Hewden, the UK’s largest plant-hirer saw off competition from one of its main rivals A-Plant to scoop the highly regarded 'Excellence in Training Award' at this year's Hire Association Europe (HAE) awards.

Held this year at the Holland House Hotel, Cardiff on Saturday 13th October, the awards celebrated best practice in all areas of the hire industry across Europe.

The plant-hire giant received the accolade in recognition of its Movex training programme, introduced to support the roll-out of the company's £14m IT system in July this year. As part of the programme, Hewden delivered over 3,500 man days of training, the majority of which were delivered over a seven-week period.

Speaking of the recent accolade, Christine Hardy, UK Training and Development Manager across Finning Group UK said: "The roll out of Project Horizon – our new enterprise resource planning system - presented a real challenge to the whole of the Hewden business over the last year. Developing effective training to support this significant business investment was critical. We actively engaged with over 60 Hewden employees to design and deliver training that enable our workforce to go live with the new system on launch day."

"At Hewden we are proud of our people as they are key to our business success. This award acts as a testament to how much we have achieved together so far - but we know we can further improve. We will continue to invest in our people and provide them with the training and support needed to deliver a first-class service for our customers."