23.12.2009

Management changes at Hewden

Hewden, one of the UK’s largest rental companies has restructured its senior management team.

Since last year the company has been organised around three regions and three regional general managers.Click here for original reportthe company will now be structured around two of those managers:- Andrew Swallow – previously Scotland and the North and Mark Hogg who was general manager central region. The third manager Simon Clothier is leaving the company.

The role of regional operations manager, previously responsible for the day to day management of each region, will now disappear in order to create a flatter responsive organisation structure. Mark Hierons moves to the Industrial Services division while Nathan White moves to area operations manager South East.

In Scotland Charlie Seivwright moves into a sales and operations role on the north of the country reporting to Swallow.

Linda Jones will head up the company’s Hire Direct operation in addition to being responsible for credit control.

As a result of the changes Chris Johnson and Nick Childs (at one time head of Access) are also leaving the business.

Vertikal Comment

The organisation changes of November 2008 were the first step towards creating ‘one Hewden’, merging Cranes, Access and general rental into one organisation in order to make it easier for customers to deal with the company on a seamless basis and eliminate duplication.

At the time we said that the new structure carried the risk of too many layers and would be hard to make entrepreneurial. It seems that this has now become self evident.

To be fair the move from separate businesses with a good deal of overlap to a more efficient centralised administration operation while trying to locally aggressive was always going to be a challenge. It may well have been that a two step process was the only way to make the transformation work?

Kevin Parkes was appointed to head last year’s new regional structure and has since been promoted to director of Hewden. He is also responsible for the latest changes, based on running the structure for more than a year. One of the few times that Hewden has made such a restructuring without changing the senior manger… definitely a good sign.