The Hire and Rental Industry Association (HRIA) in Australia has launched a newly designed website at hireandrental.com.au, featuring expanded member services and ongoing public access search capabilities.

HRIA is a member of the Global Rental Alliance, a partnership of seven hire and rental associations working together to increase the profile of the equipment rental industry worldwide. The alliance, founded in 2003, is administered by the American Rental Association (ARA).

HRIA said the website's changes are designed to make the site visually sharper and more user friendly to accommodate an expanded range of member services.

“As our membership base grew, additional services for members were being added to the website and it was becoming more difficult to keep like services with like member options,” said James Oxenham, HRIA's national operations manager.

“Now all services have been clearly identified and compartmentalized into relevant industry sections on the new website, making it easy to find member services and industry relevant information on the site,” Oxenham said.

In addition, the search engine has been updated to make it more intelligent and capable of recognizing a variety of industry relevant key words. Publicly accessible, the search engine will search hire and rental member companies by product, company name or location/suburb, or by a combination of all three, enabling direct access to hire equipment. 

Members can access the "Member Services" segment of the website by using dedicated member log-in details. “Member services is the key segment of the website for members and will enable quick access to all member services like updates on changes to legislation; credit and financial services; and other key, industry relevant information,” Oxenham said.

The website will continue to provide links to its sister associations including the Elevating Work Platform Association (EWPA) and the Telescopic Handler Association of Australia (TSHA).

The relaunch of the HRIA website coincides with the launch of an HRIA "YouTube" channel featuring industry-related videos. To view these new videos, visit youtube.com and search "HRIA100" and the current HRIA videos will appear.

Completing its online presence, the HRIA also will continue to develop its social media presence via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

More information is available online at hireandrental.com.au.