Lock it or lost it

FOUND: This SSL, stolen from the UK turned up in Sharjah.

Theft is on the rise in some parts. Here are a few ways of making sure plant stays put.

There has been a problem with plant theft over the past few years. In Britain the chances of heavy equipment being stolen have actually increased in recent years, despite vehicle crime in general coming down. It is also disheartening to realise that any heavy machine that does go missing has a less than five percent likelihood of ever coming back.

Things are pretty bad in Europe for anybody who has their plant nicked, as insurance companies invariably look for ways of getting out of paying a claim. However, it can be just as bad for consumers in the Middle East who buy second hand equipment, only to find out it is stolen property.

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While equipment actually being stolen here in the GCC is much less of a problem, it does still happen, with some areas being far worse than others.

But why, in this day and age is it still possible to walk off with a machine weighing twenty tonnes at all? Simply put, even quality, branded machines usually have no more security than a 1970s saloon car. Most equipment has a key operated switch and perhaps a button lock on the door, and nothing else.

CHANGES

Things are likely to change soon, as in the UK at least a body has been set up to resolve the problem. One solution is to put all items of plant and machinery, from a portable cement mixer to a batching plant on a register, which in the UK is known as the construction equipment security and registration, or CESAR scheme.

In turn all items on the register will be fitted with small ‘active’ RFID chips hidden in the machine from a company called Datatag so that police can use scanners to identify the equipment.

The most recent manufacturer to add Datatag to all of its machines as standard was Bell. Commenting on the move Bell’s UK sales manager, Bob Aldridge, had this to say. “We’ve been aware of the progress made by CESAR for some time and we’re also aware of the issue of plant theft that our customers face. Adopting CESAR from the turn of the year is a positive step for Bell Equipment to take and one that shows our customer orientation.”

Other manufacturers fit the CESAR system at no cost, including Doosan, JCB and Amman-Yanmar. Datatag say that there is a twenty percent discount on insurance premiums for machinery equipped with the system, while cases of recovered equipment that have been positively identified have always been returned to its rightful owner, or their insurance company.

However, the system only works if police with the right scanner find some equipment that they deem to be suspicious. For the most part equipment seems to just disappear into thin air - how can this be prevented from happening?

As mentioned, the general level of standard security on even very expensive machines can be very low, but some companies are beginning to take the matter seriously.

In many markets Komatsu excavators have sophisticated security systems, such as PIN protection (there is a numerical pad and a start button where you might expect the key to be) while Kubota machines use a key with a chip in it, making it very hard to start the machine without it.

There’s much more to be done though, as TER points out.

A cheap and simple way of stopping a thief driving off in your machine is to fit an immobiliser. Again, in the UK a body called Thatcham approves such devices for insurance companies, and one of the highest rated items comes from a manufacturer called Kosran.

The immobiliser has something called an ‘electronic coded valve’ and it works by shutting off the machine’s hydraulics as well as the fuel supply. There is no input needed from the operator - the system is set whenever the machine is switched off.

There are other types of immobiliser of course, with the most simple type being a switch that has a part removed when the machine is not in action, making it difficult to start.

Some manufacturers include a mechanical system as standard or as an option on their machinery. The mechanical locking system is built into the ignition switch, which when switched disconnects all the main vehicle systems, making it very difficult to start without the key.