You are a trained accountant. What made you move into the plant safety sector?
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I consider myself to be a pretender in real accounting terms. My time in accounting was spent in insolvency and business consulting. I am proud to say I never completed a set of accounts, a tax return or an audit in those 10 years. I got great experience dealing with companies who had either reached the end of their life or had expanded too quickly which taught me a lot about entrepreneurship. From there I went into general management roles in the steel industry. Safety was a critical component of the role and I saw how difficult it was to do safety well.
What led to the birth of Plant Assessor in 2004?
My best mate, Paul Dean, was running an auction house in Wagga and had identified the difficulty associated with inspecting plant and equipment for sale at auctions. He combined his equipment knowledge, database capability and online experience to create the first iteration of the Plant Assessor software. I started out helping him pro-bono with marketing and commercial matters but quickly realised I had to be part of it. We have been equal shareholders ever since.
What does it do?
We provide cloud-based machinery safety inspection and management software and professional services associated with that software. Essentially Plant Assessor is an information storage, generation and safety platform used by thousands of companies to conduct digital pre-start checks, complete periodic detailed plant risk assessments, and share important information with their employees, contractors and clients. Our vision now is that Plant Assessor will be the Facebook for machines - a global machinery information sharing platform.
Your website says Plant Assessor is the world's leading plant hazard assessment and control tool. Who are your clients?
Our platform is used in industry sectors including machinery dealers, hire companies, local government and industries that typically use a lot of equipment such as construction, waste and utilities. Our clients includes all of the big names in each of these segments such as John Holland, BMD, Lend Lease, CPB (formerly Leightons) in construction plus more than 100 local councils across the country, electricity distributors, rail operators and machinery dealers.
What are your main challenges in the business?
Finding the best people to help us grow the software and service suite and ensure our customers’ success.
You are about to hire eight people - what has driven that demand?
We are about to offer a free version of our software to encourage uptake and pursue our “Facebook” strategy and our new hires are to support that. Our big hairy audacious goal is 500 per cent growth by 2022.
What has safeguarded your business during the mining downturn?
We have never actively pursued business in the mining industry. It has been “doing” safety for a lot longer than most other sectors and we have found that they have developed quite unique requirements and require bespoke systems to suit their risk management processes, and up until now that has not aligned with our business model. As we get bigger we are more able to tailor solutions for industries such as mining, and integrate into other platforms that service these industries and the key players within them. Having said that, Plant Assessor is used by a lot of people in the mining industry and the downturn did have an adverse impact on us. It just slowed our growth through that period rather than reversing it.
What are the advantages of working in the Hunter?
Firstly it is the best place in the world to work and live in my opinion. The Hunter is geographically central to our customer base. Our management team and sales staff travel to Melbourne and Brisbane regularly so the frequency of direct flights to these markets is excellent. The Hunter is big enough to provide us with the physical networks we need, especially fast reliable internet and comms, and the human networks as well - excellent staff, experienced contractors, great legal and finance support and so on without the congestion and drama of living in the city.
And the disadvantages?
As we grow and we need more specialist human resources we are encountering some difficulty in growing in certain areas, especially developers. We are looking more broadly and trying to entice these specialists to relocate to God’s country, but unfortunately we will probably look to having to offshore some of these roles – which we have actively avoided in the past.
What’s your "dream job"?
Well I am probably in it. Whilst growing a small business has its trials and tribulations, it is very satisfying. Having said that, I have a pretty big picture view of the world, so probably shifting my focus to spending the majority of my time in pursuit of broader product and market development would be my dream.
We are looking more broadly and trying to entice specialists to relocate to God’s country, but unfortunately we will probably look to having to offshore some of these roles.
- Matt Turner