A golden year for Continental Event Hire

Judged on a number of criteria including presentation, equipment, customer service, health and safety and emergency management, entrants can achieve bronze, silver or gold recognition in the annual awards.

Continental’s record score totalled 93.83% (715 points out of a possible score of 762) after the written entry was evaluated, the company was ‘mystery shopped’ and then the premises visited by judges inspecting records, procedures and equipment.

The judges commented about Continental: “The company has entered these awards many times over recent years. It has been absolutely amazing to witness the growth of the business and even more so, the people within it!”

While achieving Gold status was exciting and very satisfying for the Continental Event Hire team, hires manager Andy Youngman said the fact that the Awards were judged on a business’ own merits rather than against other businesses made entering the awards more worthwhile than an outright competition.

“We see it as an invaluable independent audit of our business. The feedback from the judges really helps us pinpoint some areas to work on and we definitely took on board what was fed back to us in the past to achieve Silver for the last two years.

“With Continental (which also has an event catering division, venue management and food outlets in Canterbury) celebrating 50 years in business this year, getting Gold seems especially fitting.”

Youngman has noted a definite increase in interest from other industry partners in entering the Awards in future, since the Awards evening: “I’ve had a lot of questions about how we went about putting our entry together and whether we thought it worth it and my response is always, give it a go; it can only help your business. Which ultimately can only help the industry in total.”

This year is the first year HIANZ has awarded Gold status, and the industry organisation was delighted to award four other Gold awards for 2015 to: Pacific Linen; Stella Hire, Invercargill; Kennards Hire, Albany branch, Auckland; and Tauranga Hire. Silver status was awarded to Stella Hire, Invercargill, and a Bronze went to Telelift NZ Ltd, Christchurch.

Left to right – managing director Greg Ward, hires manager Andy Youngman, director David Ward, director Joan Ward, president of HIANZ Tim Mikkelsen.