Knowing what plant you own
and where it is.

A useful plant register records what each item is, its serial or identification number, its value, where it is now, who signed for it, and its service and inspection dates. Without the last two it cannot answer the questions that actually cost money: is this on hire when we own one, and can we prove this was ours. Firms that solve it record each move as kit changes hands, by a scan or a signed transfer on a phone.

The losses are quiet, which is why they persist

Nobody notices an asset going missing. Assets do not announce their absence, and on a business with kit across six sites there is always a plausible explanation for why something cannot be found today.

What firms do notice, eventually, is the pattern, and it takes three forms.

• Hiring something you already own. The most common and the most irritating. A site needs a piece of kit, nobody can establish whether the company has a spare or where it is, so it gets hired. The hire is a visible cost with an invoice; the owned item sitting in a container two sites away is invisible.
• Migration. Kit moves between jobs with the people who need it, and after four moves nobody can say where it went or which job is carrying it. The cost lands on whichever job happens to be open.
• Written off but still present. Items depreciated to nothing or written off after a theft that never happened, physically still in the yard, being maintained and insured by a company that does not know it owns them.

Nobody ever notices a tool going missing. They notice hiring one they already own, and by then the first loss is months old.

What a register has to hold

Six fields, and the last two are the ones that make it more than a list.

1. What it is, described well enough for somebody who has not seen it to identify it.
2. Its identification. Serial number, asset tag, and any security marking such as CESAR on plant. This is the field that matters after a theft.
3. Value and purchase date, for insurance and for the decision about whether repairing it is sensible.
4. Current location and holder, meaning a site and a person rather than just a site.
5. Movement history, so a location is a current answer rather than the last time anybody updated it.
6. Service and inspection dates, because plant with an expired thorough examination is not an asset, it is a stopped job. That connects to the certificates that expire without anybody noticing.

Movement is the part that fails

Every firm can produce a list of what it bought. Almost none can produce a reliable answer to where things are now, and the reason is that movement happens on site, at speed, by people whose job is not administration.

Which means a movement process only works if it takes seconds and happens at the moment of the move. A signed transfer note, or a scan, at the point kit changes hands. Anything that requires somebody to remember to update a spreadsheet when they get back to the office will be accurate for about a fortnight.

The test of whether yours works: pick three items at random from the register and go and find them. Most firms doing this for the first time find one of the three is not where the record says.

Proving ownership after a theft

This is where the register either exists or does not, and it cannot be created afterwards.

An insurer dealing with a plant or tool claim will want to know what was taken, that it was yours, and what it was worth. That means the description, the serial number, a purchase invoice, and ideally photographs. A claim supported by that is straightforward. A claim supported by a recollection that there were roughly a dozen power tools in the van is not, and the settlement reflects it.

The police position is similar: property with a recorded serial number and a security marking can be identified and returned; property without cannot, which is a substantial part of why so little stolen equipment is ever recovered.

Owned against hired, which matters more than it looks

Worth keeping the two clearly separated on the same register rather than in different places.

Hired plant is not yours, which changes the insurance position, changes what an administrator can take if the hirer fails, and creates an obligation to return it. Owned plant is an asset with a value and a depreciation position. Firms that hold both in one undifferentiated list end up insuring things they do not own and forgetting to off-hire things they never owned, which is the subject of a separate article on off-hire charges.

What contractors move to

Three routes, and the choice turns on how much kit moves and how often.

1. A disciplined spreadsheet register. The six fields above, one named owner, and a monthly check of ten items picked at random. It holds for a single yard with a few dozen valuable items.
2. Off-the-shelf asset tracking or job software. Labels on the kit and a register on the phone, so a move is a scan. The yard adopts the product's process for requests, transfers and returns.
3. A bespoke platform. The register, the stores, hire and job costing on one record, shaped to how the yard already issues and collects.

Where to start, on Monday

Do not attempt a full inventory. Take the ten most valuable items you believe you own and answer two questions about each: where is it, and can you produce a serial number and a purchase invoice.

Whatever you cannot answer for those ten is the answer for everything below them. Then start the register with those ten rather than with everything, because a register of the valuable items that is accurate beats a register of everything that is not.