Australia, Between Hook and Load, Features

Experience and innovations the key to lifting solutions

Bullivants is a name synonymous with the lifting industry. Calling on its extensive experience and expertise in the industry, Bullivants continues to develop products that impress in the lifting sector.

Bullivants is one of Australia’s largest, most established and yet progressive specialist providers of lifting, rigging, testing, and related inspection services to the industrial sector. For over 130 years, Bullivants has been a business that is all about safety. 

Bullivants is a part of the Wesfarmers network, ensuring it has backing to continue developing industry-leading service and solutions for many years to come. With 18 branches and over 260 employees nationally, the approach for Bullivants is always the same across each branch, providing consistent service and quality. 

Located in five major capital cities, including Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, Bullivants has six key resource hubs as well as regional branches nationally, sustaining a high level of
service to its customers. 

Safety is always the highest priority for Bullivants, exemplified by the company’s zero harm policy, which is in action across the network.

By understanding the serious risks involved in the lifting and rigging industry, Bullivants’ zero harm philosophy supports customer safety and efficiency goals. 

Adam Esho is an area sales manager for Bullivants, and he explains why the zero harm policy is so important for the Bullivants team.

“Zero harm is in our DNA. It is something we strive to do in every part of every day,” he said. 

“We find that safety is a cultural issue – if you don’t practise zero harm in every action you take, it doesn’t become second nature. It transcends the workplace into the home like wearing the right PPE when mowing your lawn,” Esho said.

Bullivants provides key services to cover all risk management areas for inspection, rigging, lifting, restraint, recovery, and height safety requirements.

Bullivants has worked with the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) for over 60 years and has maintained NATA accreditation in all 18 locations of its business for ISO17020 Visual Inspection and ISO17025 Mechanical Testing, as well as its specialised NATA accredited laboratory in Shanghai, China. 

NATA is Australia’s leading accreditation body, assessing organisations against a number of international standards for inspection bodies, mechanical and proficiency testing scheme providers and reference material producers.

The benefits of Bullivants’ long association with NATA and NATA accreditation to the international inspection and testing standards (ISO17020 and ISO17025) mean that customers are provided with assurance around product compliance and technical systems for manufacture, testing, and inspection in our industry.

The lifting and rigging gear from Bullivants is utilised on sites across the country.

The company is committed to ensuring that the product and services provided to customers are of the highest quality and performance, and have the capability to maintain compliance standards. 

For over 10 years Bullivants’ training manager Andrew Taylor has been working closely with the crane industry and its peak body CICA, representing it on the relevant Australian Standards committee.

Having been in the lifting and rigging industry for over a century, Bullivants recognises that building strong long-term partnerships with exclusive and key suppliers is essential to the survival of a business and understanding the needs of the industry. 

These partnerships provide unique opportunities for product development, as well as ensuring Bullivants has the right stock available for customers when needed. Together with its long-term suppliers, Bullivants can work with all customers to solve their lifting challenges. 

Scott Gundry, national sales manager of Bullivants, recognises that when lifting equipment arrives on site, it might not be of the expected quality or may even be damaged.

“When this happens, we generally get a phone call from our crane partners looking for support in obtaining the correct lifting gear or to conduct an inspection on equipment that has expired from its previous inspection. This is where Bullivants provides our just-in-time service to our crane partners,” Gundry said.

“Whether it’s manufacturing a new chain sling, cutting a new wire rope or even attending a site to inspect a rope on a crane with broken wires, Bullivants understands these time pressures put on crane companies and does everything it can to support the outcomes customers are looking for.

“With our national branch coverage, specialist lifting salespeople and versatile manufacturing capability, we deliver on these expectations when the time pressure is on.

 “We understand the importance of minimising downtime in the crane industry. To ensure downtime is kept to a minimum our services enable our team to respond quickly and efficiently to enquiries and provide a complete solution to our customers.

“Our NATA ISO1720 inspections continue to help manage risk and provide you with confidence to use your equipment with the knowledge that it will comply with the strict Australian Standards and your site requirements,” he said.

Bullivants ensures diligent inspections are only carried out by trained and approved field services technicians to deliver a high-quality service.

Following each inspection process, Bullivants provides a comprehensive listing of all assets registered both electronically in its Bullivants asset management system (BEAM) and in hard copy format. 

The BEAM system is designed to provide maximum operational efficiency and access to data when dealing with on-site inspections and lifting gear registers. 

Bullivants is truly a market leader, tailoring a training program for its team members to ensure they continue to develop their skills.

“To ensure our staff are capable to serve our customers, we have built over many decades a training curriculum that helps them understand the lifting and rigging market, the products, and services that we offer and that encompasses how they are manufactured, how they are used, repaired or serviced, recertified, and all the relevant Australian or international standards,” Gundry said.

“The courses we deliver internally to our teams and to our customers range from slinging awareness and safe use of lifting equipment sessions, lifting toolbox talks and a suite of accredited programs. 

“Our field service technicians undertake around 220 hours of training, both theory and practical, and are mentored alongside the more experienced team members before receiving their approval and a Bullivants FST license,” he said.

To further support its customers, Bullivants have excellent tools available to increase an understanding of lifting loads safely. 

This includes the RigCheck card, an easy reference guide that can be kept on hand in the pocket, cab, or toolbox for operators. 

This guide is supported by the Australian Standards and designed to help make the correct decision on type and size of sling required when selecting the lift requirements for an application.  

Esho explains the feedback from operators and riggers who have used the RigCheck card.

“Riggers know their stuff, but sometimes on site they can second guess themselves,” Esho explained.

“Having the RigCheck card available takes the guesswork out of knowing the loads and angles. It is a simple tool to help keep everyone safe.”

Maintenance and storage of products before and after use is also extremely important. 

The Bullivants catalogue provides the end user with significant care and use guides on their product ranges to ensure equipment is kept in the best possible condition for use. 

Adam Esho explains how Bullivants continues to develop fresh products and revolutionise the industry.

“As a bespoke manufacturer of lifting equipment, we always look for more efficient ways to help our customers complete their lifts,” he said. 

“We help ensure our lifting equipment is lightweight, without handicapping the customer’s ability to lift more weight. Our fibre rope solutions are an example of this. Another great example is our Multimeter Powertex high performance range of slings. These are lightweight and can lift some serious loads,” he said.

Bullivants is also heavily involved in supporting Indigenous engagement. Partnering with the Clontarf Foundation, Bullivants offers  school-based traineeships for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young men, employing trainees part time while also supporting their education, discipline, life skills, and self-esteem.

“At Bullivants, we teach our trainees the operations of our warehouse as well as the importance that safety plays in the workplace. This provides essential learning experiences and potentially future full time post school employment prospects with Bullivants. This program shows great success as we continue to grow our traineeships nationally,” Gundry said. 

Bullivants also supports two Indigenous University students studying engineering. Introduced in 2019, the Bullivants Indigenous Scholarship Program provides $10,000 of financial support per annum to each student, enabling them to achieve their dreams of becoming engineers.

Funded through the sales of selected Bullivants alloy chain slings a portion is contributed towards this program.

“We are grateful and thank all our customers for their support in purchasing these products,” Gundry said. 

“We are proud to invest in the education of our trainees and scholars as they represent the future of the lifting and rigging industry.”

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