HUBER Technology UK has taken further steps to strengthen its hire business team for AMP8 with the recent appointment of Alistair McFarlane as Hire Business Manager for its hire division.

With a wealth of experience under his belt, Alistair has been working in the UK wastewater sector supply chain for over 20 years, starting with M&N Electrical and Mechanical Services Ltd and then moving across to Hydro International when it acquired M&N in 2019.

Alistair McFarlane talks about the key role hire equipment looks set to play in helping to deliver the AMP8 wastewater programme plans – and how the company has positioned itself to meet the needs of both its new and existing customers.

Alistair McFarlane: Since I took over responsibility for HUBER’s hire division, I’ve been struck by the amount of time, effort and resources the company has already devoted to expanding its resources, range of equipment for hire, skills and capabilities to be ready for AMP8.

I’m hoping that bringing my own knowledge of the wastewater industry, the water companies’ operational processes and the products, technologies, services and equipment they need, will further support HUBER’s proactive approach to help customers deliver their major programmes of work.

Starting with the basics, the work we do when we're surveying a potential project before any equipment goes out on hire is a key part of getting it right. We need to make sure that whatever asset we're supplying to the customer, it’s going to be the right asset for that application. We want to ensure that whatever unit we supply is the appropriate size – which means we undertake a lot of technical input at the outset on our side before a unit is delivered to our customer’s site.

We also need to take a number of factors at key points in the process into consideration – for example hydraulic factors, upstream and downstream issues, water levels, to mention just a few.

Inlet screens - always sized based on worst case scenario

Image: HUBER inlet screen Micro Strainer ROTAMAT Ro9

We take great care to ensure that we size the screen correctly for the right application - the first question we will ask is what are the storm flow rates and the maximum flows coming into the works which are going to pass through the inlet screen.

So, for example, if we know that the FFT or storm conditions on a works is 200 l/s and we put a particular pump in, which is on a VSD drive, we can control the flows on the VSD drive to ramp the pump up and down to suit the flow rates or the storm conditions. Whenever we're sizing inlet screens we always have to size based on the worst case scenario – particularly important given the increasingly stringent controls that water companies are now operating under.

Relationship with pump solutions provider Selwood forms integral part of HUBER’s hire offering

From a hire perspective, HUBER is well placed to support our water sector clients to meet the challenges of AMP8. Our hire equipment often requires inlet and outlet pumps – and our arrangement with pump rental and engineered water handling solutions provider Selwood further strengthens our hire capabilities/ resources in that respect. Around 95% of our equipment generally needs an inlet pump or an outlet pump when it goes out on hire which means in practice we always have to work with a pump supplier – and Selwood is our preferred supplier of choice for pumps.

We work closely with Selwood – in addition to having a great product, they also provide a fantastic level of service that is an integral part of HUBER’s hire offering. In addition to understanding our equipment, they also understand how quickly we may need to deploy pumps as part of our hire solutions due to the nature of the industry that we're in. This will be a huge advantage for us to meet the high level of demand HUBER are now seeing for hire solutions – Selwood’s engineers have now got the capability to both install our equipment and commission it, giving us a further resource to draw on.

With Selwood now on all of the pump frameworks in the UK, on the hire side this offers a significant advantage to our customers in terms of keeping costs down, speed of delivery and flexibility. It means the client has the option of scoping the pump requirements directly with Selwood and placing that side of the hire order directly with them.

Likewise, we can streamline the process by supplying a completely integrated turnkey package where we are the single entity the customers have to deal with. For a lot of the water companies this is a real plus - a peace of mind factor given the ongoing pressures they’re working under.

Understanding operational requirements for deploying hire equipment in rapid timeframe for emergencies 

While a lot of our hire contracts are done in advance on a planned basis, we do understand that there are occasions when customers need to act fast in an emergency unscheduled situation. We also understand the operational requirements for deploying hire equipment in a rapid timeframe. Working closely with our local regional field managers across the UK at HUBER’s strategically located depots, we are able to deploy engineers in a timely manner to install our hire equipment and help to reduce the risk of potential spillages and ensures the works continue to meet consent standards.

Over the eight months I’ve been working at HUBER, I’ve seen how the hire business is continuing to go from strength to strength. Based in the centre of the UK, the hire hub supplies all our OEM equipment – which is now even easier to move around, more agile and more robust for faster effective installation and deployment on site This includes minimal assembly of the equipment on arrival at site and plug and play power connection points. HUBER now offers remote monitoring on all its hire equipment, meaning we can monitor the machine status and react quickly if it goes out of scope.

So for instance, there may be a blockage, it may be that the client's overloaded it. The data we receive means that quite often we will see a regular pattern - so that we'll see any unusual variations and spikes at which point we can notify the client to say, we've noticed certain unusual behaviour. It may simply be that the client has changed the process conditions at that point e.g. been blowing tankers directly into the unit and it's been very heavy material which would account for the variation. Again, it’s a significant “peace of mind” benefit for our customers. 

We offer a wide range of equipment to support customers’ needs – ranging from sewage screening 1D and 2D type screens, sludge screening down to one dimensional screenings, screenings handling equipment and sludge thickening and dewatering. All our hire solutions are designed with our hire hub expertise, installation and support provided by our regional after-sales teams,

As long as we've got the unit available and it's in the workshop, it's been tested and it's ready to go, we can rapidly deploy it via transport to anywhere within the UK, from Cornwall to Scotland.

Particular interest from customers in tank mounted solutions

One area of particular interest to our customers is the fact we are able to offer them tank mounted solutions – the majority of our hire equipment is tank mounted which means we can build the unit offsite. The key benefit of an offsite build means we can just deliver the unit to the site and drop it into place – tank solutions can be installed quickly and deployed easily. And because it’s a plug and play system all we need is an electrical technician to make the initial five pin plug connection. So when, say, a fully automated HUBER inlet screen controlled from a master control panel is in place on the site, because it's fully automated we can literally turn it on and walk away.

All hire equipment maintained on site via a service package

For all of our equipment, there's always a minimum four week hire period – whether it’s needed for planned maintenance works or for reactive work. With all the equipment that goes out, we also ensure it's maintained once it's on site via a service package. If a unit is out on longer-term hire every three months we will do a general on-site visit service where we look at the hours it’s been running which will give us an indication on whether it potentially may need a new brush, a new bearing and so forth.

As the leading screen and screenings handling supplier with technology in place with all the UK water companies, I think it’s probably true to say that if you go into any inlet works, you’ll find HUBER kit in place. We only supply our own manufactured equipment, which means that our customers can be confident that the performance and reliability will not be jeopardised once installed on a temporary basis.

Image: HUBER Containerised S-DISC sludge thickener packaged unit

Turning to processing equipment hire, we’ve also been seeing an uptake in demand for our sludge thickening solution. Our containerised Sludge thickening S-DISC unit, for example, which is completely containerised and can simply be dropped off at a site, connected to a water supply and a power for supply and it's ready to go. The business has just invested in a second unit which means we’ve now got two containerised Sludge thickening S-DISC units available for hire.

Continued increase in demand for temporary sludge screens and screen handling equipment

In the context of addressing storm overflow issues in particular, over the past six months the business has invested heavily in having a wide range of technologies available for both new and existing customers. Moving into AMP8, we are of course aware that there will be a focus on securing overflow reductions to help clients manage flow rates in storm conditions.

We’re continuing to see an increase in demand for temporary sludge screens and screen handling equipment and over recent months we’ve been seeing specific requests for inlet screens which are capable of dealing with larger flow rates. We are now able to offer a new larger tank mounted screen for flows up to 1250 l/s with the tank mounted EscaMax® and WAP®L - we are in a great position to offer our clients a turnkey solution.

To sum up, our clients are always going to have operational requirements for hire equipment in a range of situations, including equipment failure, proactive and reactive works, environmental issues and capital schemes. Interestingly, with more regulatory controls now in place, we’re also seeing more hire and trial activity by water companies who want temporary equipment to be supplied and installed whilst capital projects are being delivered to ensure that the site remains operational and continues to meet consent.

We will continue to make significant investments and add new assets to the hire side of the business to meet the strong demand we expect to see throughout AMP8. We want to be the first port of call for both new and existing wastewater customers so when they ask “Who does hire?” - the response will be “HUBER does.”

In later articles, Alistair McFarlane will take a more detailed look at the role hire equipment is playing in AMP8.

For an informal discussion about HUBER's hire services contact Alistair McFarlane via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or mob: 07980 316064.