SILVERSTAR

Well it’s two fold really, we do not like being on the internals of houses because the square meter volume of scaffolding material costs a fortune. You use a lot of decks, a lot of boards and that’s the most expensive part of our equipment. You do not get the sort of returns that you would want to get on these kinds of jobs. We could not compete with the likes of Trad Deck and GM Netting that provide decking in this area, because of their rates, it’s easily half price in comparison to scaffolding. We used to attend meetings with our clients and they would ask us about the internals, we would actually advise them to use one of the local decking companies; like Trad or whoever. We did that one day and I came out of a precontract meeting and I said to one of the other managers “I’m not happy with this, we should be providing the full service for them.” We provide access and fall protection, that is our business, that is our bread and butter and the way we were going at the time, we were not providing the full service, it was only half a job. We were not providing the fall protection for the internals. So that is when we looked at this seriously and we started doing solid research on safety decking providers. This was about one year ago now.

It has saved us time, reduced costs, increased our revenue and it is more profitable for our clients. The main advantage is we are saving a lot on our own scaffolding materials. We’re not going out and purchasing packs of decks individually to complement our steel. We do a lot of timber frame buildings, high rise flats and apartments, refurbs. All of them are generally fully boarded lifts. Our customers can now rely on us for all their access and fall protection needs. No need to deal with two companies, it’s all under one roof. Communication is streamlined, fast and efficient and with the system being branded and in our company colours, it adds that extra touch of professionalism. All our vans are white with blue signs, the safety decking is blue, it really does enhance our brand image. It looks really good and the customers love it. Communication really is key, we had a contract the other day, and we won the scaffolding. By default, we won the scaffolding down to communication. The site manger literally said… “Why do I want to deal with Trad to save myself 20p a square meter. Its too much hassle, just hire Silver Star to do the lot!“ If Trad doesn’t turn up, or if there is a mix up, you might think it’s just one phone call, But there’s quite a lot of interaction and things can get messy in communication. It makes sense to just provide the full service and everyone knows where they stand. We find this time and time again; customers would rather deal with one company that provides a full service.