Operated Plant Hire Manager
Flannery Plant Hire

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My name’s Neil, and I’m the operated plant manager at P. Flannery Plant Hire.

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We’re based in Wembley, which is West London.

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We specialise as a company in supplying various

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different types of machines to construction sites across the country.

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This can be rollers, dump trucks, excavator diggers,

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JCBs, bulldozers.

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Me along with my team,

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we’re responsible for ensuring all the operated hires,

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basically, have an operator on them. Any excavator that goes out on hire

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we’ll have to recruit the right operator for the right machine.

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And that could be
in a summer’s day,

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you could be looking at 100 operators, which gets busy.

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But it’s a challenge which is enjoyable.

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Persuasion is key. A lot of operators work for different companies.

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During the summer months, especially,

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we want them to come on board with us.

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So persuading them and showing them the benefits of what

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it will be like working for us, it’s all fundamental.

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Confidence – you have to be confident.

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We speak to hundreds of people on a daily basis.

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I loved school

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and not necessarily for the purposes I should be there for, which is education.

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I loved it in the sense of I loved socialising.

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I loved being with my friends.

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For me, it was the fun factor, like I was that person

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if you get a reference off any of my teachers, they’ll say

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he would not stop talking.

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He’ll be in a corner, just yap, yap, yap.

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That’s what I was like.

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And I’ve utilised that in sort of in what I do now.

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Like the job involves talking to people

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so I’ve sort of made it into a career.

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A-levels I done business and media. I moved on to university, which was up north, so up in Hull.

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I initially started off with business management,

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so moved over to accounting and finance, which in all honesty,

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I lasted about six months.

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I can’t see myself after university is done sitting in an office doing accounts.

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I left university after about a year and a half.

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My parents weren’t best pleased with it. Sat at home for probably about a month or two

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and I just tried to evaluate and see what I actually wanted to do.

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Then I entered the world of recruitment.

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So I started off in recruitment, supplying trades and labour staff

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nationwide, not as big as I’m doing now, but smaller scale, but it was still recruitment.

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From then I moved on

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to another recruitment company which was a peg up and

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it’s something I loved doing.

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I just loved doing it.

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And then I got a call once from Flannery’s asking me to come in for an interview.

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Came in for an interview and I got offered a job.

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You don’t want to have that feeling of

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dismay, like, I don’t want to go to work today.

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I wake up right now, I got to work. I’m happy.

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Jump out of bed, I’m a very morning person.

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If I was an accountant, I wouldn’t have been a morning person.

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I would have been just, it’s just paying the bills.

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The advice I’d have is don’t look at what anyone else is doing.

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Just focus on yourself and I guess just work hard.