Equipment Leasing

Ask a safety manager what their gas detection programme cost last year and most cannot answer. Not because they are not paying attention, but because the spend never appears in one place.

Instruments are a capital purchase. Repairs come out of maintenance. Replacement sensors and parts are ordered separately. Calibration gas is a consumable. Freight is charged both ways when something goes back for repair. And the time somebody spends raising orders, chasing warranty claims and following up on instruments that are away is never counted at all.

None of it is visible as a single figure, which means none of it gets managed. It becomes visible when an instrument fails on a Monday morning and a crew cannot start.

Leasing answers that by converting the whole thing into one predictable monthly cost. No capital outlay on instruments, no repair invoices, no parts charges and no freight bills, so the number is the number.

The more interesting part is what a leasing arrangement makes possible rather than what it costs. iNet Exchange from Industrial Scientific monitors the internal health of each instrument as it docks, examining the sensors, the battery, the circuit board, the pump and the microprocessors. Where performance is declining it triggers a replacement automatically, so a working unit arrives before the current one fails.

That reverses the usual arrangement. A service contract fixes an instrument after it stops working, which means somebody was without it in between. Proactive replacement means the first anybody knows about a problem is when the box turns up.

Calibration gas works the same way. The docking station tracks usage and expiry across cylinders and reorders automatically, which handles the awkward balance between running out and discarding cylinders that expired before they were used.

The subscription covers the instruments, the docking stations, the calibration gas, all shipping in both directions, proactive replacement, trade in of damaged units, fleet setup, training and ongoing support. Access to the iNet Control+ fleet management software is included at no additional charge.

Leasing is not automatically the right answer. Where a fleet is small, stable and lightly used, buying outright and servicing it as needed is frequently cheaper. Leasing earns its place where instruments are used hard, where downtime stops work, where a fleet is spread across sites, or where nobody has the time to become the gas detection expert.

Our Technical Consultants will work through what you are currently spending before recommending either, from WA, NSW and QLD. If leasing does not suit, our hire fleet covers short term requirements and outright purchase remains the straightforward option.