INDUSTRY PEOPLE
A mobile truck set-up.
wanted to find a way to greatly increase productivity, and
put more money back into the pockets of hard-working
New Zealanders,” says Simon Boakes, Director of BOA.
Since early 2000, Simon and co-Director, Greg, have had
an ear out in the hydraulics industry. With over 55 years’
collective experience, they heard one common message,
over and over, which was that contracting businesses,
particularly in the forestry and civil industries, felt they
were being penalised with downtime — that moment your
digger blows a hydraulic hose and you’re sitting there in
the middle of nowhere, nursing a tepid cuppa, waiting for
the hose doctor to arrive. Clients were saying this could
take up to four hours, depending on the location.
The losses due to downtime in these industries can be
huge. Four hours of non-productivity is massive in terms of
lost income. The contractor still needs to pay their staff for
that time. BOA have calculated that the forestry industry is
bleeding in excess of $130m annually in lost productivity.
This equates to 800 + forestry crews losing 10 to 15 hours
per month at an average cost of $1200 per hour.
“A common thing we’d hear from the business owners
is that they felt they were being ripped off, in that they
couldn’t see the value in outsourcing their hydraulic repair
and maintenance work, and then receiving a bill for $700
to $1500, especially when this work was being done, over
and over again,” says Simon.
Over time, BOA’s vision was to offer a hydraulic repair and
maintenance solution, giving life to the slogan ‘hydraulic
uptime’.
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CAM February 2019
“The idea of ‘hydraulic uptime’ came about as a way
of trying to get clients to think of managing their own
hydraulic repairs as ‘uptime’ rather than focusing on the
loss of time as has traditionally been experienced,” says
Simon.
“So we give them the capability to fix everything
themselves, with a container onsite or a setup on the
back of a ute, and provide machinery, as in the crimping
machine, the cut-off saw and the hoses and fittings, to
suit their range of equipment. Then we provide training
around it so we give them that capability to assemble their
own hoses onsite,” Greg explains.
“When a machine is down it’s obviously not making
money; we’re about providing a solution right at the need,
when there’s a breakdown, instead of waiting maybe two
hours. It also depends how remote they are. In some
cases we’ve managed to reduce a repair from four hours
to half an hour”, he says.
The result is that companies using this BOA model have
reduced ‘downtime’ to 20 minutes, about the length of
time it takes to replace a basic hydraulic hose. One of
the key factors in this model is training, the passing on of
BOA’s own specialist knowledge to the contractor so they
can do it themselves perpetually.
“To assemble a hose is relatively simple,” Greg explains.
“Not to say that the decisions around what parts and
equipment is simple, but if you already have those parts
and the right machinery, it’s not difficult to learn how to
assemble a high-quality replacement hose. The main
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