Natural resources Sallachan Quarry, south of Fort William on Loch Linnhe, can’t afford to stand down for long periods. When the time came to service its mobile drilling equipment, it had to be done over the course of a single weekend, so that drilling could recommence on the Monday morning. The company needed to replace all the hoses on the moveable arms and fast. With its mobility, professional service and quality workmanship, only Pirtek was up to the job. Stevie Rock and Andy Tait made the 160-mile, four-and-a-half-hour journey to the west coast on a Friday afternoon, working through and completing the job at 2am on the Sunday morning. The dry environment and glare from the sand made it blisteringly hot work making hoses, despite the northerly latitude. Andy says, “They were impressed with the job and service in such a remote location and couldn’t believe we’d completed it so quickly. “Testament to our workmanship is the fact that they haven’t had a hose failure since then.”
With exchanges in remote locations, BT employs backup generators to maintain communications should the power supply be interrupted. Pirtek Aberdeen was called upon to change the hoses at every exchange station in the Grampians, Orkneys, Western Isles, Highlands and Fort William. Covering great distances, including on country roads, made this a substantial job. It took the Aberdeen franchise’s MSST three weeks to cover all the sites. Working in concert with Pirtek’s man was another engineer from the company responsible for the generators, who facilitated access to the sites. While in some places the team was able to cover two or three stations in a day, other exchanges were much further apart. The MSST says, “I enjoyed the challenge of driving to areas I would never normally have visited on a daily basis, including Orkney and the Western Isles. Who could ask for better than the scenery we have – and I get paid for doing my job at the same time.”
The beast from the east The extreme weather of late February and early March caused upheaval across the United Kingdom, all the more so in the northerly latitudes. Pirtek people’s willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty is not restricted to paying customers, as Aberdeen centre manager Andrew Tait explains. “During the beast from the east our newest MSST, Gary Bisset, was on his way back from a job in Ullapool, driving on the A835 through approximately 12 inches of snow. “When he came across a motorist
who had rolled their car off the road in the snow,
Gary helped the occupants out of the vehicle and contacted the police. Naturally, he got them into his van and kept them warm and despite the worsening weather remained with them until the police arrived.”
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