2023 sees Cosmo Cranes celebrate 20 years in business. John and Josh Handley talk about their development, the business and why their staff are their real key to success.
It started with the family business importing tower cranes from Italy. John and Josh flew to various parts of the world, including Italy, Russia, Dubai and Singapore for factory training on the cranes and building solid relationships with the various manufacturers and suppliers.
By 2010 the fleet had increased to 15 cranes and six years later it grew to 30. In 2014 Cosmo bought its first mobile crane, a 20t Franna, closely followed by at 220t Grove. Today, the team at Cosmo tops 120 personnel and there are 50 plus tower cranes in the fleet.
The success and growth of the business is in no small part due to the professionalism of the entire Cosmo Cranes team, says John.
“We have always been very self-sufficient as a business. We like to bring people into the business, train them in our ways of doing things and provide them with growth opportunities and career pathways.
“Damien Blanch is a great example of how we work at Cosmo Cranes. He started off as a rigger, moved to be our yards person, and now he’s Project Manager. We like to retain our people as much as possible and train them to be versatile so they can move throughout the company.
“We give our staff the opportunity to take on more responsibility and to grow within the organisation. We have a core team that has been with us for around ten years and has moved into Team Leader roles, helping us to maintain the high standard that has been set and continue to develop the good working relationships that we have built over the years,” said John.
“This growth and experience has also led to us being engaged by other crane companies. We regularly carry out servicing, maintenance and refurbishment of tower cranes, as well as installation and dismantle operations,” he said.
Cosmo Cranes services Sydney’s very competitive commercial and residential construction sector. Josh explains how the business has succeeded in such a competitive environment.
“We have long term relationships with our clients which are high end construction companies building quality projects. Most of our business is repeat business because our clients know the quality of our service and quality of the teams that deliver it,” said Josh.
Cosmo Cranes offers turnkey solutions to clients including tower cranes, mobile cranes and also crane decks. Josh provides insights into the package.
“We introduced our range of crane decks in 2015, shortly after we started our mobile crane fIeet. We could see a demand for a ‘One Stop Shop’ approach where a builder could get everything from the one supplier.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of materials handled on a construction site, and we could see opportunities to package everything together. By providing our clients with a turnkey package we are enhancing the safety of the site with our teams working together, understanding each other and the products they are working with. We now have 180 crane decks in our hire fleet which go hand in hand with our tower cranes. We also sell to exclusive distributors round Australia and New Zealand,” said Josh.
“On site, our Crane Decks are inspected by our Crane crews and a daily logbook record is kept. This ensures we are closing out any maintenance issues that come up, as well as committing to site compliance requirements,” he said.
Maintaining the crane fleet is a major priority for Cosmo Cranes.
“We have a team of soon to be four fulltime technicians and they maintain the fleet to the manufacturers’ recommendations, conducting periodical servicing, attending to breakdowns, installation, dismantles and climbing operations,” said John.
The team at Cosmo Cranes has spent a significant amount of time automating the maintenance and scheduling side of the business.
“We now run a cloud-based system which automatically captures all the data relating to the maintenance and scheduling of the fleet. It’s been a significant investment in terms of time and outlay but these processes are now paperless, and we are beginning the see the benefits of the system,” said John.
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The Cosmo tower crane fleet features an equal split of Luffing Tower and Hammerheads, but the market is increasingly turning to Luffing tower cranes due to the ever-changing requirements of local authorities and air rights issues. The fleet is 100 per cent electric.
“We are committed to replenishing our fleet to ensure we are offering our customers the very latest technology. This program includes both the tower cranes and mobiles,” he said.
“To celebrate 20 years in business we added a 160t capacity Tadano and we have just taken delivery of a third Franna AT40 which we are excited about,” said John.
“Keeping the fleet fresh and modern is a priority for the business.”