Measures to take to protect plant machinery

The biggest secret in the plant world is how much theft costs each year. The insurers estimate it cost them £42m in 2006, but in the same breath admit that many contractors and plant hire companies self-insure. And £42m is only the cost of the machinery minus the excess.

A-Plant, for instance, calculates that each stolen item costs it £7,500 in unrecoverable costs.

So why is stealing plant so attractive? Haydn Steele from the Construction Plant-hire Association who sits on the Plant Theft Action Group says the criminals perceived plant theft as a low risk/high profit business. "Security is pretty well non-existent on many plant items, the recovery rate of stolen plant is only about 5%, so the chances of getting caught are almost negligible and there is a high level of demand for plant both in UK and overseas," he says. At last year's CITS conference Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur of the Metropolitan Police said criminals see plant as "low hanging fruit".

Organised crime

That's not to say that the criminal fraternity is purely opportunistic in regards to plant theft, some are very organised with one gang painting a vehicle in a contractor's colours! In another incident a 21t excavator stolen from London was recovered in Southern Ireland 24 hours after it was taken. Anybody moving plant knows just how difficult arranging ferry crossings can be - the thieves didn't just turn up at the docks and ask 'any chance of squeezing us on' this was a well-planned job.

Thieves utilise trucks, trailers, low loaders and containers to transport stolen plant just as legitimate companies do to move their own kit. Indeed legitimate hauliers, freight forwarders and shippers may be employed to export the stolen plant - as happened recently in Newcastle.

But times are changing - and not before time many would say. Over the past year the new Construction Equipment Safety and Registration (Cesar) scheme has become established and plant manufacturers are increasingly turning away from the single key mentality and fitting immobilisers as standard.

Even the insurance industry is beginning get its act together, requesting complete details (such as the VIN number) of each machine they cover, recording plant theft claims in greater detail and taking into account levels of security when assessing risk.

Police interest has increased too with the setting up of the Agricultural and Plant National Intelligence Unit (see page 12), which will give a nationwide picture of plant theft and help increase both recovery and prosecution rates. Something that could deter criminals where all else has failed.

But neither the police nor the insurers can beat this crime wave alone and contractors and plant owners are being urged to shoulder more responsibility for protecting, marking and keeping records of their own machines.

Without identifying marks or a record of the VIN numbers, the chances of the police identifying a machine as stolen and returning it to the rightful owner are very slim (experience would suggest 5%).

With cars, which are both registered and have their VIN numbers recorded in a police-accessible database, the recovery rate is over 50% - a lesson if ever there was one.

Claims record

In a recent case Ian Elliott from the Agricultural and Plant National Intelligence Unit spent six hours trying to trace the owners of a Cat excavator belonging to a national plant hire company because it only recorded the machine's details by its own fleet number.

As the thieves had removed the self-adhesive vinyl fleet number, the hire company couldn't identify the machine and Elliott only traced it through the insurance claim record.

But security needn't be an on-cost. Insurers are starting to offer discounted premium for companies taking additional measures to secure their plant, and the anti-theft technology can also be used to improve utilisation and eliminate misuse.

In the following pages we explore how to beat the criminals and how to utilise the security devices to their greatest effect.