Waterford Crane Hire has grown to become a leader
in crane hire and contract lifting since its establishment in 2001. Building Ireland spoke with Sam Power, one of the members of the founding family, to find out more.
Waterford Crane Hire was established in 2001 by Nicky Power after he had spent the previous 25 years working in the crane hire business, gaining himself a wealth of knowledge and experience within the industry.
Since that time the company has grown from strength to strength, becoming the only crane hire business in all of Co Waterford and one of the leading names in lifting services in the south of Ireland, but still remains a business with a strong family focus.
Nicky’s son Sam has been involved in Waterford Crane Hire all of his working life and was good enough to take time out of the company’s hectic schedule to speak with us recently.
“We’re based here in Ballindud just outside Waterford City and the company has been established 16 years now,” said Sam.
“It’s a family business with seven full-time staff, including my father Nicky (managing director) and my uncle Michael.
“We do general crane hire work here obviously but we also provide a full contract lift service as well, which sees us responsible for all aspects of the planning and execution of the lift, and we cover Waterford, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Wexford and Carlow mostly but we’d further up the country into the Dublin area sometimes as well.”
Waterford Crane Hire offer a wide range of cranes, ranging from a compact 13-tonne city crane to a 130 tonne all-terrain crane on standard hire or contract lifting basis throughout Waterford, Kilkenny, Wexford, Tipperary, Carlow and East Cork, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The company is strategically located on the outer ring road of Waterford City which gives it excellent access to anywhere within the city and also provides excellent links to the N25 Waterford City bypass, Belview Port and M9 motorway.
Safety has always been the number one priority at Waterford Crane Hire since the company opened its doors in 2001. They pride themselves on keeping all of their equipment maintained to the highest standard, serviced and tested regularly, plus ensure all of their employees receive on-going training to carry up to date necessary tickets and certificates.
Combined with an upturn in the construction market, being the only crane hire company in Co Waterford means that Sam and co are experiencing busy times are present.
“Right now, we are very busy,” he said. “We have work going on in a lot of places and we’re the only crane hire outfit in Waterford, so we’re quite busy and hopefully it stays that way.”
When Nicky Power started Waterford Crane Hire 16 years ago things picked up for him fairly quickly with the Celtic Tiger in full flow.
After six or seven years, the downturn hit the Irish construction industry like a sledgehammer and Sam admits that there was a point where the company had to downsize.
Now, however, things are different and the plan at present is to add a couple more cranes to the fleet as business continues to thrive.
“It (the recession) definitely did affect us,” Sam stated. “We downsized our fleet to three cranes and in our peak we had six here.
“We’re at five cranes now since adding our 130 tonne Liebherr to the fleet last year and hoping to add one or two more to the fleet this year plus upgrade another hopefully, so we can’t complain because business has been good recently and we have been involved in some nice jobs over the past year or so.
“The construction & mechanical fit-out of the new West Pharma plant here in Waterford would be one, the conversion of the old Diageo brewery to the new Waterford Distillery in the city, the Spray Dryer Project in MSD(Merck, Sharp & Dohme) in Co. Tipperary.
“Also the construction of the new Glanbia Plant in Belview Port, the extension works of SmartPly also at Belview Port, the construction works of the Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) in Dunmore East, Kilmeaden, Kilmacthomas & Stradbally, the repair & dredging works of Dunmore East harbour, just to name a few so with a couple more projects lined up during 2017 we should be okay.”
It wasn’t all bad news during the downturn for Waterford Crane Hire. After all, they weathered the storm when all was said and done and they also got to grab some local headlines.
In 2012, Waterford Crane Hire supplied its 60-tonne Marchetti MG 60.3 to help break the world record for the largest bowl of porridge at the Waterford Harvest Festival.
A two metre high bowl with a diameter of 1.7 metres was filled with a hundred bags of Flahavans oats and 800 litres of water. After sugar and milk was added it produced a grand total of 1380 kilos of porridge, a world record at the time.
The event saw the company nab some food exposure at the time and close to a year to two later the business began to turn around thanks to an upturn in the market.
Combine that with some loyal clients which have been with them from the beginning, and Waterford Crane Hire looks to be in a fairly good place right now.
“We’ve done a lot of work for SmartPly, which is owned by Coilite, for the majority of our time in business and then Tom O’Brien Construction, Suir Engineering, Glencalan Engineering, Winthrop Engineering, David Flynn Construction & Radley Engineering would be local clients that have struck with us down through the years,” said Sam.
“They like to keep it local and we enjoy working for them and, as I said, we’re the only crane hire company in Waterford now.”
Out from their Crane Hire service, Waterford Crane Hire have done countless Contract Lifts for some of the above mentioned and various other clients since setting up in 2001.
Under the terms and conditions of a Contract Lift, the crane, as well as any extra equipment provided, the operator and all personnel, (including the Appointed Person / Lift Supervisor) are the responsibility of ourselves, the crane owner.
Waterford Crane Hire are also responsible for all aspects of the planning and execution of the lift and will supply Site Surveys, Appointed Persons, Lift Supervisors, Risk Assessments, Method Statements and Lift Plans.
With a new year upon us, Sam says he’s hoping for more of the same in 2017 with maybe two new additions for his family’s company.
“Hopefully we’ll add those cranes to the fleet this year and with another couple of big projects up and coming in the area hopefully we’ll keep busy at those,” he concluded.
Waterford Crane Hire
Address: Mill Lane Complex, Ballindud, Co Waterford
Phone: 051-595947
Web: www.waterfordcranehire.ie
Email: [email protected]
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, April 2017, Vol 3 No 3
