In our industry, mobile type tool rooms are not normally used, but on our last job, we had 1,200 subcontractors, and we were required to furnish tools for all of them. By having a day and night shift, we couldn't check tools in and out under the normal system" Robert Alvarez, materials manager for Gulf Marine Fabricators says. He oversees complex procurement operations, subcontracts and material control.

Gulf Marine Fabricators is headquartered in Arkansas Pass, Texas, and builds offshore oil structures for companies such as BP, ConocoPhillips and Chevron-Texaco. Alvarez needed a mobile tool solution.

"Before the MobileTool Room, we would get tools back at the end of the job and had little recourse for lost, stolen, or damaged tools" Alvarez says. "With the Mobile Tool Room from RSC Equipment Rental, I could charter the subcontractor, find out what was needed, and get it replaced."

"With RSC's Mobile Tool Room, we could have tool check-in and check-out, but didn't have the cost associated with buying tools and then maintaining them" he says"Plus, we could go over reports sorted by subcontractors, individuals and/or tool abuses. Trends of abuse or non-compliance could be monitored by these reports. That aspect was really nice."

"We invested in a lot for the Mobile Tool Room, but in return, we got 24-hour coverage, a lot of tools and a great service team to resolve issues on site," he recalls.

"It really paid off," Alvarez says. "If we work with a large number of subcontractors in the future, I would recommend using the Mobile Tool Room again."

"One of the major benefits the subcontractors had was less downtime, since the Mobile Tool Room was located by the work areas," he says. "The person issuing the tools was also the tool repair person. Before bringing in the mobile tool trailer, we would have to wait for repairs if replacements were not available or purchase new tools to cover our requirements. That downtime began hurting production."

"When we used the Mobile Tool Room, we were doing a lot of structural work, so we rented a large amount of grinders, torches, comealongs, lights and chippers," Alvarez says. "That tool room was packed!"

Overall, I was very happy with RSC's response time" he recalls."Leo, the RSC on-site person who supervised operations and managed the trailer, was excellent! Once he found out what we needed, he was very quick to turn over the tools."

"I went out really early several days and nights at shift change to run a performance audit on RSC's Mobile Tool Room" he says."There were roughly 12-14 people in line, with an average wait time of 1.5 minutes and a maximum wait time of 3 minutes. I think that was outstanding. I was very impressed."

For more information on the Mobile Tool Rooms and how it can benefit your productivity, please contact your RSC account executive, or simply call 1-800-222-7777