Since establishing his company back in 2001, proprietor and managing director John Smith has developed Prestige Hire into a major independent plant and tool hire business serving the whole of the West Midlands.

Besides the core business of tool and plant hire, the company has also, just over the last three years, invested significant time and resources into developing a separate division operating as Total Training.

“For quite some time we had repeated requests from our customers to provide all manner of training for their operatives whether it was operator training on plant, theoretical training, manual handling – in fact anything related to the construction industry,” explains John Smith. And recognizing there was a niche in the market in the West Midlands the company set about obtaining the relevant accreditations to provide training to the local construction industry.

Total Training can now offer CPCS training on virtually all items of mobile plant along with SQAs and City & Guilds accreditation to deliver NVQs. The company has recently been appointed as national training provider for a major national civils contractor and is working with local government agencies in helping to get unemployed people ready for industry apprenticeships.

Prestige Plant has recently bought a package of 14 Volvo compact excavators (pictured above) – eight canopy version EC15Cs and six larger EC27Cs with cabs. But for its training wing it also bought a 14-tonne Volvo EC140D excavator as part of the same order.

“This is the largest machine we’ve purchased so far but recognize that this size of machine is commonplace on the building or construction site so it made sense to opt for the fourteen tonner to help deliver the relevant operator training we provide,” says John Smith. The machine will be based at Total Training’s facility near the Birmingham NEC.