operations Manager of Lynch Plant Hire. The webinar gave a fascinating insight into how Sunbelt Rentals UK, Nationwide Platforms and Lynch Plant Hire have dealt with the challenges and the panellists shared their thoughts about the road to recovery. One clear message that resonated throughout the webinar was the fact that each of the three companies has placed the safety of their employees at the forefront of their recovery efforts. Andy Wright of Sunbelt Rentals UK - formerly A-Plant - said: “It’s vital to the industry that we pull together to ensure that we get through this situation in the best shape we can. It’s a challenging time - it’s unprecedented. Right from the start we decided we wanted to place the safety of our employees first. That was paramount. We decided there were certain locations that we couldn’t work safely from so we closed these temporarily. The ones that we could work safely from, we introduced a rotational structure to ensure that social distancing could be observed. “Our employees also had concerns about their financial situation. The government announced the job retention scheme and we decided we weren’t going to access it in any way. We wanted to act really quickly to allay any fears from our employees so we reassured them we would be here for them. We committed right from the start that we would pay all our employees 100% of their basic salaries,” Andy continued. Brian Stead of Nationwide Platforms added to the discussions: “We’ve really gone to town on the welfare side of looking after our staff. Safety is absolutely the number one priority but behind that we needed to look after the welfare of our staff. Those that were continuing to work at the sharp end had concerns as they were going into the unknown, and those that were working from home also had concerns.” Andy Burrows of Lynch Plant Hire commented: “We are an operated plant hire company so we had different issues relating to how we keep our operators safe on-site. There was lots of communication with our plant operators and foremen on-site. We encouraged our employees out on-site to speak to us if they had any issues about how sites were working and our foremen are trained in mental health awareness training. “We’ve done an awful lot to make sure our people are safe. We introduced a number of measures such as making sure all our machines were sanitised before leaving the building, giving our lorry drivers sanitiser wipes and introducing one-way systems. It’s our people who are going to bring us through this and it’s been a tough period not just for those on furlough who we were conscious of keeping in touch with, but also those who were at home working as that’s quite a tough place to be,” Andy Burrows continued. Nationwide Platforms also introduced a number of safety measures. Brian Stead added: “When our operators go up in a powered access machine they often have a customer alongside them and 2m distancing is not possible in a 1.8m basket. We put in separation screens, we documented Covid operational rules on- site and every machine went out stamped Covid ready. We also gave our operators, engineers and drivers a final say in their own safety. If they weren’t comfortable, we would always defend their decision. We said your decision matters and we will back you. If the work wasn’t essential, it THE ROAD TO RECOVERY: 1 At the end of June, we hosted an industry-wide webinar to discuss the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the plant-hire sector and the road to recovery.