Can it take phone enquiries?

Yes, via a voice agent or by transcribing and actioning voicemail. Most firms start with email and web, then add voice once they trust the flow.

What if availability data is wrong?

The agent holds rather than confirms when the fleet record looks uncertain, and flags the discrepancy to the desk.

PLANT HIRE · SYSTEM

AI hire desk enquiry triage for plant hire

IN SHORT

An agent takes enquiries from phone, email and web, checks live fleet availability, quotes from your rate matrix and books or holds the machine — with the desk approving anything unusual.

Hire is won on the first answer

A site manager needing a machine on Monday rings three suppliers on Friday afternoon. Whoever confirms availability and a price first usually gets the hire. Every unanswered enquiry is a machine sitting in the yard earning nothing.

How the workflow runs

Enquiries are captured from every channel and matched to fleet availability for the requested dates. The agent replies with machine options, rate, delivery window and terms, holds the asset provisionally, and hands the desk a booking to confirm. Out-of-hours enquiries get the same treatment.

Rate control

Quoting follows your rate matrix, including customer-specific rates and minimum hire periods. Discounts outside the matrix require a human.

What you get

Minutes-not-hours response, including out of hours
Live availability check before anything is promised
Rate matrix and account-specific pricing respected
Provisional holds with desk confirmation

Questions we get asked

Can it take phone enquiries?: Yes, via a voice agent or by transcribing and actioning voicemail. Most firms start with email and web, then add voice once they trust the flow.
What if availability data is wrong?: The agent holds rather than confirms when the fleet record looks uncertain, and flags the discrepancy to the desk.

Keep reading

TRUST & CREDENTIALS

How we work, and what stands behind it

This page is maintained by Forth Systems. Everything listed below describes our own team, hosting choices and the technologies we build on — it is a statement of practice, not an independent certification or an endorsement by the vendors named.

UK team & data residency

Who builds it, and where your data sits while they do.

UK-based engineers
Edinburgh-headquartered. Every system is designed, built and supported by our own UK-based engineering team — no offshore delivery pool.
UK / EU hosting by default
Applications and databases are provisioned in UK or EU regions unless you require otherwise, with encryption in transit and at rest.
Human-in-the-loop by design
Every AI system we ship keeps a manual override. Nothing irreversible happens without an operator able to review, edit or stop it.
Audit trails as standard
Automated actions are written as first-class records — who or what did it, when, against which input — so operations stay evidence-ready.

Systems we build on

The platforms our systems run on. These are the technologies we deploy and support — not sponsorships or reseller badges.

OpenAI, Anthropic & Google models
Model-agnostic delivery. We route each workload to the model that fits it on cost, latency and accuracy, and can switch without a rebuild.
Supabase & Postgres
Row-level-security Postgres as the operational spine under every platform we run.
Stripe payments
Payment capture, checkout and reconciliation wired directly into job and permit workflows.
Xero, Sage & HubSpot integrations
Production integrations into the finance and CRM systems UK operators already run, so automation lands where the business keeps its records.

Streetworks & industry credentials

Operational domains we build in daily, with the sector systems we integrate against.

DfT Street Manager integration
Our Kerbco permit chain creates and tracks streetworks permit applications against DfT Street Manager and local highway authority processes.
NRSWA-aligned workflows
Permit, reinstatement and traffic-management workflows built to the New Roads and Street Works Act process contractors are inspected against.
Traffic management planning
Roadplan produces signing and guarding layouts for council submission and for the crew installing them on site.
Operator-built, not consultancy-built
We run streetworks and plant operations ourselves. Every platform started as a system we needed in our own business.

Insurance certificates, registration numbers and security documentation are available on request — ask the team.