First ROSE Award for Ireland
John Deere's Technician of the Year for 2005/2006 is Kenny Quaile from Irish dealer Derek Plant Farm Machinery Ltd of Jordanstown, Lusk in Co Dublin. This is first time a service technician from Ireland, north or south, has won the national Gold Award. Runner-up Jerry Stansfield of Farol Ltd, Byfield, near Daventry in Northamptonshire gained this year's Silver Award.
"I am especially pleased to see the ROSE bowl trophy go to Ireland for the first time," says Peter Leech, manager, customer support at John Deere Limited. "The award has been running for 17 years now and has gone to most of our other sales areas at least once. We know our Irish dealers are equally as capable and have some excellent technicians, so it is very gratifying to see one of them win at last.
"I'm also delighted that one of our newest dealers gained the runner-up spot, having been appointed just 18 months ago. It underlines both their commitment to the business and the high quality of our dealer training."
ROSE stands for Recognition Of Service Excellence, with the top award going to the best all round service technician from John Deere dealerships all over the UK and Ireland. John Deere provides upwards of 5000 training days each year to dealer personnel, on more than 40 different subjects, including around 3500 days for service technicians. Each technician undergoing training during the eight month season is automatically competing for the ROSE Awards - and those who achieve the highest standards become area finalists.
One of two technicians representing the whole of Ireland, Kenny and the other nine finalists competed at John Deere's purpose built, state of the art training centre at Langar, Nottingham, in an intensive series of specialist tests. These are designed to assess the technicians' skills in the various product ranges, in service procedures, in communications and presentation and in customer relations.
Kenny Quaile, who lives in Termonfeckin, Drogheda in Co Louth, was the clear winner on the day. "I thought I had as good a chance as anyone, although I felt pretty nervous at the start of the day," he says of his first time in the ROSE Award final. "Some of the tests went better than others, obviously, and there were two or three that I felt I'd not done so well on, but they must have been OK!"
Kenny joined Derek Plant eight years ago as a service engineer, and has been service manager for the last five. Before this he worked for another Irish John Deere dealership, Meath Farm Machinery in Navan, and then spent a year in Uzbekhistan servicing combines. He now manages a large service department, with five full time staff working on John Deere equipment.
"We sell and service a lot of tractors in our area, which runs south to Dublin and north to Drogheda," Kenny adds. "We have a lot of vegetable growers and quite large tillage farmer customers, so we look after everything from the smaller 5020 tractors up to the big 8020 tracked models."
Jerry Stansfield was particularly pleased with his runner-up spot, as he has only been working on the equipment since Farol signed as a John Deere dealer in spring 2004. "I really enjoyed the day, and to be honest I was surprised with the result, as a relative newcomer to John Deere," says Jerry, who lives in Bicester. "It's a great boost for the dealership to be recognised in this way."
After completing his HND at Rycotewood College, Jerry worked as a farm engineer for eight years, before joining Farol in 1991 as a service engineer at Milton Common in Thame, and then moving to Byfield when the branch opened six years ago. Including Jerry, there are four service engineers plus an apprentice working under service manager Phil Jenkinson at the Byfield branch. Around 20 service engineers altogether work across the Farol group, which also has branches at Atherstone in Warwickshire, Hungerford in Berkshire and Thame in Oxfordshire.
The other eight area finalists who won Bronze Awards were: Craig Low of Netherton Tractors Ltd, Finavon, Angus; Mark Wilson of Thomas Sherriff & Co Ltd, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland; Nigel Gray of Ripon Farm Services Ltd, Ripon, North Yorkshire; Nigel Edwards of Frank Sutton Ltd, Raglan, Gwent; Justin Gooderson of Ben Burgess, Aylsham, Norfolk; Peter Gash of R Tincknell & Son (Agricultural) Ltd, Tetbury, Gloucestershire; Kevin Drage of J E Buckle Engineers Ltd, Cromer, Hertfordshire; and Kevin O'Brien of Templetuohy Farm Machinery, Portlaoise, Co Laois in Ireland.
