A new piece of equipment designed to make cladding faster, less damage prone and far less labour intensive has been introduced by Nationwide, the country's leading powered access hire company. Called PowerClad, it does away with the hassle associated with the manual handling and placing of heavy and increasingly larger cladding panels. It boosts site productivity and achieves previously unattainable levels of cladding efficiency.

PowerClad is also expected to make a major contribution towards site safety and, for the first time, provides cladding contractors with a means of lifting and positioning panels that is in line with the best health and safety practices.

Instead of four or five installers typically being required to manhandle heavy composite panels into place and fix them into position, using PowerClad is a two-man job. There is no danger of damaged panels - industry estimates suggest that the current panel damage rate is as high as ten percent - and one of the most vulnerable operations, the "drop" of the panel when it is finally positioned, is virtually eliminated. Trials have shown that a two-man PowerClad team can comfortably complete at least 30 percent more cladding a day. Put another way, eight 7-metre panels fixed in around half of the time it would otherwise take.

PowerClad is designed by a cladder for cladders, so there is nothing hypothetical about the productivity, efficiency, safety or lack of damage claims made for PowerClad, Nationwide asserts. It is the brainchild of Peter Compton who, before taking his idea to Nationwide, had spent his working life as a cladding contractor.

He says: "Composite panels are now so heavy that they are too much for even experienced four or five man teams to handle safely. They are also getting more expensive, so a scratch or a buckled corner can easily write-off £300 to £400." He continues: "Many cladding contractors are already exceeding the safe working load of the lifting equipment they are using, and manually lifting the panel over the gap between the platform and the building is getting increasingly dangerous."

Designed for use with popular scissor lifts in the Nationwide hire fleet - the Genie 5390 and Genie 4390, both with 7.38-metre extended, strengthened decks - there are a number of key stages in the PowerClad process. These are loading the panel onto the scissor lift using a telehandler or rough terrain forklift truck, placing it centrally onto the specially designed aluminium trestles, and hydraulically lifting and offering-up the panel to the building framework. The remaining stages are fixing the panel and, finally, retracting the system and moving on to fit the next panel.

PowerClad incorporates fine height and lateral adjustment and is simplicity itself to use. The scissor lift accommodates variations in ground conditions by the use of automatically adjusting jacks that level the platform at the push of a single button. There is a 110v power supply to the platform, with ample power points to enable the use of screw guns and drills.

"It is not rocket science to calculate the cost benefits of using PowerClad," concludes Peter Compton. "The savings far surpass the cost of hiring the equipment. In fact, hiring PowerClad actually makes a significant and on-going contribution to the cladder's profit. Real examples show that gross profit can be more than doubled. This is a real opportunity for cladding to be undertaken free of risk and damage, as a consistently smooth and fast operation."

Nationwide is part of the publicly-quoted Lavendon Group plc and is headquartered in Lutterworth, Leicestershire. Its hire fleet is twice the size of its nearest UK competitor and all of the company's depots comply with Nationwide's ISO 9002 accreditation. The Group is also the leading player in the European powered access market, trading under the
name Zooom in Germany, France, Spain and Austria.

END

April 2002 Nat2.026b