Brilliant Ideas is a UK company that designs, produces and rents out safety products for the construction sector. Their equipment is extensively utilised by main contractors, house builders, structural frame contractors (including steel, concrete and timber), crane hire companies, lifting experts, as well as health and safety professionals, among others.
Founded by Chris Massey, the idea for Brilliant Ideas stemmed from his on-site experience at Beresford’s Flooring. Beresford’s Flooring Ltd was established in 1967. Chris became part of the company in 1992 and took over eight years later, in 2000. That same year, he launched Brilliant Ideas Ltd as a sister company and has never looked back!
As for the core values of Brilliant Ideas, enhancing site safety and fostering innovation go hand-in-hand. Their products are the result of extensive hands-on experience and deep insight, and are widely utilised across all construction sectors. Chris Massey began creating problem-solving innovations over 30 years ago when he couldn't find market solutions to enhance the safety and efficiency of his own team. Many of the products in Brilliant Idea's range have been developed in response to accidents or near misses.
Their range of construction safety equipment includes:
Brilliant Idea's products are designed, rigorously tested and certified to make construction sites a safer place to work. Each product has been developed to improve efficiencies and safety – especially when you compare them to traditional construction methods.
However, as Brilliant Ideas continued to expand, along with their range of equipment, the requirement for a dedicated hire management solution became apparent. That's when OnRent entered the picture!
"Before we set-up OnRent, our processes were old fashioned and handwritten, having paperwork in racks, making manual entries in a book and drivers hand writing their own delivery paperwork. With this, mistakes were often made, paperwork in racks and overall, it was difficult to manage the day-to-day workload, especially when the business was only getting busier. It simply wasn't an efficient way of running things. We realised then that we needed a change in order to grow the business and our existing system couldn't handle this, we required a digital solution.
We chose OnRent as we were still a fairly small business at the time and just needed a simple transition to a straightforward solution that would easily digitise our processes. OnRent has helped making things much more efficient in streamlining processes and managing the day-to-day workload, as well as orders coming in. We wouldn't have been able to grow the business without moving to this system.
OnRent's screens are easy to navigate, and I personally use the dashboard every day for managing jobs. Our drivers were all against the idea of change and going digital with their delivery paperwork initially... But now they are all in agreement that it has made life much easier for them! We can assign a job instantly, get the paperwork as soon as they have signed the job off - instead of having to wait for them to return to the yard. It looks more professional than having handwritten notes too.
We are now able to send formal quotations, order acknowledgements and off-hire confirmation which looks much more polished than our old way of doing things. Lastly, the invoicing is much quicker now all the information is input from the start. I used to have to manually raise invoices and type everything out beforehand. Overall, our processes are a lot more efficient than they used to be! OnRent has been the perfect stepping stone for developing our business and internal processes." - Amy Downs, Brilliant Ideas
Throughout the years, Brilliant Ideas' hard work and dedication to the industry has been recognised through various award wins. In 2022, Brilliant Ideas won 'Equipment Specialist of the Year' at the Construction News Specialist Awards and in 2021, Chris Massey was winner of ‘Innovation Champion’ at the Building Innovation Awards.
Their inventions have won multiple awards. They’re used by some of the biggest names in construction on projects all around the world, including: HS2, Barcelona Cathedral, Google HQ Kings Cross, Manchester Metro, Emirates Stadium, Fulham Football Club, Gatwick Airport, Heathrow Airport, London Guildhall, Olympic Park, Tottenham Hotspur, London Bridge, Anfield Main Stand, Wimbledon Court One and Sandwell Aquatics. Just to name a few!
A big shoutout to Brilliant Ideas for sharing their success story and how OnRent has supported along the way. To find out more about their services, click here.