Mr Rob Oliver is the Chief Executive of the Construction Equipment Association, which has been the trade association for manufacturers of construction equipment in the UK since the 1940s. Mr Oliver started working for the organisation in 1983 – and became Chief Executive in 2000. The association exists to represent the sector, has fostered strong links with the government and has assisted in represented on European legislative matters through the Committee for European Construction Equipment in Brussels. There are 120 members of the association, which is entirely funded by members’ subscriptions.

I happened to be speaking with Detective Inspector Will Young of the Met Police a couple of months ago, and he told me the amazing fact that, at a conservative estimate, £1 million worth of construction plant is stolen every ten days. Is that an accurate number?

It seems incredible to me that very large, valuable and attractive items can be spirited away without anybody noticing. How is that possible?

Rob Oliver A large dump truck can be worth £250,000 and, in the unlikely event of it being found, unless it carries identification marks, there may be no way of identifying it. The PTAG went through a process of contacting specialist suppliers to operate a plant registration scheme which included marking plant with both easily seen and covert identification marks. This led to the appointment of Datatag ID Ltd., who had extensive experience in the motor bike and jet ski market, that is sectors who had similar problems in terms of theft. With them, we developed the CESAR scheme.  A great leap forward was when the police established the Plant and Agricultural National Intelligence Unit (PANIU), located with the Metropolitan Police, to act as co-ordinators for re-locating stolen plant nationally. Since 2007, many manufacturers now CESAR mark and register their kit, allowing the police access to their key identification data. In addition, a number of leading insurers came forward to offer their support to the police unit. We believe it came as a shock to them to learn how much money they were losing in the plant market.

Will Young said that he thought insurance companies did business with the big hire companies as a lost leader, do you believe that is correct?

Rob Oliver I’m not privy to the details, but I do know that it is, or perhaps was, common practice to insure equipment not necessarily knowing precisely what equipment they were covering. A family car, for instance, is insured as a serial numbered item, but if a contractor has (say) 50 items on site then the lot may be insured in one go as a fleet and individual details, about whether an item is marked or has a single key, or what security is connected to it, has not necessarily been recorded or even thought through. Most people are not aware that under the standard plant hire terms promoted by the Construction Plant Hire Association that, if an individual hires a piece of kit to dig a trench in the garden, then the hirer is responsible for the insurance. The liability and risk under the standard terms is transferred from the owner, the plant hire company, to the user. There is an element of education to observe when we talk to plant hire companies, because many of them don’t perceive plant theft to be a problem. Yet it would be wrong to characterise all plant companies with the same broad brush. There are major companies that have excellent systems and are well up to speed with the plant theft issue while others are not quite there yet.

What was the next development?

Rob Oliver It all came together with the widening support for the CESAR scheme. This originally stood for Construction Equipment Security and Registration, but now we just call it CESAR as farm equipment is also being registered too. Fitting CESAR as standard, as JCB do for the UK market, for example, has given the scheme a further lift.  The most obvious evidence of a CESAR fit is the presence of a triangular plate bearing alphanumeric markings rather like a car registration plate. Less obvious are miniature transponders attached to the plant containing a unique code number that can be read by a scanner, supplied by us to the police, and supported by a 24/7 hot line. Thirdly, there is a microdot and “DNA paint” identification system, their removal being virtually impossible. Thus establishing the provenance of a stolen digger, or any other item of plant so marked, becomes possible.

How long has the CESAR scheme been running?

Rob Oliver We introduced it in the spring of 2007 and it came into full effect later in the year.

…and what do the recent stats reveal?

Rob Oliver Before CESAR, there was only a 5% chance that a stolen item would be recovered. The recovery rate for equipment that is CESAR protected is now 25% which is a great improvement; yet that is still 75% that is never seen again. We think CESAR fitted plant is also around 70% less likely to be stolen than unprotected equipment. Perhaps we ought to discuss some of the factors: First we think CESAR has a deterrent affect and another, is the increase in police awareness. On the other hand, we have to recognise what we are up against and that is the skill and professionalism of some of the gangs involved in plant theft. Part of the CESAR scheme is to keep the 40 or so different police forces in the country informed and to encourage owners to develop good security practices. In November there will be a conference run by the Construction Industry Theft Solutions (CITS) organisation. There will be two hundred or so people attending, including a strong police contingent, all there to tackle shared plant theft problems. 

From where are the vehicles and plant mostly stolen? Are they taken from the sites, off the road or from where?

Rob Oliver The answer to that is, all over…from seemingly well-protected sites and from the roadside. Situations when thieves have painted stolen vans in the colours of well-known contractors and driven-up to a site claiming to be genuine arrivals to collect a particular excavator and are waved through to carry on. Some quite sophisticated methods are used to get at the kit. Generally, there are a lot of basic things that owners can do to deter theft: secure storage and fencing, site night patrols, not leaving vehicles unattended at the roadside and the fitting of devices to disable the engine. Some companies take the problem very seriously, they will fit tracking devices to locate a ‘lost’ vehicle which are practically management systems that provide information about the hours the equipment has been used as well as the precise location and even the ability to be remotely switched off. We are also looking forward to working with the Agricultural Engineers Association, who are our counterparts covering the farm sector, as they suffer similar problems.

I’ve asked all my questions; anything you would like to add?

Rob Oliver Yes, just to say that the police are huge supporters of CESAR because it enables them, for the first time, to get a grip on the situation because there now exists a method of identifying stolen plant. I am amazed that they were able to recover any kit at all in the past. CESAR is still growing and will become a standard throughout the industry in a few years. The majority of new kit for key product lines is CESAR fitted and we will be improving our retrofit programme. Finally, the insurance companies are taking more interest in prevention and are making it financially attractive for the owners to have their equipment registered so that they qualify for discounts on their premiums.

Thank you for speaking to PIR Construction.