A fresh look for the LADS fleet

The vans have had their new vinyl graphics fitted, and for the first time the outside of the vehicle says exactly what is inside it.

Four letters, four specialisms

The name does a lot of work. LADS stands for Lifting, Access, Drone and Steam, and those four words are the whole business model — the reason we can turn up to a building, get to the problem, look at it properly, deal with it and leave, without three other contractors being involved.

The trouble with a memorable acronym is that people remember the word and forget what it stands for. So the new graphics put the four specialisms front and centre:

• Lifting — tracked spider lifts with up to 20 m working height, supplied with a trained certified operator.
• Access — reaching the gutters, rooflines, façades and glazing that get neglected because they are awkward to get to.
• Drone — thermal-imaging inspection that finds damp, insulation failure, leak paths and electrical hotspots without touching the building, plus 2D and 3D modelling.
• Steam — 150 °C dry steam that cleans render, brick, heritage stone and cladding using heat rather than chemicals.

Why a clearly marked vehicle matters

It is not only marketing. On a live commercial site, a clearly identified vehicle is part of turning up properly. Security want to know who has arrived. A facilities manager wants to point a colleague at the right van. Residents in a block want to know that the people setting up outside their window are the contractor the managing agent told them about.

The same goes for domestic streets. A machine appearing outside a house makes neighbours curious. A vehicle with a company name, a phone number and a clear description of the work answers most of those questions before anyone has to ask.

The practical bit

The design had to survive the conditions the vehicles actually live in. Vans that carry steam plant, water tanks and access equipment get loaded, unloaded, reversed down farm tracks and washed a lot. Vinyl that looks smart in a studio photograph and fades to grey in eighteen months would be a false economy.

There is also a small irony in a cleaning company driving a dirty van, which is not lost on us. The pure-water system that cleans customers' glass works just as well on our own.

What has not changed

The graphics are new. The way we work is not. Same team, same phone number — 0330 043 0961, answered 24 hours a day, 365 days a year — same principle of getting the access, the inspection, the cleaning and the small repairs done on one visit rather than four.

If you see the van out and about across Essex, that is what it is doing.