Grading and Excavation Contractor

John Trotti

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

—Winston Churchill (November 10, 1942) after the British defeat of the German Afrika Korps at the Second Battle of El Alamein in Egypt.

This is a pretty apt description of the situation as it stands with laser/GPS measuring, guidance, and control construction systems as we launch into the final third of the decade.

The issue is no longer in doubt as to the productivity gains available through the use of these tools. The early adopters—principally large contractors operating fleets of heavy equipment—have paved the way for the rest of us, proving that improvements in productivity, safety, and reduction of environmental disturbance more than offset the costs involved in purchasing and deploying these systems. While the pricetags for the various classes of equipment remain fairly high, when you take into account the tremendous improvements in performance and utility that have occurred over the past several years, a far different picture emerges. This in my view brings us to the end of the beginning.

From Evolution to Revolution
What comes next involves several difficult, distinct, and challenging elements, not the least of which is the recognition by all of us that from this point forward nearly every aspect of the construction industry will undergo significant if not fundamental change whose agents are the laser/GPS measuring, guidance, and control systems and their enabling software.

In a talk at January’s World of Concrete, Ray O’Connor, president and CEO of Topcon Positioning Systems, laid out the situation in a nutshell: “Every job is a custom manufacturing business, one that shapes the planet just like a sculptor shapes clay. Only in the construction business, the sculpting tools used are bulldozers, motor graders, excavators, pavers, and other machines to change the very face of the Earth.” With this as prolog, he went on to point out the pivotal role of increasingly precise measurement in this process.

This precision, essential to each-pass accuracy, is mandated by the fact that while operating costs when measured on an hourly basis have risen steadily over the last decade, billings for moving a unit amount of dirt have gone down … and it doesn’t appear that either trend is apt to change in the near future.

So here we’ve arrived at a point where the technology is sound; the engineering (to steal from the marketeers’ bag of hyperbole) “robust,” yet the market penetration of what might be considered “no-brainer” systems is still on the short side of 10%. “Why,” you may ask, if these tools are so great, “haven’t they knocked the bearings out of cash registers all over the country?” Well, how about starting with confusion, cost, complexity, and resistance on the part of manufacturers to take a leading role by plumbing their equipment for the systems?

What Will It Take to Move Forward?
Simplification. Software’s the key here, and it’s really amazing to witness the tremendous strides each of the providers has made in the past year. All you have to do is spend five minutes on a machine equipped with any of the latest systems to see how much more intuitive they are than even a year ago. Put another way, it’s no longer a mask-and-rattle situation.

Equipment Interface. Time was when you had to go through a painful retrofit process to configure your equipment to accept an add-on system, but today an increasing number of machines rolling off assembly lines come pre-plumbed, and this trend is bound to accelerate as time goes on. Put another way, it’s getting to the point you can’t avoid it.

Handholding. “OK,” you say, “the principal bottlenecks are out of the way, but why am I going to spend $20,000 or more when I don’t know how to use the darn thing, much less marry it to a job site?” The system providers and their dealers are acutely aware of the concern and working to put trained technicians into the field to assist their customers get up and running, but is this really the solution? For starters, the crux of their business is selling systems. Training and optimization activities, while important to sales, are secondary pursuits—seeds, perhaps, for a whole new tier of independent service consultants, whose business it is to provide the interface between the equipment and system suppliers and the operators … similar in essence to the way computer consultants work with business customers the world over.

Taking a Chance. If you’re one of the 10% of early adopters, you already know that making the commitment to cross the divide is the one key that really matters. If you’re still among the 90%, the question as I see it is not if you’re going to bite the bullet but when … and it’s just a lot easier today than in the past.

GEC - March/April 2007

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