Evolution of job site connectivity

Picture this: a job site where everyone involved, from the general contractor and subcontractors to the designers, owners, equipment vendors and material suppliers, work in sync with real-time data that shifts with each condition change, progress report, change order, telematics warning and machine inspection, providing the right people with the right information at the right time to make informed decisions.

This one-dashboard vision may be easier to imagine than to accomplish, but the journey of one equipment manager can help to illuminate why it can be worth making an investment in job site connectivity.

Several years back, Langdon Mitchell, equipment division general manager for heavy civil contractor Morgan Corp., Spartanburg, South Carolina, wanted to update the software in his fleet. To accomplish this, he had to task someone to physically walk from machine to machine to update each one. The next big hurdle was that each OEM (original equipment manufacturer) had a proprietary telematics portal. Like most contractors, Morgan has a mixed fleet, and getting a unified view from all the disparate systems proved to be a clunky and time-consuming process.

Now, Morgan Corp. is using a third-party product that amalgamates information from each brand represented in the company’s fleet and rental equipment.

“It’s become a single source of truth,” Mitchell says. “Beyond the raw telematics data, it’s allowing us to have tools, to have actionable items.”

But more is needed, says Will Hipp, equipment data analyst with Morgan. “Our 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.”

This would involve 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. “That is one of the biggest tasks we have: making sure that machines are in the right place at the right time,” Mitchell says.

Connectivity is complex

This is one example of the information needed for one division of one company. Multiply those needs company-wide, and then by all the entities with which that one company does business, and a clearer picture of the complexities involved becomes apparent.

“It sounds pretty simple, but when you take a look at the disparate systems [general contractors], subs, developers and agencies use, everybody has different formats and protocols, so it’s extremely convoluted,” says Brian Juroff, senior vice president of sales and positioning solutions at Livermore, California-based Topcon Positioning Systems, a technology provider for surveyors, civil engineers and construction contractors. “While job site 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.”

Patrick Stevenson, vice president of product management and platform at Westminster, Colorado-based software company Trimble, says an immense amount of data is created throughout a construction project. “Job site connectivity is making sure that information is transferred to the right individuals at the right moment in time so that they can more effectively do their job,” he says.

What new technology can provide is a connective tissue that integrates fully with all pieces of information, creating a living, adaptive body of data.

“It’s providing a digital overview of what’s happening on the site so everyone can easily make decisions,” says Kenneth Veys, portfolio manager of uptime and connectivity at Volvo Construction Equipment, based in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.

Technology boost

Technology infrastructure advancements including 5G networks, LiDAR (light detection and ranging) scanning, GNSS (global navigation satellite system) and edge computing are laying the foundation for job site connectivity.

“I’ve been on job sites in the past where at 2:30 in the afternoon you were going to lose connectivity based on satellite positioning,” says Lonnie Fritz, senior market professional at Texas-based manufacturer Caterpillar. “You could set your watch to it. GNSS alone has really driven improvement in accuracy and reliability.”

One of the biggest shifts is open architecture software that can more easily integrate data from different sources. “That’s allowing a lot of contractors to embrace the concept of automating their processes,” Juroff says.

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.

There’s also a wealth of data that’s waiting to be mined in a connected way, from machine telematics to design data to labor apps, says Jason Anetsberger, director of customer solutions for Illinois-based Komatsu North America. Connected machines can now receive updated design data and report back their productivity and the shape of the terrain as they create it.

Severino Trucking of Candia, New Hampshire, went to a cloud-based model to reduce redundancy and disconnect, says Project Manager Pat L’Heureux. “We have some crews that will take a project 80 percent of the way and then another group takes over. Everyone needs to have the same information,” he explains.

Going to the cloud has been a “huge time-saver,” L’Heureux adds. “I can now troubleshoot an issue in five minutes, where sometimes in the past it could take me three hours because of travel time.”

And it’s not just production schedules that are part of the data mix. Trackers, specialized hard hats and smart glasses are adding location, fall alerts and biometrics information on construction workers, leading to increased safety and labor management capabilities.

Changing attitudes

Contractor attitudes also have shifted, says Trimble’s Sector Vice President Elwyn McLachlan. “We’ve seen a big jump in adoption of connectivity solutions,” she says, “especially now that we can push a design update out to a machine remotely instead of having to drive out to the job site.”

The combination of grade control data with telematics reporting was a significant step forward, says James Leibold, product manager for connectivity at Moline, Illinois-based John Deere. “You’re not just having machines that report data, but you can remotely go into a machine and fix it.”

It’s no longer necessary to physically download job model revisions, and that’s critical. Lyle Ballou, GPS manager for DXI Construction in Churchville, Maryland, says, “We 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.”

DXI Construction in Churchville, Maryland, juggles the workload for 51 different crews in three different states, which necessitates being able to instantly connect and “program” work for each crew.

“The 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,” Ballou says.

Getting technology’s attention

Anetsberger says he loves the attention the industry is getting. “People are seeing that it’s either ripe for digital disruption or that there must be an easier way,” he says.

Mitchell agrees, saying, “What is exciting in our industry right now is how technology is really, really ramping up.” Contractors will be able to piggyback on what’s happening in the broader technology space.

In addition to job site connectivity, these efforts also will lay the groundwork for autonomous machines.

But don’t assume job site connectivity will solve all problems, Bretz warns.

“It’s 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’t immediately available,” he says.

“The connected job site concept is something I’m passionate about and I want to see grow,” L’Heureux says.

“It will help with the disconnect we see daily between companies, engineers, even internally. It will create more of community if we can share this data.”

The author is a contributing writer for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For more information, visit www.aem.org.