Idea for my business advice and help appreciated

[irishsparks]

Field service technicians/engineers - Just wondered has anyone decided to go down this route for work?

I am a self employed Electrician here in Dublin but work has gone very slow lately so I was thinking of either applying for a job,or maybe getting involved in the above area through my own company.

I got out of the domestic game a long time ago as I hated it (house wiring etc)and my main area as an Electrical Contractor is sub contracting into companies installing energy saving products,installing and maintaining VSD's and I had a number of contracts on call for various types of factories to maintain and repair plant and machinery.

I thought of maybe getting in touch with various companies in the UK and offering my services to them if they decided to branch out into Ireland.

For example I know of one or two factories in Ireland that have electrical equipment bought from the UK where they have to get a technician over from the UK to repair the product if anything goes wrong.

What I was thinking was I could cut out the cost for the company needing the product repaired as I would not be charging travel/hotel costs etc and it would also mean the UK company would have a presence in Ireland thus making them a more attractive option for Irish companies to do business with them as there would be a 'local' technician/electrician available at short notice.Ireland is fairly small and I can be in any part of Ireland within 3-4 hrs.

If anyone works for a company like this or knows of companies I could contact I would really appreciate it.

Don't worry about me taking work or contracts off you as I am in Ireland and I am only interested in working in Ireland.

I hope to find companies that want to branch out into the Irish market or like the example I have given above are already in Ireland but are based in the UK and don't have any personnel in Ireland.

Also I'd be eager to know if my idea is a good one or not,any advice much appreciated.

 

[steptoe]

One question,

Do you know and understand the difference between an electrician, a technician, and an engineer?

Its just that you seem to be merely using them as titles,

To be an engineer or a technician requires different qualifications to a 'normal' electrician.

 

[irishsparks]

Yes I understand the difference.

I have used the terms loosely I admit but my query remains the same.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Doc Hudson]

Welcome to the forum. In all honesty some of your points appear a little flawed in their logic. You are asking if others do a proposed work model you are considering for your business. Yet any person running a business needs to know their target customer base and how to market to promote yourself to your prospective customers. So you should be able to answer yourself if any business would be interested in the service you are considering? The concept of cutting travel costs for other businesses may or may not be valid. One off visits to a distant location may be cheaper in a travel lodge & a flight or ferry trip, compared to paying a full time employee to be on standby with minimal work. Or if no essential technical skill or knowledge is needed then a remote businesses would probably just ring an agency or sub contractor for some short term temp contract work. I cannot image than any successful business hasn't already established if its cheaper to use local contractors or travel / lodge their own. I think you would need to do the asking to the clients you are hoping to service as only you will know what hourly rates you charge or overheads you have to cover.

Doc H.

 

[betty swollocks]

I feel there are a number of problems you will come across in the pursuit of this type of contract

I tried this when I first started my own business.

Big company's like to deal with other big company's, fact

Heres a few reasons,

Other big company's have more financial resources, access to ample equipment, greater service and product knowledge, better specialist technical services.

If they need somebody to do something they expect it to be done straight away, large company's can accommodate all this.

What about V.A.T? they will want to claim every penny they can claw back.

How about final payment?

big companys often have terms of upto 90 days for invoices, can you afford to wait 3 months for payment?

In my experience they won't entertain a single employee for main service contracts.

What's happens if your sick?

Holidays?

Kids off school?

Van fails its mot?

Van doesn't start in the cold?

Health and safety, most big company's prefer two employees per job obviously depending on what service they deal with.

Lighting contracts for supermarkets, health clubs and the like don't allow single guys climbing ladders/ towers on their premises, or they didn't 10 yrs ago, more likely need 5 men per job these days.

And not forgetting insurances for liabilty damage, for failing to accomplish a set contract/agreement.

Try it by all means but I think you will waste a lot of time and effort and be banging your head against a brick wall

Sorry but as I said I tried this many years ago and gave up quickly, the few jobs I got took months of chasing for payments.

Obviously if you have a niche quality, nuclear reaction mig welding certificate or something specialist this would vastly improve your chances.

 

[Sidewinder]

There are also the training & technical requirements of product knowledge.

I have worked on field service for a global blue chip controls company, we all spent at least 2 weeks per year at the manufacturing plant on product training.

How would you get around this?

 

[steptoe]

ok, for what its worth, and bringing up betty's point on VAT,

I used to be based in both Eire and NI for this simple reason, if you are exporting you do NOT have to pay VAT, yes, even services can be worked to count,

you would be going in at a death knell price to even break even the way some of these big companies work their tax breaks,

oh, at the time I was working for a firm that were based in Jersy(or was it Guernsey), can never remember, but it was the tiny one that you got home from the pub in half an hour even if you went the wrong way!

oh, back to sideys point on expertise, all I done was attend the job and assess what was actually wrong rather than the site manager say 'its broke' , they then sent over the relevant man/team/squad for the repair, and if it was a one man repair then I was simply used as the banker when 2 men were required on site,

but, and its a BIG BUT, I was expected to drop everything and attend site if I got a phone call, I was young and single so it wasnt an issue to me.

---------- Post Auto-Merged at 21:38 ---------- Previous post was made at 21:35 ----------

one of the best [funniest/costly] jobs I went to was when harmonised colours were first used in Ireland,

an English squad came over to final commision the machines and connect up the control panels,

all the Irish sparks had used Br Bl Gr as phases and blue as Neutral,

the English guys used the Blue as a phase, well you can guess what happened when they started turning machines on! :slap

bad day explode