Digital Plant Manager
Flannery Plant Hire
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My name’s Paul. I work for Flannery Plant Hire.
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They’re a UK-wide operation. I’m based out of Birmingham, in Curdworth.
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And today we’re coming from our head office in West London.
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Flannery rents out machines to the construction industry
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and you’ll see them as large diggers, excavators, bulldozers.
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We’ve got a whole fleet of machines throughout the UK.
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My role here, as digital plant manager, is to manage a UK
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team of engineers who go out and fix and install products
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on Flannery machines at customer sites.
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From the early 2000s there’s been an adoption of products that enhance machines
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and that consists of telematics, GPS systems,
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total stations and remote support.
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Telematics allows us to log into each machine
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at any point during the day and it’s a remote control system.
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School for me – I concentrated on what I was good at to be honest with you.
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Mathematics was not a strong area for me, but I was great at art.
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I felt that doing things that I enjoyed
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allowed me to be, I suppose, more confident in them areas.
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I then went to sixth form.
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I’d done well on my GCSEs and I done again subjects that
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I enjoyed for two years, which is art, history and media.
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And then after that I got an apprenticeship.
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I started as an apprentice technician
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and that was servicing equipment.
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I didn’t really know what it was at that time, to be honest with you,
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but I just knew that it was something that I wanted to do
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and it was an apprenticeship which no one really knew anything about.
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I liked it because they were putting me back through City and Guilds on a day break.
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So I got to learn as well.
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So while I had four days of work, the Wednesday of
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every week I was sent off to college to learn electronics.
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I finished my apprenticeship with Sekeya
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and then I joined a company which was called Survey Supplies.
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I joined a business that was called Quarec, joined as a service technician.
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I joined a company called VP PLC as a specialist engineer,
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and then I joined a company called Bolles, who are a Dutch company – family-run
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business again, similar to Flannery’s. I was there for six and a half years.
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Ended up as a director, starting off from a technical support engineer.
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So I didn’t realise it until I actually started work that I’d learned
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quite a lot in terms of at the time, in geography, in terms of mapping,
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understanding where places are, how to scale and understand
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how to do a grid – which are all applicable in my job today.
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When we’re looking to recruit, we’re looking for great attitude,
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I think, because you can train people
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with a great attitude, people that are willing to listen and learn.
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The advice I would give you is
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don’t let a piece of paper with results written on it
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judge you or define you
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and once you win that job, give it your all.
“Don’t let a piece of paper with results written on it judge you or define you.”
Paul became an apprentice technician after sixth form. He had roles with a number of companies, before working his way up to a director position. He now leads a team of engineers who fix and install digital products on machines such as diggers, excavators and bulldozers.
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