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It’s international safety week. A week in which extra attention is devoted to health and safety at work. A worthy goal, which deserves the necessary consideration.
And that also applies to Boels Rental and building contractor Fried van de Laar from Best in the Netherlands. Since 2013, the two family businesses have been working together and placing employee safety high on the agenda. This year, both companies have also been collaborating in the field of safety training. Time to talk to director Jan van de Laar, Rob Derkx and Steven Van Kampen about safety and their partnership with Boels Rental.
We accompany Rob Derkx, key account manager for the Netherlands at Boels Rental, to visit Fried van de Laar in Best. Today, twenty Van de Laar employees are doing a VCA course in which they learn how to work healthily and safely in the workplace. This VCA course is one of the many customised training programmes and courses offered by Boels Training.
Building contractors Fried van de Laar was founded by Fried van de Laar in 1994 and is now run by Van de Laar’s sons. The company has 100 employees and mainly works on construction, refurbishment, renovation and redesign in the Retail sector. To carry out this work, the company rents hydraulic platforms and forklift trucks, among others, from Boels Rental.
“Our work involves using a lot of hydraulic platforms, for example, sometimes thirty or forty in a project. These hydraulic platforms are also used for safety reasons. They enable our employees to work faster, better and above all more safely at heights”
Reliable partner
The bonus of working with Boels is that the equipment is new and well looked after. I can’t remember an old worn-out Boels machine. And that says a lot about the way a business is run. This is absolutely the strength of a family-run business. We know that they supply good, safe equipment and that they are a reliable partner. For that reason, we chose to outsource training to Boels too.” At Fried van de Laar, safety has high priority. The family element and ‘like knows like’ in the company is tangible.
“We do a lot of incredible work, but the main thing is that everyone gets home safely at the end of the day. We never compromise when it comes to working safely. Our people are trained to the highest safety standards and work with the best, user-friendly and safest equipment.”
Since March this year, Boels has been giving various training courses, including BHV, VCA(-VOL) and forklift truck, mobile scaffold and hydraulic platform training courses to the Van de Laar team. Before this, the building contractors had various suppliers for these training courses. “They tended to work reactively. Something was only delivered if it was required. Boels Rental is a proactive partner with an advisory role,” explains Funs Hermans, business unit manager at Boels Training Benelux.
“It is important that the training courses are not regarded as a goal in themselves. Having worked with Fried van de Laar for such a long time in relation to equipment hire, we know where they work and what they use. We can therefore not only advise them on training, but also on the use of equipment which may be even safer and more efficient to work with.”
‘Speed with perfection’
Rob Derkx adds: “Boels keeps you going also with respect to training courses. With our customised advice, single point of contact and flexible planning, we meet the needs of the client. At Fried van de Laar, it is important that we do not disrupt the continuity of their processes. For good reason, the company motto is ‘Speed with perfection’, whereby good planning and efficiency are the basic principles. Van de Laar must fulfil its promises its clients. That means that they must be able to trust us completely, also with respect to training and equipment. That’s it.’
Jan van de Laar confirms this. ‘Everything needs to be perfect in the execution, otherwise we cannot achieve the speed at which we work, and of course everything depends on good preparation. With Boels, we have a unique partner for this. Steven van Kampen from the Boels office in Eindhoven has been incredible for us. He answers the phone nearly seven days a week. How he does this, I don’t know, but he does. In fact, we’ve never consulted him about any problem that he hasn’t managed to solve. That’s not only clever, but we also appreciate it enormously.’
One contact point
Steven and his team are the single point of contact for Van de Laar. From the machines to training, they organise the planning, logistics, service, administration and invoicing. Van de Laar therefore always has the right equipment at the right time in the right place, and in this case, the training courses at a time and location that suits them.
This is a really in-depth partnership, says Jan. “We choose the equipment together and get advice on the best and most efficient hire. As a company, that shows you’ve understood your client and ‘support’ gets a new meaning. And yes, we now benefit from the training courses provided by Boels. For us, this is a win-win situation in terms of efficiency, flexibility in services and approach, but above all for the safety of our employees on the work floor, and that what it’s ultimately all about.’
