On Jan. 8, New York-based Turner Construction launched First Equipment Co. (FEC), a wholly-owned centralized equipment rental and services subsidiary. Turner said the new division is a further strategic expansion of the services Turner regularly provides to clients, such as owners of mission-critical facilities, while supporting commercial contractors working on the nation’s largest general contractor projects.
FEC has been providing equipment and site services on a number of Turner projects, particularly large-scale advanced technology projects such as data centers, where its integrated service model and online service rental and reservation platform have shown benefits. Turner is expanding these services to support projects across the US and the more than 40,000 commercial contractors who work on Turner jobs each year. FEC will also provide equipment and site rental services to other national general contractors and commercial contractors. The goal is to reduce the burden of renting and managing equipment for customers and the businesses that work at their sites, Turner said. As such, it will compete with larger rental companies that have expanded their reach into equipment rental and strategy services.
“We were looking at where we could implement an equipment rental division, where subject matter experts and rental experts and people in the industry can help our customers be smarter about how we treat equipment,” says Joshua Ehlers, FEC division director and Turner National Equipment Store Director. “FEC is helping to come up with a bigger purchasing strategy. What are the pieces of equipment that we could use everywhere in the country, that are easy to move, that once done in one place, can be moved to another, and that we can keep in a healthy fleet?”
First Equipment Co. It is part of Turner’s broader investment in project delivery capabilities, along with service offerings such as xPL Offsite for prefabrication and industrialized construction, SourceBlue for supply chain management and procurement, Turner Accelerated Payment Program for subcontractor payments, Turner Engineering Group for engineering and expanding self-executing operations.
Ehlers said that as the new division launches, it will look to work with Turner’s contractors and business owners on their jobsites, but that could eventually lead to work on team strategy and recruiting on other contractors’ jobsites.
“Right now, FEC is consolidating and working with the Turner teams to really streamline [the] team process,” he explains.
