Manny Rasores is "Mr. Parking" in the UK. At least thats what he calls himself. He has been running a parking consultancy and specializing in revenue control equipment. His background is just that. He has worked for and owned companies that provide it. He’s now on his own, helping mostly local city governments with their RC requirements.
We met at a pub near Victoria Station in London and talked about Revenue Control in the UK.
Manny is all for standards. He thinks that RC companies should meet certain standards in the quality and functionality of their products. He writes his specs that way. Those that don’t meet his minimums end up on the cutting room floor. Sure price is an object, but in the long term, not just the purchase price.
"What good does it do to install a system that won’t do what the customer wants?" the transplanted Spaniard asked me. "Sure, you can slap something in but a year from now you will be demanding that it perform and it simply won’t."
How does he ensure a system is working? "I go to the factory and test the entire system before its shipped. Then I know that it works there and most likely will work in the field. I supervise the installation and then can train the customer, since I learn all about it at the factory. Funny, sometimes this process puts me in a position of telling the local technicians about features they had never heard of."
"I have stopped a number of projects at the factory level and gotten things fixed before shipment. This has saved a lot of pain upon installation."
Manny says that the downward pressure on pricing isn’t necessarily a good thing. The manufacturers have only one way to lower those prices, and that’s reduce costs. "You can only engineer so much out of the product and then it starts to affect the quality. When that happens no one wins. We have a lot of junk on the market now. The buyers need to beware. Just because its inexpensive doesn’t mean its a good buy.
Words to live by.
JVH
