Wet Hire

Wet hire is a hire arrangement in which equipment arrives with a trained operator supplied by the hire company. Dry hire is the same equipment with no operator: you provide the person, who is your own employee or subcontractor. That single difference is not a pricing detail, because it moves who trained the operator, who employs them, who insures them and who is answerable if something goes wrong.

The operator on a wet hire remains the supplier's worker throughout. They are not a temporary member of your team, you do not carry their employer's liability cover, and you should not be issuing them detailed operating instructions.

Where wet hire is used

It is standard wherever specialist equipment needs a specialist to run it safely. In live events and AV production, a rig goes out wet hire with crew who rig, operate and de-rig it, so the client gets the result without employing technicians. In plant hire, an excavator or a crane goes out with a licensed operator, which is the normal route when the client cannot show qualified operators of their own, or when the hire company would rather keep control of an expensive machine.

Who carries what

UK health and safety law does not let either party hand its duties over with the keys. The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 place duties on people and companies who own, operate or have control over work equipment, and also on businesses whose employees use work equipment whether the business owns it or not. HSE is explicit that a business providing work equipment for others to use, for hire among other things, must manage the risks from that equipment.

In practice that means both sides hold something on a wet hire, and the agreement is where you write down which is which.

• Competence and training: the supplier holds the operator's tickets, training records and health surveillance, because the operator is their employee.
• Equipment condition: the supplier is responsible for the machine being suitable, maintained and inspected before it arrives.
• The workplace: the hirer controls the site, the ground conditions, the exclusion zones and the other trades working around the equipment.
• Direction of work: the agreement should say who may task the operator and how. This is the clause that decides liability when something is damaged, and it is the one most often left vague.
• Insurance, fuel and consumables: none of these follow automatically from the word wet. Many hire agreements still push damage liability back to the hirer on wet hire terms, on the basis that the hirer controls site conditions. Read the agreement rather than assuming.

What the agreement should cover

A workable hire agreement for wet hire names the operator's required qualifications, the site induction they will receive, the hours included and how overtime is charged, who supplies fuel and consumables, what happens if the operator becomes unavailable mid-hire, and where damage risk sits during delivery, operation and collection.

Records settle the rest. Hours actually worked, instructions received and any standing time are what a billing query turns on weeks later, and they are also the first thing anyone asks for after an incident. Keeping hire hours against the job they were worked on rather than on a separate timesheet is what makes those questions answerable. The steps for pricing and running one of these are set out in the guide to quoting and managing an AV equipment hire job.