Simon Purchon talks to Patrick Smith about the asset management side of Babcock International Group
Globally each year, the aggregates industry moves 25 billion tonnes of construction aggregates. According to
Simon Purchon is a man with an international mission to increase his company’s visibility in the quarrying and mining industries.
In his new role as Business Development Director, mining and construction at Babcock, Purchon is charged with exploring all avenues that will increase the mobile asset management side of the business, and as part of this the group will be exhibiting at
He held similar positions with the
“Babcock International Group is a FTSE 250 company and it is on the edge of becoming a FTSE 100 company and I think after the next shortlist we will be up there,” says Purchon.
“Babcock has grown up as a company by a number of strategic acquisitions from being just a defence company to being an engineering support services company.
“We employ 27,000 people worldwide and we have a turnover of around £3 billion (€3.7 billion).”
As an engineering support services company, Babcock has a wide-ranging portfolio and one of its major contracts recently has come from
Earlier this year the French-headquartered global company awarded Babcock International Group a £100 million (€124 million) ten-year contract to provide a fleet managed service for its heavy mobile equipment (HME) located across 200 of its aggregate and cement sites in North America.
The programme follows the £50 million (€62 million) fleet management contract awarded to Babcock in July 2011, which covers Lafarge's aggregate and cement sites in the UK.
Babcock is delivering a whole lifecycle approach to managing Lafarge's fleet of vehicles and equipment, from procuring, supporting and maintaining the equipment through to arranging equipment disposal.
The contract covers HME including vehicles such as loaders, heavy rigid and articulated trucks, excavators, bulldozers and ancillary equipment.
In the UK, Babcock will look after more than 400 Lafarge assets across 70 sites ranging from small forklifts to 300tonne excavators.
Using ALCAMiE (Asset Life Cycle Availability in Engineering), its proven method of delivery, Babcock says it transforms the way that customers optimise their fleet and equipment availability, improving performance and reducing the lifetime costs of ownership and uncertainly.
Purchon says that at the core of ALCAMiE is a system of web-based reporting that provides organisations with the granular information they need to make the right strategic and operational decisions about their fleet. The output is a day-by-day extract of what is happening in the world of the customer’s assets, offering total visibility of performance, cost of ownership, and availability that helps managers make whole-life decisions.
This, says Purchon, allows Babcock to take a smarter approach to optimising asset availability as well as planning a more efficient maintenance schedule by matching accurate fleet availability to the customer’s daily requirements for each asset.
“Through Babcock's proven partnering approach, Lafarge will be able to focus on its core activity of delivering world-class materials, while benefitting from the efficiencies, a multi-jurisdictional overview of its fleet operations, and the sharing of best practice that this new service will deliver.”
Purchon points out that within the first eight months of the contract Babcock had completed the annual review process for the year ahead with Lafarge, “ensuring that sites have the capacity to meet demand”; committed £10 million (€12.4 million) of new equipment to replace aged or worn out equipment including five
Babcock currently manages close on 30,000 vehicles and over 176,000 equipment stock lines globally.
This includes a 16-year PFI (private finance initiative) vehicles capability contract to deploy and support 2,200 engineering support vehicles around the world on behalf of the UK Royal Engineers and Royal Logistics Corps; the White Fleet contract providing a range of over 14,000 vehicles to the UK Ministry of Defence, as well as managing British Airways' UK airside vehicles and the Metropolitan Police Service's operational fleet.
Indeed, Purchon says one of his career highlights includes winning British Airways, Metropolitan Police and leading the sales team to win a 16-year contract to manage the New Dimension fleet used by the fire and rescue authorities in England and Wales to respond to major incidents.
In early 2012, Babcock also won a £200 million (€247 million) ten-year contract to continue providing services relating to the transmission and distribution of radio and television for the BBC World Service, which it carries out from its head office in London.
It is designed to ensure that the BBC receives the optimum value for money that continues to deliver high levels of service for its audience.
“When I joined Babcock it was through the acquisition of defence services company VT Group.
“As a company we have a worldwide reach, although we are not in every country. Where we are is because we have a customer-focussed business in those countries and we don’t believe in setting up a base unless there are both good strategic reasons to do so and advantages for the customer.” says Purchon.
“Mining and construction companies have traditionally managed their vehicles and equipment in-house. They rely on a complex mix of assets to service their business, and up until now these have been seen as too critical to outsource.
“Given the critical importance of these assets to the operation of the business, it is perhaps clear why fleet management has not been outsourced.
“However, increased economic pressures and a new offering from Babcock into the market has seen this mindset begin to change.
“Bringing capability to the market, Babcock took this proven expertise into the mining and construction sector, signing an exclusive deal with Lafarge which transfers the maintenance risk to Babcock.
“One of the critical advantages we bring is our independence: we are not an OEM so we can manage, on behalf of the client, a variety of equipment that may be sourced from many well-known manufacturers.”
Purchon also emphasises the importance health and safety has in the industry.
“Health and safety is absolutely paramount to what we do and what we are doing for our very large customer base, which aligns very much with quarrying where health and safety is vitally important.
“We have a policy called Home Safe Every Day and this is applied to our employees and our partners, and we expect everyone to arrive home safe every day.
“Fundamental to what we do is to have, by country, a single point of contact centre for all sites. Each country has a dedicated team of people that get to know the site well.
“When you strip asset management back to its core elements it is surprising how applicable they are to new sectors and to the mining and quarrying sector as an area where we think we can apply the skills we have learned over many years in this environment.
“For example, in the case of Lafarge, we have taken the administration for thousands of invoices out of the company and it receives a single invoice from us each month.”
Purchon added: “In assessing opportunities, we hope to look at the whole supply chain of an organisation and, depending on the client and where we can add some value, we would like to talk to companies.
“We think there are a couple of companies we should be talking to, to see if we can add value to what they are doing.
“While I am sure that there are different requirements within the sector, I believe what we have is quite different and what we are doing is applying what we have successfully done for other sectors to the quarrying and mining sector.”
