MPE Incidents: Get the Right People on the Job

If you’ve had an incident with your mobile plant or equipment (MPE), “The first thing to do is call your insurance provider,” said Lisa Naylor, Technical Claims Manager at NTI. 

Ideally, your insurance provider should connect you with a specialist MPE recovery team. A good team will handle the entire process for you, including site recovery, clean-up, and salvage.  

MPE recovery specialists can save your business

When things go wrong, you want the right people to turn up on the scene. NTI carefully selects its preferred recovery partners to ensure they can do the job quickly and efficiently.

“We’ve got strict criteria,” Lisa said. “An important part of that is to be using up-to-date equipment. We require constant training and updates because there’s new technology for things all the time.

“Say a piece of equipment falls off a trailer for some reason. An experienced team will right the machine and lift it in such a way as to minimise any additional damage.”

It’s similar with site clean-up and remediation. “You need to have an accreditation to be able to appropriately clean up and manage these sites,” Lisa said. NTI’s preferred suppliers aren’t just skilled; they’re also more cost-effective. 

“We’ve seen clients use external contractors who’ve billed a million dollars for a site clean-up,” Lisa recalls, “where our preferred suppliers could have done the job for $700,000.”

Case study: Bogged or total loss?

Not getting the right people on-site to deal with an incident can turn a relatively simple situation into a total loss. Lisa recalls a case involving a $392,000 Kobelco excavator with only 50 hours on the clock.

On its first job, working on boggy land near salt water, it bogged with mud about halfway up its tracks. The operator tried pulling the machine out with its boom and bucket, which only sunk it further.

Over the next four days, the operator tried several times to free it, from dragging to digging and putting down logs to create a solid path. But with tides coming in and out, rain, and the suction of the mud, the excavator was eventually fully submerged.

Only then did the operator call NTI. After spending nearly $100,000 on failed recovery attempts and losing five days’ work on the project, the unit was deemed a total loss (due to the damage to its electrics) – adding nearly another $400,000 to the bill. Then, they had to wait almost 12 months for a replacement machine.

If the owner had instead called NTI as soon as the excavator became bogged, a specialist team could have recovered it that day likely with less damage and with only minimal delay to the project.

Call the experts

NTI’s expert MPE claims team includes technical MPE claim specialists, risk surveyors and specialist MPE repair managers.

Team members have hands-on, real-life experience operating all types of plant and equipment. This experience gives them a deep understanding of the machines they look at every day when assessing claims. 

Our specialist MPE repair managers come to NTI from backgrounds in servicing, maintaining and repairing plant and machinery. As with our other team members, their previous experience means they can offer invaluable insight, support and guidance to our customers. 

In short – we’ve got the right experts on the job to get you back to business faster.