Wigan-based civil engineering and groundworks company Civils & Construction Solutions Ltd has ordered four CASE CX130E crawler excavators from local dealer Dennis Barnfield Ltd, to meet growing demand from customers across the North-West.
The company, which specialises in groundworks and construction up to floor level on retirement and social housing projects, has seen rapidly increasing demand for its services this year.
“We are having to hire in a lot of machines at present,” said Construction Director Neil Barnes.
“We aim to own 80% and hire 20%, but we’re way off that at the moment. We are one of the busiest civils companies in the North-West right now.”
A long-term CASE customer, Civils & Construction Solutions operates a fleet of 25 machines, with excavators from 1.5-tonnes through to 35-tonnes, a road haulage fleet of tippers and low-loaders and a range of smaller equipment. Since its formation 12 years ago, the company has invested more than £1.5m with CASE dealer Dennis Barnfield LTD, with this latest order being sealed at the recent UK CASE Roadshow event in Derbyshire.
“We started out with a few used machines from various manufacturers,” said Mr Barnes.
“We became friends with Area Sales Manager Kevin Johnson from Dennis Barnfield Ltd and purchased our first two new CASE CX145D short radius excavators in 2018. We were massively impressed with them and went on to buy a CASE CX245D short radius excavator.”
Since that time the company has purchased CASE excavators up to the 35-tonne CASE CX350D and was the first customer in the UK to order a 9-tonne CASE CX90D Midi excavator. The business is now moving forward again with the purchase its first CASE
E-Series excavators, being the four new CASE CX130Es that will be delivered over the coming weeks.
The CASE CX130E is the smallest of the recently-introduced E-Series crawler excavator models, yet it shares many of the features and benefits of its larger stablemates. Powered by an EU Stage V engine from FPT, the 13-tonne machine delivers the perfect combination of power and productivity, with enhanced operator comfort and ease of use.
“The cab on the E-Series machines is more roomy for our operators, with a better and larger control panel screen, but they’ve always been a top notch machine,” said Mr Barnes.
“You need the manoeuvrability in residential work. The CX130E and CX145D are the most popular machines on site for us, while the larger models, like the CX245D are used for deeper drainage work and for heavy lifting, for trench boxes and larger pipe sections.”
There are few complaints from the company’s operators, with each machine assigned to a single driver throughout its 3-4 year life with the business. All of the service and maintenance work is carried out by Dennis Barnfield’s service department and the engineers have a novel What’sApp group with Civils & Construction Solutions’ drivers, allowing them to contact the dealer when required.
“It looks after itself and it works really well,” said Mr Barnes. “We buy a machine and it gets a driver and that’s it. The machine is parked up if the driver is on holiday and CASE dealer Dennis Barnfield performs all the maintenance on the machines and Nine times out of Ten we sell them back to Dennis Barnfield and the resale values have been very good. They are a sought-after product.”
Civils & Construction Solutions is very much a family business, though it employs more than 130 staff. Neil’s brother Phil Barnes is the Managing Director, while his wife Leanne Barnes is Finance Director. Family friend Scott Hickford is Commercial Director.
The company currently has more than 20 live sites across the North-West and further machines will no doubt be required as the business continues to grow. There seems little doubt about where those machines will come from though.
“The CASE machines and the service from Dennis Barnfield are first class,” said Mr Barnes. “We’re never going to change now.”
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Gordon Lucy
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