Whether you’re renting to a single consumer or loaning equipment to a larger business, the same principles largely apply. You expect your equipment to be in a similar condition before and after, whilst knowing that it is your responsibility to provide legally safe equipment. Just these two of the many values in the equipment rental business highlight why there is a need for a thorough inspection process that is both quick and effective. Many rental and hire businesses are now moving on from outdated paper inspection checklists to digital and paperless solutions using mobile devices.
One of the reasons that it’s so important to conduct a thorough check before leasing or hiring equipment to a consumer or business is the question of liability and safety. It is fundamentally important that any equipment or asset has passed the necessary safety checks and conforms to industrial regulations. Similarly, if something goes wrong during the lease period, or if excessive damage occurs, it is crucial to have a detailed record of the equipment before the lease began. Only through this can it be determined who is liable for the event. This is why many hiring organisations are making use of digital tracking of inspection reports. Paperless solutions are allowing hiring businesses to make inspection reports or pre-rental checks on any asset or equipment piece and save/lodge this report in the historical file for said asset. This means that if anything does occur, it is easy to see the likelihood of this happening from normal wear and tear, whilst also help prevent future such incidents. Maintenance teams can also use this information to better understand how the material, part or entire equipment piece deformed, broke or failed. For management this gives a good oversight of the return on interest (ROI) that equipment rental is providing and whether the costs are effectively outweighing the income or value that the asset is generating.
Inspection reports of this nature often require a visual check, scan of information or reporting of current wear. For this, paperless solutions currently provide image capture and annotation using the smartphone or tablet device camera. Using the touchscreen, it is easy to annotate images, make drawings and record observations. The GPS, date/time stamps function built into every report means that historical tracking of every asset becomes much easier than having to manually file reports. The filing of reports also often takes up large amount of space which can obviously be reduced with digital paperless applications. The voluminous amount of paperwork in business equipment rental can all be moved to digital formats, being stored on an in-house server or on the cloud (SaaS). This gives easy access for management that may operate out of a central location to track the movement of equipment or assets that are mobile and may be returned at another location.
To learn more about digital solutions for business equipment rental inspection, or how paperless can help your hiring organisation, visit Pervidi.com.au
