ASHTEAD TECHNOLOGY ASKS 'IS RENTING A BETTER OPTION?'
December 18th 2007

A wide variety of instruments are available to assist with COSHH assessments, however, technology changes fast and many companies prefer to hire monitoring and test instruments rather than buy them. In this article James Carlyle, General Manager at rental instrumentation specialists Ashtead Technology, explains why renting is often a better option.

Imagine the situation. You are standing in the power tools section of your local D.I.Y. store gazing longingly at the dazzling array of equipment with which you could transform your home into something worthy of an Ideal Homes exhibit.

Your attention is caught by a particularly attractive offer on saw benches - �399.99 seems like a really good deal!

A little devil on one shoulder says �Go on! No more sawing. Wouldn�t that be great!� but the angel on the other shoulder says �hang on, how often are you actually going to use that saw bench? Can you really afford to spend the cash? And where will you keep it? If you really need a saw bench, why don�t you just hire one?�

Luckily, your partner arrives and you don�t have to make a decision, but the dilemma that you faced is one that many of us have to deal with in our everyday working lives. For the saw bench - see a portable gas detector or a noise meter, for the angel - see your boss, for the devil - see yourself, and for your partner - see the financial director!

Ashtead Technology is part of the Ashtead Group plc � one of the world�s largest equipment rental companies. The Group was founded in 1947, and has achieved considerable success, not least because renting is often a better alternative to buying.

Most of us buy equipment when we need it, however, how many of us stop to consider the renting alternative?

Let us suppose that your company employs a number of hazardous chemicals and you need to undertake a COSHH assessment. You need a gas detector, but since this is not a frequent occurrence, it seems logical to rent one. However, if you and your colleagues can find use for this equipment every week, it might make more sense to buy an instrument.

So, this simple example demonstrates that the decision to rent is often dictated by the frequency of intended use. However, there are a number of other advantages to renting.

For example, suppose the instrument breaks down, you spend a couple of hours trying to fix it, give up and then try and convince the manufacturer that it should replace it under warranty.

Let us also suppose that a colleague in a different department heard that you had your own equipment, and asked if he could borrow it for use on a site in the next County. Will he look after it properly and return it in its original condition? And will he return it when he said he would?

In the following year, your colleague calls again, and asks if you can bring your instrument to an important site where they have a possible chemical leak. However, when you get there you discover that your instrument does not measure the specific vapours that may have arisen from a leak. So, your colleague hires one and you are frustrated to discover that instrument technology has moved on since you made your purchase and the hired model is much easier to use and more accurate.

You would love to have the new model, but having purchased the (now) older model, you are stuck with it, unless you can find a way to dispose of it. However, it did cost a lot of money, and might come in useful one day, so you keep it, and lock it up in a storage area.

Years later, whilst trying to free up space, you come across your old instrument, and experience a brief pang of guilt at having wasted your company�s money, but your feelings of guilt then give way to feelings of concern as to how you are going to be able to dispose of the device in an environmentally friendly way.

In all of these scenarios, you would wish that you had rented rather than purchased your instrument.

If a rented tool malfunctions, it is replaced quickly because the rental company is anxious that the instrument performs to specification, so that you might rent it again.

Ashtead�s rental equipment is always delivered clean, checked and ready for use, and if you had rented a detector it would have been delivered to site on the prescribed day, at the right time.

Each time you rent an instrument, you have the opportunity to choose the model that suits your application.

Next year, when you need a gas detector again, you would be able to rent the latest, higher quality model, and at the end of each renting period you simply return it, so you have no storage or disposal problems.

Perhaps the most extensive users of rented environmental monitoring equipment are consultants. For them, Ashtead Technology�s catalogue often represents the range of their capabilities. There would be no sense in them purchasing a large range of gas and water monitoring instruments, when they can simply include the cost of renting in their proposals without taking on all of the disadvantages of ownership.

The strongest case for renting is of course financial. It is vitally important to remember that the money used in equipment purchase could have been used for something else. For example, if your company has an overdraft or Bank loan upon which it is paying say, 8% per annum, that means that the opportunity cost of your purchase is 8%. If you had paid off that part of your overdraft you would have saved the interest charge. Conversely, if you are in the happy position of having no indebtedness, there is still the lost opportunity of investing that money, either in a Bank account, or another profitable area of the business.

Furthermore, your accounts department will depreciate the value of your equipment over a period of 1 to 3 years in most cases, which means that the cost of equipment with a purchase price of say �10,000 will actually hit your bottom line by something between �4,000 and �10,000 in the first year.

The case for renting technical instruments is even stronger than for other equipment because it often requires external calibration, or at the very least skilful maintenance with specialist equipment. It makes sense for this work to be performed by fully equipped and trained engineers, and for this reason, the engineers at Ashtead Technology have all been trained by instrument manufacturers.

The technical expertise of the Ashtead engineers is also vitally important in helping you firstly to select the right equipment, and secondly, to use it to its best effect. This can be of particular value when you need to �try before you buy� � Ashtead�s engineers can help you to choose the right instrument for your application, and they can help you to use it correctly, so that once you are comfortable with the device you are in a better position to make a purchase decision.

In summary, the case for renting is stronger if the equipment is expensive to buy, or you do not plan to use the equipment frequently. You should also consider whether you could put the purchase money to better use.

You may also decide that the equipment requires skilled calibration and maintenance, coupled with specialist equipment, and the cost for this would be preclusive.

You should also choose to rent if you always need access to the latest technology, or if you do not wish to bear the cost and inconvenience of storage.

Lastly, a common reason for renting is that people like to �try before they buy�.

So, the next time you find yourself thinking illogically at a D.I.Y. store or considering purchasing a new instrument for your COSHH assessment, remember to listen to the angel on your shoulder!