As the world’s largest concrete pile cropper manufacturer and rental company, National Pile Croppers (NPC) has been active globally for some time. In the United States, the company has formed a successful working partnership with International Drilling Equipment (IDE) as well as other specialist companies. In order to ensure that IDE and its customers receive the very best in support, a team from NPC, led by Scott Fitchett, recently spent some time with IDE.
The relationship between NPC and its professional and experienced partner companies around the world reinforces the company’s commitment in providing exceptional levels of customer focus, in-market. The United States is no different, with IDE providing the NPC range in the across the United States East of the Rocky Mountains. IDE’s main office is located in Rural Hall, North Carolina, with additional offices and depots strategically located throughout their area of operations. This vast range of distribution and service points enables the company to offer some of the world’s leading drilling and infrastructure brands where they are needed.
IDE now stocks a comprehensive range of NPC pile croppers for the US market at its strategically placed hubs, providing ‘point of contact’ customer support and installation. In addition, NPC is on hand to provide round the clock support from its UK based centre of customer excellence. The latter further enables customers to tap into the specialized advice and assistance that has made NPC the world’s largest designer, manufacturer, hire centre, and now vendor, of pile cropping attachments.
Customer focused support
Although the IDE pile cropping operation is fully supported from the UK, with IDE operations and sales staff receiving full training both in the US and at NPC’s customer excellence centre in the UK, it was felt that the company’s pile cropping team would benefit from a further visit from NPC specialists. The idea was to support recent deliveries of equipment, undertake product familiarisation workshops and visit IDE customers in the field. To this end, NPC’s Scott Fitchett led an NPC team to North Carolina in December of 2023.
“NPC’s pile croppers provide a state-of-the-art solution for dealing with concrete piles. Although not highly complicated, to get the best out them requires training and experience. The pile croppers are effectively very precise hydraulic shears, with defined angles of deflection, and points of contact to deliver a clean cut of the excess pile that does not interfere with the efficacy of the remaining pile. In order to give customers the very best service, the NPC team set out to show the IDE team how to operate the croppers safely and effectively, deliver field training and improve product knowledge. We believe that it is essential that our distributors receive training from our people who have extensive industry experience in order help get the best from our hydraulic pile croppers,” explains NPC’s Scott Fitchett.
Scott continues: “There are a variety of different types and sizes of croppers, designed specifically for the breadth and range of piles including augured, bearing, contiguous, secant, CFA, trench and helical displacement. The pile croppers are available in varying sizes ranging, normally, from 300mm up to 1,800mm (approx. between 12 and 71 inches) in diameter. We are thus keen to pass on our experience to the IDE team to help ensure IDE customers benefit from the NPC range.”
Another key member of the NPC team was Ben Lambert, who was responsible for onsite commissioning and technical training. Ben’s role was vital, as many of the practical problems the NPC team set out to deal with involve the ‘nitty gritty’ of fine tuning to get the very best out of the equipment and ensure that IDE field staff benefit from NPC’s unprecedented experience. “The IDE team were a joy to work with. They took on board what we were saying and I am sure NPC cropper users in North America will soon benefit from the hard work put in by the IDE guys,” explains Ben Lambert.
As well as running product familiarisation seminars and workshops aimed at getting the best out of the pile croppers, Scott and the NPC team also undertook customer site visits alongside IDE staff. “Fully customisable length and diameter wise, concrete foundation piles for all types of ground conditions have been, and are, used for various civil engineering and construction structures. As in the UK and Europe, these concrete piles in the US need cropping. We were thus pleased to assist the IDE team, experience the unique US market conditions, helping IDE give their customers the very best pile cropping advice,” adds Scott.
Going forward
Ian English, Business Development Director of National Pile Croppers comments: “International Drilling Equipment’s vast local market knowledge, industry expertise, vision, ethos, values and drive make them the perfect partner for the National Pile Cropper Group. Working with IDE enables us to entrust the development of the eastern US market to them, enabling customers there to benefit from our comprehensive range of pile croppers. Through visiting IDE regularly, we are able to provide on the ground familiarization, sales and support training, safety training as well as undertaking commissioning and site visits with IDE sales and service engineers. This helps ensure the IDE team are fully acquainted with the NPC product in conjunction with their own vast knowledge of piling in their marketplace. We look forward to continuing working with International Dilling Equipment which has already proven to be a mutually beneficial relationship.”
“I would like to thank company president Stephen Gazo and all at IDE for their wonderful hospitality and warmth of welcome,” adds Scott Fitchett, who concludes: “We enjoyed sharing our knowledge and experience with IDE and its customers. Our site visits were enlightening and we look forward to hearing more about how the National Pile Cropper solutions are helping US customers empower their construction projects.”