Wouldn\u2019t it be great if the entire job site \u2014 the general contractor, subs, designers, owners, equipment vendors, and material suppliers \u2014 were all working in sync with the data that shifts with each condition change, progress report, change order, telematics warning, and machine inspection? That the right people got the right information at the right time to make informed decisions?<\/p>\n
This one-dashboard vision is much, much easier said than done. The journey of one equipment manager illuminates the roadblocks.<\/p>\n
Several years back, Langdon Mitchell, equipment division general manager for heavy civil contractor Morgan Corp., needed to have someone physically go machine-by-machine to update the software in his fleet.<\/p>\n
The next big hurdle: each OEM had its own proprietary telematics portal. Like most contractors, Morgan has a mixed fleet, and getting a unified fleet view from all the disparate systems was clunky and time-consuming, Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
The Spartanburg, South Carolina, company is now using a third-party product that amalgamates the information from each brand in the company fleet in addition to its rental equipment. \u201cIt\u2019s become a single source of truth,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cBeyond the raw telematics data, it\u2019s allowing us to have tools to have actionable items.\u201d<\/p>\n
But more is needed, said Will Hipp, an equipment data analyst with Morgan. \u201cOur eventual goal is to have all the project managers on board so they can see the machines on other job sites and identify any machines that have little utilization.\u201d<\/p>\n
That involves getting dynamic project schedules to match up with fleet needs so areas can be pinpointed where the company perhaps has too many or not enough machines. \u201cThat is one of the biggest tasks we have: making sure that machines are in the right place at the right time,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
This is one example of the information needs of one division of one company. Multiply those needs company-wide and then by all the entities with which that one company does business. Now add the industry at large, and you get the idea of the complexities involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds pretty simple, but when you take a look at the disparate systems GCs, subs, developers, and agencies use, everybody has different formats and protocols so it\u2019s extremely convoluted,\u201d said Brian Juroff, senior vice president of sales \u2013 positioning solutions at Topcon Positioning Group. \u201cWhile jobsite connectivity is easy to define, executing it is a completely different matter. Every contractor has a different soup mix of software for office, modeling, scanning, etc. It becomes a huge hurdle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an immense amount of data that are created throughout the course of a construction project,\u201d said Patrick Stevenson, vice president of product management and platform at Trimble. \u201cJobsite connectivity is making sure that information is transferring to the right individuals at the right moment in time so that they can more effectively do their job.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s needed is a connective tissue that integrates fully with all pieces of information, creating a living, adaptive body of data.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s providing a digital overview of what\u2019s happening on the site so everyone can easily make decisions,\u201d said Kenneth Veys, portfolio manager, uptime and connectivity at Volvo Construction Equipment.<\/p>\n
Overall, technology infrastructure advancements like 5G networks, LiDAR scanning, GNSS, and edge computing is laying the foundation for job site connectivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been on job sites in the past where at 2:30 in the afternoon, you were going to lose connectivity based on satellite positioning,\u201d said Lonnie Fritz, senior market professional at Caterpillar. \u201cYou could set your watch to it. GNSS alone has really driven improvement in accuracy and reliability.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the biggest shifts is open architecture software so that data from different sources can be more easily integrated. \u201cThat\u2019s allowing a lot of contractors to embrace the concept of automating their processes,\u201d Juroff said.<\/p>\n
While jobs in more remote areas still face connectivity issues, the amount of data that can now be transmitted has grown exponentially in the world-at-large.<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s a wealth of data that\u2019s waiting to be mined in a connected way, from machine telematics to design data to labor apps, said Jason Anetsberger, Komatsu \u2018s director of customer solutions. Connected machines can now receive updated design data, report back their productivity and the shape of the terrain as they create it.<\/p>\n
Severino Trucking of Candia, New Hampshire went to a cloud-based model to reduce redundancy and disconnect, said Pat L\u2019Heureux, project manager. \u201cWe have some crews that will take a project 80% of the way and then another group takes over. Everyone needs to have the same information.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going to the cloud has been a \u201chuge time-saver,\u201d reported L\u2019Heureux. \u201cI can now troubleshoot an issue in five minutes, where sometimes in the past it could take me three hours because of travel time.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just machines and production schedules that are part of the data mix. Trackers, specialized hardhats, and smart glasses are adding location, fall alerts, and biometrics information on construction workers, leading to increases in safety and labor management capabilities.<\/p>\n
Contractor attitudes have also shifted, said Trimble\u2019s McLachlan. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen a big jump in adoption of connectivity solutions,\u201d she said, \u201cespecially now that we can push a design update out to a machine remotely instead of having to drive out to the job site.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year, the needle is definitely moving on the contractor technology adoption levels,\u201d Fritz said. \u201cThere\u2019s an increase in their belief of what technology can do to improve their operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
The combination of grade control data with telematics reporting was a significant step forward, said James Leibold, product manager \u2013 connectivity at John Deere: \u201cYou\u2019re not just having machines that report data, but you can remotely go into a machine and fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ability to not physically have to download job model revisions is critical, said Lyle Ballou, GPS manager for DXI Construction in Churchville, Maryland. \u201cWe are managing 65 active jobs as we speak, and we have to manage the GPS info as different crews move in and out of different jobs weekly, sometimes daily.\u201d<\/p>\n
DXI Construction juggles the workload for 51 different crews in three different states, which necessitates being able to instantly connect and \u201cprogram\u201d each crew for the work to be performed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe investment we have made has eliminated not being able to work because we have to wait for stakeout or wait for a program to be driven to a job and downloaded,\u201d Ballou added.<\/p>\n
One barrier to job site connectivity is the sheer choice of tech options out there, said Jim Bretz, connectivity services support manager at Volvo Construction Equipment. \u201cCustomers don\u2019t know what to choose,\u201d he said. Fears about office and field data security are also valid.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so fragmented right now there with the number of solutions,\u201d agreed Mitchell. \u201cOne company has a cool answer for one thing, and another company has a cool answer for another thing. How do you now bring that information into the whole so you can make decisions?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe different solutions can be siloed, which makes it hard to have cross-compatibility,\u201d added L\u2019Heureux. \u201cIf providers get too proprietary, it can hurt the end user.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the attention that the industry is now getting,\u201d said Anetsberger. \u201cPeople are seeing that it\u2019s either ripe for digital disruption or that there must be an easier way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mitchell agreed: \u201cWhat is exciting in our industry right now is how technology is really, really ramping up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Contractors will be able to piggyback on what\u2019s happening in the broader technology space. In addition to jobsite connectivity, these efforts will also lay the groundwork for autonomous machines.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t think job site connectivity will solve all problems, Bretz warned. \u201cIt\u2019s likely it will reveal more issues and create a whole new aspect of managing job sites and machines because it opens up a lot of information that wasn\u2019t immediately available,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe connected jobsite concept is something I\u2019m passionate about, and I want to see grow,\u201d said L\u2019Heureux. \u201cIt will help with the disconnect we see daily between companies, engineers, even internally. It will create more of a community if we can share this data.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
AEM is the North America-based international trade group representing off-road equipment manufacturers and suppliers with more than 1,000 companies and more than 200 product lines in the agriculture and construction-related industry sectors worldwide. The equipment manufacturing industry in the United States supports 2.8 million jobs and contributes roughly $288 billion to the economy every year.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Follow one jobsite equipment manager as he navigated the roadblocks to trying to get an entire job site in sync with change orders, warnings, and inspections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":455,"featured_media":25326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23281],"tags":[23284,23285,23282],"class_list":{"0":"post-25325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-2023-spring","8":"tag-aem","9":"tag-connectivity","10":"tag-spring-2023"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/455"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25327,"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25325\/revisions\/25327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaeimagazine.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}