A crane hire specialist that has lifted African elephants into their new homes and rollercoasters into place has completed a five-year £10 million investment programme by adopting new safety technology to protect its staff and customers.
ABA Crane Hire had been looking for a new fleet management system that would allow it to track its cranes while also improving visibility for its operators when travelling to and working on site.
The company, which employs 52 people at its base in Essington near Wolverhampton, teamed up with Spillard Safety Systems and Spillard Live, a new cloud-based platform that captures and streams real time video and analytics simultaneously.
This technology was fitted to the ABA's cranes and now provides four live cameras and an additional 180 cameras elsewhere as well as a group of alarms.
Operations manager Adrian Baggott said: "As you can imagine, driving these large vehicles is a skill in itself but traditionally the operator will have little additional technology to rely on to give maximum visibility from the cab.
"We pride ourselves on our excellent health and safety record and started to explore a range of systems that would help reduce the possibility of accidents by increasing visibility to see all around the crane/lorry.
"Our workshop manager had heard of Spillard Safety Systems' technology and invited the company in to see how it would approach visibility issues and compliance on two cranes in particular and we were immediately impressed with what it gave us."
Family-owned ABA Crane Hire operates a 32-strong fleet of vehicles that include iron fairies, self-erecting towers and all terrain cranes up to 220-tonnes.
The company offers contract hire, CPA crane hire, lifting equipment and personnel, not to mention a project management service when required.
Pete Spillard, managing director of Wolverhampton-based Spillard Safety Systems, added: "We've invested over £750,000 into creating the best possible platform and ABA is one of the first companies in the crane hire sector to embrace it.
"From talking with Adrian and the team, the technology is delivering lots of operational benefits and, most importantly, keeping people safe."
