PRESS RELEASE: HAE EHA HITS ON NEW WAY TO PROMOTE EXCELLENCE IN THE HIRE INDUSTRY

Hire Association Europe and Event Hire Association (HAE EHA) has unveiled a supply chain scheme designed to promote the highest level of quality, competence and safety across the UK hire industry, following the successful introduction of SafeHire Certification.

Hire Industry Trusted Suppliers (HITs), designed by HAE and Event Hire Association (EHA), will be formally launched on April 1 2018 with the long-term goal for all supply chain members passing the online assessment and due diligence process needed to achieve ‘Trusted Supplier’ status.

On a par with SafeHire Certification for the tool, plant and equipment hire sector, the Supply Chain Board created HITs as an extra layer of reassurance for businesses purchasing services, that their chosen supply chain partner is fully committed to maintaining the very best practices and its suitability as a supplier is recognised.

Displaying the HITs logo is a hallmark of quality in training, safety, environmental, R&D, production processes, data security and other related areas. JCB, Arcotherm, Morris Site Machinery, Marcrist and InspHire are members who have already committed to the scheme and from April 1 2018 achieving HITs will become a condition of HAE EHA supplier membership.

Graham, Arundell, managing director of HAE, said: “From April 1 any new members joining the supply chain sector will be obliged to complete the HITs assessment as part of the membership process and existing members will be contacted at their period of renewal. Eventually, we hope all supply chain members will earn their ‘Trusted Supplier’ stripes.”

He added: “HITs is not just about making demands of the supply chain, it’s also about offering some advice and guidance. The assessment also looks at suppliers’ ability to cope with increases in business demand and things of that nature, so looking at productivity and efficiency, environmental and modern slavery policies.”

In order to be considered for future projects both great and small, it may be worth remembering that many organisations look to supply chain partners that proactively invest in top level staff training and have achieved industry standard health and safety accreditations. In doing so, hire companies and procurement managers are guaranteed peace of mind that they have found a trustworthy supplier who is also not going to land them in health and safety ‘deep water’.

Continually raising safety standards in the hire industry is the name of the game even though UK businesses consistently have one of the lowest rates of work-related fatal injuries across the European Union and are more likely to have a health and safety policy, followed up with a formal risk assessment, compared to other EU countries.

The HITs scheme is designed to help hire and rental organisations have access to reliable due diligence information secured by HAE and EHA from supply chain members and seeks to provide an industry standard against which those gaining have proved their competencies.

Information on how to gain Hire Industry Trusted Supplier status can be obtained from: www.hae.org.uk or www.eha.ork.uk from April 1st 2018.