Benny Express

How our technical, warehouse and sales teams saved the day in an emergency request with a record 4-hour order processing turnaround, quote-to-handover.

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, in fact it was a bright summer afternoon of a quieter-than-usual Friday. One of those end-of-week mid-afternoons when you just think of closing the short projects and leaving the long ones at a stage that can be picked back up on Monday. 

Little did we know that an oil pump onboard a customer’s vessel had suddenly started leaking with barely any initial evidence of what had given way, requiring a ripple of quick responses across the South of England. 

The customer’s engineer took the pump apart and quickly realised that only four out of five bearing bushes had been installed in a recent job by an external company. The missing bearing bush caused the gear to rotate at an angle and slowly grind on one side, eventually showing as a leak. Luckily, the gear could be restored to its proper working state with some detailed welding, but the customer still needed to replace a number of parts which aren’t usually combined as a pre-assembled kit. 

As they were unable to identify each of the parts in need of replacement, the customer sent us an urgent request for help and advice. Our in-house engines expert jumped straight onto the case and referred to the specific engine’s technical manual, which he treats like a sacred book. In lightning-quick time he was able to identify all the replacement items needed for the oil pump and assemble a bespoke kit ready for quoting.

From quote acceptance by the customer, our order processing team’s quick turnaround of the necessary paperwork and our warehouse staff’s clockwork response to the urgent need reached record levels, also thanks to careful stock planning. The order was assembled, packed and ready to go in under 20 minutes. 

We learned that a service engineer was going to attend in emergency on the same evening, travelling straight to the ship across the South Coast, from Falmouth to Lowestoft, right at the end of the previous job. Trying to arrange an immediate collection of the replacement parts with a dedicated driver turned out to be impossible even with the usual local couriers. 

In an impetus reminiscent of a Pony Express from old western films, the customer’s account manager stood up to the high standard everyone had set and took it upon himself to deliver the order, going the extra distance as well as the extra time. With a speedy journey to a convenient location for the service engineer, Ben Southwick was able to intercept him on his travel and pass the parcel on to reach the vessel later in the evening.

Ben wasn’t the only protagonist of this story, nor the main one, but he’s young and personable, with just the perfect name to summarise lightly an example worth sharing of solid expertise and well-oiled teamwork.