// Business
UP, UP AND AWAY Over the last 10 years, the scaffolding industry has evolved faster than at any other time in history. We now have technology at our fingertips and can visualise, strategise and improvise faster and easier than ever before, Simon Boyes tells us more
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lthough there is one thing that has not progressed at the same pace, and that is our human ability to use our imaginations and experience to find new ways to solve old problems. In today’s recovering market, price is the most important value that our customers are looking for when evaluating tenders or bids against one another. Safety, time and previous experience will always be considered, but for now (and the next 12 months or more) price will most often be the most important item the customer is considering. Although this poses a challenge for some scaffolding companies with high overheads and fixed costs, it also creates great opportunity. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” So, how do we make our prices go down when having a storage of cash has never been more important than it is today, while employee costs are going up and productivity is going down? We use our imaginations and experience to find new ways to solve old problems! I often get asked “What is your favourite type of scaffolding? Is it tube and coupler? Is it Layher? Is it Peri?” We all know that different scaffolding systems have their advantages and disadvantages, and
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some are better suited to one industry, while another might be better suited to another. The answer to what is the best type of scaffolding depends on how you intend to use it or, more importantly, how you can best service your client with it. If all we ever do with our scaffolding equipment is stack one standard on top of another, we are never going to use the scaffolding to its full ability and we will always be competing with other scaffolding contractors to see who has the cheapest price. The biggest challenge scaffolding contractors face when only competing on price, is the pressure of being able to deliver the final solution and still make enough money to run a sustainable and stable workforce. The most common way that scaffolding contractors make money is, unfortunately, by taking shortcuts. Often the shortcuts are not driven by the company but more so by the workers on site who are put under strict time pressures. Unfortunately, as we all see far too regularly in the media, the result of taking short cuts on a scaffolding site can result in multiple fatalities. There are no second chances in a scaffolding collapse and the impact of taking a short cut lingers for the rest of our lives. So, how is it possible to make money in today’s market? The answer is by finding new ways to solve
