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Quantum Shift

GPS technology has significantly increased productivity. Contractors say the impacts on their businesses are positive, as long as they respect the complexity of the tasks that it handles.

By Don Talend

Much like a phenomenon that the overall US economy experienced starting in the late 1990s, the excavation and grading profession has seen a quantum leap in productivity thanks to technology in the past decade. Just as the US enjoyed Alan Greenspan’s “dream economy” of low inflation, low interest rates by historical standards, and low unemployment—phenomena due, largely, to office communication and computing technologies that boosted the productivity of service firms—grading and excavation contractors are utilizing powerful global positioning system (GPS) technology to significantly increase their productivity. Evidence of this leap in productivity is a drastically shortened interval between surveying and site preparation.

GPS has two main applications in the industry that shorten this interval: three-dimensional site modeling and machine control. The site-modeling application converts two-dimensional survey data into a 3D schematic that gives the contractor a precise layout of the job site, not to mention a permanent record of the location of features such as utilities for future reference. The machine control application represents a logical next step; construction equipment operators can view an image of the 3D model from inside the cab and adjust the dozer or grader blade, or excavator bucket for slight variations in slope and cross slope for cuts or fills.

GPS site layout systems use a base station that receives satellite signals and transmits the signals to one or more “rover” stations that are used for grade checking on the job site. The satellite signals allow precise marking of grade on the job site, not to mention a much more efficient and less labor-intensive process of laying out a site than the traditional method that relied upon tools such as lasers to measure grade and distance, as well as a staking crew. When the site layout data is incorporated into a 3D model that is displayed inside the cab of earthmoving equipment, the operator has a visual representation of site grading and such features as utilities.

To take the capability of GPS a step further, the contractor can have one or more GPS antennae mounted on a machine so that the operator can mark precise machine location in real time as the antennae receive satellite signals from the base stations. Besides allowing the operator to determine where the machine is located on the job site relative to topographical features, a GPS machine-control system also pinpoints blade or bucket location relative to the desired grade and the operator grades as necessary by adjusting the blade manually, or specially designed software automatically adjusts these attachments during operation.

Grading & Excavation Contractor recently spoke with several contractors who discussed the many benefits of using GPS for site layout and machine control. They also mentioned how using this technology has affected their business and what contractors must do to ensure a successful adoption of it.

Increasing Productivity
Contractors overwhelmingly say that the main advantage of GPS technology is an increase in their productivity, often allowing them to take on and complete more projects with the same human and equipment resources.

Grant Garrett, president of Garrett Excavation in Hot Springs, AR, points out that his three Topcon base stations and three rover stations are used every day, and one individual now lays out a site, a task that used to require two workers. “Before we had the GPS, we had a total station where we would do all of our engineering and layout, and we kept a crew busy doing that pretty much around the clock,” he says. Now the company has equipped four-wheel all-terrain vehicles with rover station pole kits that take readings of various locations on the job site; more precise readings require a stationary range pole. The data gathered by the rovers are compiled into a 3D digital terrain model (DTM) whose data is used in takeoffs and estimating as well as for guidance of Garrett’s dozers and motor graders that have GPS antennas mounted on their blades.

“One, we reduced the amount of layout we had to do right off the bat and two, with the layout we were having to do, we probably increased our production by 300% or 400%,” says Garrett. “It allowed us to take on more work because we could finish more work quicker—instead of taking three weeks fine-grading a job, we could spend 10 days. We were getting done with work quicker, and I had to start getting more work so I wouldn’t have guys standing around with nothing to do.” He adds that initially equipping only half of his crews with GPS technology revealed a significant disparity in productivity between the GPS haves and have-nots. “I thought: This is insane doing it this way when we know we can do it in half the time. I learned really quickly that everyone that I have is going to have to have GPS.”

A significant reduction in the time needed for job-site staking can more than justify the costs of GPS equipment.

Over the past two years, Trimble 3-D models developed by Glankler Data Services LLP have helped Jordan Anglin, project manager, field engineer, and GPS coordinator for Henderson Inc. of Williamsburg, VA, eliminate site layout errors before his dozer, grader, and excavator operators start moving dirt in the field. “The biggest benefit is that it eliminates rework,” Anglin says. When Thad [Glankler] makes a model for us, he calls me and says these garages are back-graded; they’re not going to drain. I’ll call the engineer and let him know that we’re changing the grades, and they’re stupefied—normally, you wouldn’t notice that until you’re pouring concrete or you’re checking grade the old-fashioned way with a stick rule or laser.”

The power of the information in the 3D models turns every worker into a manager, Anglin adds, increasing productivity once metal hits dirt. “We need less supervision for [operators] now,” he says. “Instead of running one job, we can have the superintendent run three jobs with the foreman running the GPS. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. It makes an operator into a foreman, basically because he’s got a set of plans in front of him and he can figure things out on his own—he’s not calling the superintendent for what to do next.”

Inside the cab, the operator can view the 3D model and his relative location to site features on a monitor. Of major importance are protected areas in historical Williamsburg, Anglin notes. “It’ll let you know when you go off the job site, which is huge in this area with all the protected areas we have,” he says. “I can flag certain areas with the software so that if they go into a protected area or go out of the limit of the job, they know right away. There’s a real-time icon that looks like the machine that moves with you around the job site and its updating thousands of times a minute. There are three different settings, and you can set the numbers: You’ve got fine grade, medium grade, and rough grade settings, but we get such good accuracy that we keep ours in fine grade all the time.” With this setting, the operator receives a low-accuracy warning when grading is off by more than a preset metric.

A significant reduction in the time needed for job-site staking more than justifies the costs of GPS equipment and 3D modeling services from Dirt Logic LLC, according to Scott Bernhardt, president of Bones Construction in Aloha, OR. Dirt Logic provides a takeoff and uses the data to develop a 3D model that is e-mailed to Bones Construction. “I put it into my GPS system, and I can use it for basic surveying and rough-grading for my sites, and I can also locate manholes for sanitary sewers,” Bernhardt explains. “I have two guys who go around with these GPSs and put in rough-grading stakes. We basically have the site in our rover and in our GPS, and we’re able to walk around the site and tell where all the roads’ centerlines are, where the grades are, where the cuts are, where the fills are, where the lot lines are, and, depending on how much line work we put in, maybe where the sidewalks, where the building envelopes are. That’s something we can do with our guys. I do have two of those systems, so I’ll have one of my grade checkers hit two or three jobs a day.

“In the past, let’s say, I built a new mile of road through a piece of raw land—I would have to use offset wooden stakes and offsets to mark locations of manholes and water valves and maybe particular monuments that I’d want to save,” Bernhardt continues. “I’d have to do that with wood and a tape measure, whereas now once I install the different pipeline systems, I can go through that with GPS and the model and mark exactly where that is, and I can keep that electronic data. I don’t have to offset with a bunch of wood stakes, paint, and markers; I don’t have to go back and find all that stuff because we have all that data electronically—it saves us a lot of time.”

Above all, Bernhardt understands that time is money. Bones Construction’s capability of modeling and staking a job site also makes the company self-sufficient and gives it the ability to better control its own schedule. “There’s also a huge benefit because I’m able to put in my own rough-grade staking,” he says. “It saves me from having to wait 48 hours for the surveyors to come, and it saves my client from having to pay extra money to have extra rough-grade stakes put in. I can just get what raw information I need right away and get my people going. I can also double-check that the engineer’s topographic information is all right and not get surprised at the end and find out that I have an extra 100,000 yards of dirt.

“I still have an engineer do all the standard surveying, but I can basically shoot all the stakes they put in, in case I lose some, which is typical in the industry. I can put them in myself instead of having to call them and have them put in three or four more curb gradient stakes and it costs the owner $1,500 more. I save myself some time and save the owner some money.”

Jeff Hoburg, foreman and superintendent with JH Excavating in Allison Park, PA, has found that the company’s Topcon GPS and 3D modeling from Terrain Modeling Services aid productivity as well as customer service because they streamline the job-site chain of command in regard to site layout when issues arise. “It’s a selling point,” Hoburg says of how customers view JH Excavating’s use of GPS. “If you have a problem, you come see me. If you have additional layout you want, I have that cell phone in my pocket.”

The company uses two site-layout systems and has equipped one of its dozers with a GPS machine-control program. “Anywhere inside the work area [operators] want cut or fill information I can provide it. All of our guys have come to the point where they can pick up [grading with GPS data] and run with it.”

Hugh Brown, GPS coordinator with Beaver Excavating in Canton, OH, adds that the company can pass along cost savings that result by eliminating the outsourcing of restaking tasks, as well as the need for dedicating an individual to grade checking.

More Competitive Bidding
The pinpoint control available to equipment operators also benefits the sales office. Contractors note that GPS data aid in quoting a project, allowing them to submit more accurate, competitive bids.

Photo: Take-Off Professionals

GPS Base stations can send signals to antennae mounted on such machine attachments as dozer blades to inform the operator of blade adjustments necessary to achieve the desired grading.

Photo: Glankler Data

Rover” GPS stations receive signals from a GPS base station for grade marking.

Newman Contracting of Glenpool, OK relies upon its GPS equipment and the takeoff and 3D modeling services of Take-Off Professionals out of a realization that these complex tasks are better outsourced to a trustworthy partner. The partnership pays off in accurate bidding, says Trent Newman, project manager for Newman.

“A lot of guys might do their own in-house data, but for us, it comes down to liability and security,” Newman says. “I’ve been doing estimating, project management, our budget and everything else, and that would take up a whole lot more time. [Take-Off Professionals] can do it so fast and so accurately that it saves a lot of time and their files are always really reliable.

“We paid for our GPS on the first job we ever used it on,” he continues. “We basically paid for the system in the amount that we were off on the dirt. It ended up being 160,000 tons of dirt on this job and we originally thought there were 100,000. That’s a lot of money if you’re charging $4 or $5 a yard. If you go the other way, you can overestimate the quantity and you can miss the job because your bid is too high.”

Newman stresses that the cost savings that result from bringing the staking task in-house are passed along to customers.

“We hired a guy with a little bit of survey experience and someone to help him and we went from subbing out 100% of our survey work and paying out the nose for it to doing it in-house,” he notes. “We’re basically operating with the in-house stakeout at about one-third the cost of a subcontractor; those guys are $1,000 a day plus
restaking costs.”

Brown adds that increasing Beaver Excavation’s productivity with the use of GPS also benefits his customers because it allows them to put their projects on a faster track. As a result, Beaver Excavation saves its customers money by saving itself and customers time. “[Customers] think they can get a job delivered more quickly and they set tighter deadlines,” says Brown.

More Reliable As-Builts
This technology gives the contractor the ability to more efficiently and accurately double-check site layout data and as-built data. More accurate as-built data can pay productivity dividends for future projects on the site—and possibly even aid efforts to retain customers who might further develop a site in the future.

“You can record as-builts and not wait for your engineers to come by or surveyors to come by,” points out Mark Gould, owner of Gould Construction in Glenwood Springs, CO. “Also, you can go out and pre-topo a project and make sure you’re comparing the project to the original drawings to make sure that the drawings are correct. Many times, you’ll get surveyors who are plus or minus 2 feet, and that means a lot. Many times, there’s a difference on the job between the recorded engineering drawings and where the water line or sewer line ultimately goes and this is a recording of what’s out there after the fact. All of a sudden for some reason, you’ve got to put an elbow in on a water line and you want to have a recording of where that is.”

Some Caveats
As is the case with using any kind of powerful technology, contractors caution that a user of GPS equipment risks working with inaccurate data unless extreme care is taken to ensure the collection of valid data—and a 3-D schematic is modeled by a competent employee or another organization.

“The young guys love GPS; the biggest problem I have with them is that they trust it too much,” says Anglin. “They’ll just look at the screen and not use their heads as much as they should. There’s no replacement for experience. You can’t just trust the GPS 100%; you’ve still got to use your head to go from Point A to Point B to make things work.”

Also, “We haven’t had it happen in two years, but the machine could get knocked out of calibration,” Anglin adds. “One of the sensors could get knocked out of calibration. If you don’t check in for a while, things can happen. On a job that’s all subgrade and all topsoil stripped off, you can’t tell if you’re half a foot off until it comes time to start laying out your curb and everything else.

“I check the machines regularly,” he continues. “I’ll take my laptop out in the field and check the calibration and the measurements because you’ve got to account for blade wear—I pretty much do that weekly. You can lose two-tenths of an inch off of your blade during the life of it. If you want to go with GPS full-fledged and you have a fleet of equipment, hire somebody to handle [the equipment calibration]. That’s what they hired me to do.

“You’re not going to have a lot of errors with your GPS—that’s not where the problem will be. The problem comes from your data prep. You want the right person with experience in grading and drainage to be making your models. It’s worth the money to pay someone to do your models.”

A strong working relationship and communication between the engineer and the 3D model developer is critical to the success of using GPS, argues Gould, a civil engineer by formal education.

“That data has to be accurate because we are building our model off of their 3D data,” he says of O’Neill Positioning Services, which builds 3D models for Gould. “You have to have some insight into what the engineer was intending because that’s not always clear; there has to be a trust factor.”

Gould adds that the 3D modeler must be someone highly qualified for such a complex task and workers should be trained on how to collect the data using the GPS equipment. “In the beginning, it takes somebody like O’Neill because that’s really the part they help out with is the orientation and getting up to speed so you can use GPS because not every contractor has the in-house capabilities to use a GPS. It’s a computer issue where its garbage in, garbage out. If you put the wrong model in the machine, the machine is going to build the wrong model in the field.”

Tim Priester, vice president with Construction 70 in Phoenix, urges contractors to rely on someone like two former employees to build accurate 3D models if they expect to realize the full benefits of GPS. Two former Construction 70 employees started up their own 3D modeling and takeoff services firm in early 2007 and maintain a relationship with the contractor. “The lasers we used to use were accurate,” notes Priester. “Still, you’ve got to have people who know exactly how we grade out in the field. We still have to get the pads certified, the street certified before we get our final payment.”

Operators Adapt
When it comes to training equipment operators to use GPS-enabled machine-control systems, though, contractors say the learning curve is a fairly short one, a crucial fact that also reduces the payback period for the equipment.

Photo: Take-Off Professionals

Three-dimensional schematics for slope and cross-slope can be viewed by the operator inside the cab.

“We sent our trainers to the people that we bought our GPS system from [Trimble] and they held two different sets of classes,” recalls Newman. “One was for the guys who would be using the field system for the surveying and layout and staking, et cetera. The other was for the operators. The operator, if there really isn’t much cut or fill—in other words, the dozer doesn’t have to be digging down a foot—he can just drive along and put the blade in automatic mode and just drive and that blade will automatically move kind of robotically and make the cut by itself. If he does have to take an area down by a foot or so, he can turn it down on the computer screen and just add an offset. He can do that entire job without having to touch the blade control lever.”

Adds Garrett: “Our finish grade operators were used to working with all of the magic technology such as two-dimensional lasers, so I’m not going to say that there was a learning curve as far as looking at the computer screen and being distracted, but there was a learning curve because one, now we’ve got a computer in the cab and some of the guys didn’t have computer skills and two, we’ve got antennas, cables and cords and now we’ve got a radio that’s transmitting and receiving a signal. We had to make sure that the information we were receiving was the right information, make sure we had a good radio signal and two, we had a lot of problems with connections and cords going bad that we weren’t used to.”

To Priester, the learning curve inherent in using GPS should be viewed as a positive in regard to professional development. “Some foremen embraced it, others were scared of it,” he says. “The ones who embraced it are the ones they want; you want people to be able to do new things—you take them out of their comfort zone.”

The contractors who spoke with Grading & Excavation Contractor are early technology adopters to begin with, which makes the transition to GPS a relatively smooth one. “There was a little bit of a learning curve, but we’ve been in the laser and [ATS] market for quite a while and our guys have already adapted to using different types of technology, so this was just a software upgrade for them if you want to call it that,” says Brown, adding that Beaver Excavating has used the technology since 2000.

Dabbling in surveying
GPS technology certainly has migrated the capabilities of early-adopting contractors into the outer limits of engineering and surveying. But none of the interviewees said they anticipate complete horizontal integration into that discipline. Surveyors, who have an opportunity to expand their service offerings into building their own 3D GPS models, are the ones who are really impacted by the increasing adoption of the technology.

“Contractually, we require that we are provided with control points to work from, and I flatly refuse to do property-line surveying,” Hoburg argues. “I’m not a registered surveyor, and I have no business doing it, in my mind. If I mess up my work that’s my problem. I’m comfortable with that responsibility because it’s working out.

“I think [surveyors] are all going to have to come to [3D modeling] because if construction layout is their bread and butter, I’m eating their lunch. It’s an opportunity that they almost have to take advantage of or they’re going to be left with very little else.”

Similarly, Newman stresses that the surveyor still has a role in the initial layout of a site. “With the GPS, I might have to localize with a minimum of maybe five points on the job site before we get started and I’ll get those points from a surveyor. We don’t do anything that will make us liable—anything legal, we get from a surveyor. But as far as a surveyor getting paid to do all of our staking for us and do restaking, we can go back out and do that in a matter of seconds.”

Bernhardt agrees but adds that relieving his surveyor or restaking can actually benefit the surveyor. “I think it relieves them of some of the pressures because putting rough grading stakes for me on a big earth site multiple times is really impossible for them to bid to an owner,” he says. “I can do that on my own, but I still have them put in all the pipeline staking, all the original rough grade and staking for the centerline.”            

Don Talend of Write Results, West Dundee, IL, is a communications and publicity consultant specializing in the trade media.

Software

By Penelope B. Grenoble

Software providers say dirt contractors are looking for better accounting packages, and better ways to manage data. They say the answer lies in end-to-end solutions and partnerships, that marry estimating and project management software with general accounting applications. But just how complicated does this have to be?

Brad Barth, senior vice president of product management for Hard Dollar Corp., says he sees a definite trend among dirt contractors for more sophisticated accounting software that is easy to use, low priced, and not overly complex. “We see this with customers who have been with us for many, many years who reflect this evolution within our own product line,” he says. “Many of them started with a very small piece of estimating software and have expanded into our project execution and management applications.

“A lot of this is a natural evolution of wanting to do things better. But, it’s also important to understand that grading and excavation contractors are in a tougher environment these days because of demands being made on them by both customers and regulators. It’s not just about what machine you need to get the job done anymore. It’s about which machine is going to be compliant with factors such as air quality requirements.”

Fred Ode, chief executive officer with Foundation Software Inc., puts a more specific face on Barth’s assessment of an evolutionary trend. “Every contractor reaches a point where he starts to lose control of his billing, and his people, and how well he's doing on a job,” Ode says. “He can’t process information quickly enough. He needs change order processing, and systems for equipment maintenance. He needs to determine how he's performing compared to the way he bids his jobs.

“With Dunn and Bradstreet reporting that over half a million contractors have five or less employees, off-the-shelf accounting packages are here to stay. For almost 30 years, I’ve been hearing that the industry is on the brick of developing a functional enterprise solution. But when they try, they end up compromising each of the elements. So I think in the real world, at least in the next decade, we’re going to see a continuation of best of breed. Contractors are going to continue to learn and grow, and become more aware of technologies they can take advantage of, and all the elements will get stronger, although the curve will be more gradual in accounting, because it's much more established.”

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) originated in manufacturing, where the objective was a central system for managing companywide resources. To be considered an enterprise solution, an application must provide the functionality of at least two systems such as accounting and payroll. The benefits include standardization, eliminating the need for external interfaces between systems, decreased maintenance, and, because all the information is held in one database, better reporting capabilities. Organizations with IT capabilities can pick and chose between software elements, thereby securing the benefits of one solution while bypassing individual weaknesses (the so-called best-of-breed approach).

Partly out of happenstance, and partly necessity, the construction industry has been managing with a sort of modified best of breed of approach. “During the ’90s,” says Barth, “people were using what we call point solutions. Maybe they went from spreadsheets to an estimating system like ours. Maybe they used a scheduling system and CAD for takeoff, and, then at some point, they realized the way to get more productive and more profitable was to develop better information sharing and better workflow across all their groups. But generic enterprise systems are overkill for the size of operations we're talking about, and this more than anything has driven companies like Hard Dollar and Primavera and many other accounting vendors to make a concerned effort to work better together. In the construction industry alone, the cost of lack of interoperability between applications has been estimated at almost $16 billion annually.”

Barth thinks that for many contractors the issues fall more under project management and execution, than financial. “The fact is contractors’ accounting needs are not that sophisticated compared to their project needs, which are very sophisticated. So we’ve found a niche serving the middle ground where you can take a generic accounting package like QuickBooks or Peachtree and supplement it with a very sophisticated project execution system. It’s almost like best of breed with integration. They’ve got an accounting system that does exactly what they want, and a project management system that does exactly what they want. And the two of them share information as if they were one.

“I think a lot of contractors have realized that accounting software has its purpose, which is to look rear-ward. Also that the process itself—the accounting, not the software—oftentimes makes it difficult to use accounting data to help contractors look forward. So that’s where a full-fledged project execution system can provide a good solution. This is why we’ve been driving the industry toward interoperability. With our Primavera integration, for example, one click on the icon opens up Primavera, which brings in all the data and displays it as a schedule. It’s the same process going backward. You can add things to the schedule, move it around, then click the button, and all the changes come back into Hard Dollar. So it’s a two-way, real-time dynamic.

“Although accounting packages primarily handle transactions,” says Mike Pandle at Penta Technologies Inc., “many accounting software vendors, including Penta, have expanded their software suite to bring project managers into the fold along with other people on the operations side of the business. Our experience has been that larger construction companies are more apt to look for an integrated system as opposed to best of breed. With our system, they can handle all their transactions from an accounting perspective, along with the financial reporting, which helps project managers manage the cost of each job down to the most minute detail. They can also take payroll and job cost information from mobile devices on the job site.”

Norman Wendle, chief executive officer of Corecon Technologies, thinks there’s no question about the need for an integrated approach. “As a company gets larger, it needs systems in place. Otherwise you get buried in your business—as opposed to growing your business. Corecon is very cutting edge Web-based estimating and job management software. What’s unique about our approach is that we tie into back-end general accounting systems through partnerships with the people who do this well, like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft 1.

“Corecon is not going to recreate the wheel by developing our own accounting engine, and we think the generic accounting applications will win out because of the accounting functionality they offer. Although the average construction contractor is not thinking of Microsoft Dynamics or SAP Business, over a period of time, partnerships with people like us at Corecon will provide a very compelling overall solution. Our goal is to provide managers in the field the ability to run the job, with the accounting staff providing support, as if the project manager is the accounting staff's client.”

Brad Mathews, vice president of marketing and sales at Dexter + Chaney, offers an alternative perspective. “Off-the-shelf software hasn’t been tenable for years. It can’t do the heavy lifting companies need today. On the other hand, an Oracle, or an IBM, or SAP doesn’t provide the enterprise functionality to manage the range of activities across a construction company. You can make the case that grading an area for development is similar from one job to the next, but the truth is each job is unique—the physical location, who you’re working for and who’s working for you, your work force, and legal requirements. A project may last for six months or a span of years, which means expensing resources and equipment, time and fuel, and maybe some materials over multiple accounting periods. You’re expensing these things to the job at the same time you’re billing for the job, although not always in lock step, which is one of the unique accounting challenges. And that’s just one problem. Equipment costing is another.”

“When it comes to accounting, job costing is the key element,” says Greg Orr, controller at Redrock Mechanical LLC in Las Vegas, who uses Maxwell Systems’ American Contractor. “You have to be able to know if you're making or losing money on each individual job, not just whether the company is making money in general. This is what makes this software different from QuickBooks. Every job, every housing tract, every subdivision, every new Target and Walmart, has their own job number. And all the costs and profit for each job are accounted for individually. It’s like having an individual ledger on every single job, which is the big appeal.”

At SharpeSoft Inc., Brent Hooten thinks the problem with off-the-shelf accounting packages, even when they’re aimed at contractors, is that they’re vertical, that is, designed for building not heavy contractors, and they’re not specific enough. “They meet the needs of accountants, but among other things, contractors don’t get adequate job-costing information. Nor can these programs track equipment inventory very well.” Hooten says SharpeSoft is in the process of developing an overall package that deals with everything “from general ledger to job costing to payroll,” and he expects this to be on the market within the year.

Dexter + Chaney’s solution is Construction Management Software, which is its version of the ERP approach of accumulating a core of information that's shared between project managers and the financial staff in real time, all tailored for the construction industry. “What we're hearing is people are tired of three or four software systems with data here and there, and project managers not having access to the accounting systems. Contractors want software that covers these bases. The idea is to reduce data entry, while creating a database that improves teamwork across the organization and provides the functionality to manage a company’s range of activities.

“Grading and excavation contractors can use what we offer to cover the whole broad band, not all the pieces of the business, but most of it. Some of these things are very subtle, like handling back charges for a subcontractor. You can waste a lot of time trying to use a generalized accounting program to achieve that kind of functionality. One of our clients, for example, spent a lot of time and money trying to use a general enterprise solution to do vacation calculations. You shouldn't be spending custom money to do something that everybody in the industry uses.”

Dan Lehman, director of project development for Maxwell Systems Inc., thinks that since construction operates on the basis of functional groups, contractors need application software that will provide intersects between their functional areas, thereby improving performance, reducing costs, and maximizing profits.

“There was a period of time where folks were doing what was required with these disparate, best of breed applications because that's what was expected of them,” Lehman says. “They had to enter data into multiple locations. They were very likely getting contradictory reports from these disparate applications, and because one product could track only certain sets of information, and another different sets of information, they could never get a comprehensive view without spending a lot of time they didn’t have analyzing information.

“For a long, long time Maxwell Systems focused just on the job-cost accounting project management side of the house, but we’ve recently acquired a couple of different applications, such as Quest Solutions, that are focused on what we call business capture.

“We have a vision of what it truly means to be an end-to-end solution, and what it can bring to a construction company, and we considered developing our own estimating applications or other applications geared to specific contracting functions. Then we took a look at best of breed solutions like Quest, which has been in the market for a long time and has a good track record. With the acquisition of Quest, we took ownership under one umbrella, providing our customers an end-to-end solution with best of breed components built into it.

“We’ve done that not just because we want to have best in breed applications—although certainly it’s fantastic to have that—but because we want the intersect between the two. The idea is to not only have a view into the business to see what’s going on currently with work in progress, but also to blend this into resource planning: Do I have enough labor, for example, for all the jobs I have in progress now, plus those that will be in progress during the next six months, plus those we think we’ll be bringing in? We’re not reinventing processes that these folks haven’t already considered. We're helping to enable them to achieve best practices.

“Contractors aren’t looking for ways to collect information; they’re looking for ways to make better decisions. We build in alert functionalities based on the perimeters the customer sets up. So if they’re not getting utilization of equipment at appropriate levels, we automatically email the equipment manager. If projected revenue drops below an acceptable percentage, we’re automatically alerting key executives. This kind of working through the exceptions, the items that are outside their acceptable variances, is a much more proactive approach to staying on top of how the business is doing.”

But when this enthusiasm is translated to the field, it appears software vendors have some marketing and education challenges ahead of them. At Foundation Software, Ode says he still sees contractors struggling with off-the-shelf software packages, who are shocked to discover there are applications specific to their industry. And discovering one software application doesn't always mean jumping in with both feet.

At Smithco Construction Inc. in Caballo, NM, Office Manager Shelley Lindsay feels proud to have replaced an old DOS-based accounting system with Foundation, but the company’s application of the software is limited. “We use everything but the invoicing,” says Lindsay, “which we do through Excel and import into Foundation because my CPA is more comfortable doing it that way.” What management does like is the ability to provide instant reports on job expenditures, which used to take half a day to produce.

Lindsey’s Smithco bosses also still prefer to do estimating by hand, but at Maverick Construction, a two-year wet utility company outside Dallas that is already doing $6 million a year, owner Shane Alexander is looking forward to integrating his accounting and estimating functions.

“For companies with revenues under $3 million to $5 million, QuickBooks is pretty good. But Foundation’s software controls costs better, and is more fine-tuned for our labor-intensive business. We get better, detailed reports, and the payroll function is better. We can take a proposal bid on a project, and at the end of the project I can do a job cost report and we can put the two together and review them simultaneously. We’re not there yet to where our estimating software is integrated with Foundation, but we’re heading in that direction."

At the other end of the spectrum, Chief Financial Officer Chris Colacurico at Colacurico Brothers Inc. in Blaine, WA, reports that integration of the company’s various software applications with Dexter + Chaney’s Spectrum software has resulted in “a great deal of measurable productivity benefits” for a construction business that does $14–$16 million a year.

“Everybody's looking at the same numbers in real time; coding is done the same way for every module, and redundant data entry is kept to a minimum. That’s a huge benefit productivity-wise, and in the ability for the company to be proactive in making certain types of decisions. Being able to track certain costs prior even to payroll being processed, for instance—because all the systems are integrated from the executive oversight position—has allowed us to grow and be more profitable than we would be otherwise. Having that extra half a percent or percent of profit because you're able to make decisions better and faster really favors a company using an integrated solution.”

Colacurico is also big on document imaging. “More than anything, document imaging has significantly improved our ability to do more work with the same amount of people,” he says. “It’s difficult to measure the benefit of having the ability to bring up the image of the source documentation without having somebody having to retrieve it from a filling cabinet. Being able to select a line item, and then increasingly drill down into it until eventually I’m actually looking at the source documentation and the correspondence between us and the sub or the material suppliers—for example, being able to do that without having to involve anyone else in any other office—has made it possible to double capacity with the same amount of staff.

“Graduating to a construction-specific, integrated solution reaps a benefit and an ability to manage our company that is hard to measure, but difficult to deny. I can't imagine that we're not more competitive because of it.”

Despite Colacurico’s enthusiasm, Barth reminds contractors that they have to go into this kind of software integration with an open mind and have realistic expectations. And they’ve got to be committed to carrying it through. “It doesn't require that they change their process, but that they work with us to help tailor their software to what they’re doing. Software these days is pretty easy to use. It’s not knowing what buttons to push as much as what your workflow is, and thus the best way to use the applications.”

Mathews is concerned that even contractors who have committed to integration aren't taking full advantage of what the software offers. “They haven’t taken the time to understand how it really works, and they haven’t got their people trained. We have clients out there who could have document imaging capacity running on their systems the next day. Or job projections. For these applications to work best, they should be configured to how a business is run.”

Such observations appear to support Ode’s view that the industry as a whole is not ready for ERP. At G&R Mineral Services in Birmingham, AL, for example, Beverly Bailey is pleased enough that Foundation makes her payroll easier. G&R is a union shop, and Bailey has to be up on all the union contracts in the multiple states where the company operates.

The real-time functionality also makes her life easier. “We may have nine crews operating in a number of different states, and we need to be able to communicate,” she says. “In Birmingham, I need to know whether the concrete has been poured in Kansas City, so I know whether to pay the sub. And on any given job, Ed may not have told Mike that he's got a purchase order that needs processing. But with Foundation, when Mike turns on his computer, he sees it.”

However much contractors elect to take advantage of what the software vendors are offering them, Ode emphasizes that these types of applications require a certain intimacy and partnership between the end user and the application. At Penta Technologies, Pandle agrees. “Most operating systems are going to meet a company’s need up to 90%. The remaining 10% we co-develop with them. With an enterprise solution like Penta, very few of our customers will implement an accounting and management software systems with no customization.”

Journalist Penelope B. Grenoble specializes in topics related to technology.

Telematics

By Penelope Grenoble

Less than five years ago, Tim Lewis, then the senior director of construction equipment for Qualcomm Inc., was marketing GPSs to the construction industry as  critical “management tools” for tracking and monitoring, predicting that within the next four years they would be standard. “It’s a matter of controlling operational efficiencies,” Lewis said at the time.

Case Construction had already introduced Fleetlink, which Marketing Manager John Marshall, billed as a “flight recorder” for construction equipment and Caterpillar was promising “maximum uptime, minimum repair costs,” with Product Link, which, it assured potential customers, would tell them everything they wanted to know about their equipment and more.

The Internet, especially paired with wireless communication, has in the years since made it easier for contractors to manage their equipment. Cigarette-pack-sized GPS units are installed on heavy equipment and fleet vehicles, data are communicated via cell phone or satellite, and customers access information through a password-secure Web site. For $500 to $1,000 per machine and a per-unit monthly access fee, an equipment manager can establish the individual whereabouts of company assets and track hours of operation. With add-ons, he can monitor critical details of machine function and performance. But have contractors embraced this opportunity, and are they using systems as the technology wizards originally imagined?

The answer is an equivocal yes and no. Original equipment manufacturers—such as Cat, Case and John Deere (which has since partnered with Qualcomm to market JDLink)—promise optimal maintenance, extended equipment life, maximum uptime, and reduced loss from theft and unauthorized use. Contractors managing large fleets of heavy equipment seem to be the first to have picked up on these opportunities, while smaller companies appear to be satisfied with theft protection and tracking hours for maintenance. In some instances, contractors are beginning to visualize the big picture, as Mike Baker, now senior director of national sales for Qualcomm Enterprise Services, describes it. In any case, applying these management systems has not been without challenges.

GPS North America sells a range of GPS-based solutions, from hardwired equipment locators to units that can provide a full record of equipment performance to its newest option, a portable battery-operated GPS tracker. But company president Todd Lewis estimates that only 10% of the construction market has opted for GPS for equipment management, “in spite of the fact that we can demonstrate it actually costs more money to do nothing—and not to mention what they’ll save on employee payroll hours and vehicle expenses.”

Likewise, Longview Advantage President Bill Quinney says his company has tried to keep the process as simple as possible. “We’ve focused on being able to protect assets from theft and sharing meter information with equipment owners for oil-change maintenance. And while we can do a lot more, we’ve found that for 95% of the market this is all the information they want. We’ve also determined that in the construction industry decision-making more often that not boils down to whether it’s more productive to know the location of your equipment or buy two additional machines.”

None of this deters Lee Knight, president of XacTrac, who argues that profitability is a direct function of sound asset management. “Knowing where your equipment is—right, now, last week, last month—not only helps you manage it more efficiently for greater revenues but also reduces expenses. To make money, you need billable hours, which means you need to keep your equipment busy.

“When we talk to people about GPS tracking, they’ll tell us the dispatcher knows where the equipment is, which is what in our company we call a mobile-bus-terminated design, meaning that if the dispatcher gets hit by a bus, they’ll have no clue where anything is. One day I was out driving jobs with a customer when we accidentally ran into an excavator he’d been looking for for two weeks. I asked him how much money he lost by not knowing where that piece of equipment was—and how about having to rent a piece of equipment to replace the one he couldn’t find.

“There’s also the issue of risk management. We had a situation about a month ago where a business owner got a lock-down violation while he was eating his breakfast one Saturday and discovered his foreman was using his backhoe on somebody else’s job. Never mind the fact that gas is $3 a gallon; what the contractor was upset about was the risk to his company if that foreman hit a gas line using his equipment on someone
else’s job.”

For Dave Sorem at Mike Bubalo Construction Co. Inc. in Baldwin Park, CA, the risk was theft. “You feel like you’ve been violated,” says Sorem. “Most of the time it was small stuff, but after we had two compressors stolen, I went out and installed XacTrack on 45 pieces of construction equipment, and we’re now in the process of putting it on our pick-ups and mechanic’s vehicles.” Sorem estimates the company’s insurance premiums have dropped by 20% as a result, and in addition to knowing where his machines are, he expects XacTrac’s ability to track idle time will help him meet expected new air quality standards.

Estimates put the value of stolen equipment in this country at as much as $1 billion annually. Kathy Kelleher, national manager for LoJack’s commercial division, reports that as the economy slows down, theft is on the rise. Backhoes are the number-one target, followed by skid steers and generators, then air compressors, forklifts, and light towers. Without some kind of tracking device, Kelleher says contractors have a 10% chance of recovering their equipment. Although theft protection is not typically thought of as a component of asset management, the fact is the effects of stolen equipment ripple throughout a fleet. “Companies that bring their equipment back to a safe yard and take specific security measures, such as security fences and cameras, are ahead of the game,” says Kelleher. LoJack recommends contractors analyze their security needs based on their geographic location (Miami, along with Los Angeles, is a hot spot) and how they store their assets, especially on remote job sites. What it boils down to is knowing where your equipment is 24 and seven is critical to getting it back if it’s stolen.

Debbie Volas at Sahuaro Contracting in Gilbert, AZ initially installed CAT’s Product Link as antitheft device. “We were losing trucks, and pieces of equipment would disappear only to turn up in the desert. Since then we’ve gotten more sophisticated. At first we wanted know where our equipment was and when it was turned on and off. Now I want to be able to see what my equipment is doing at different times during the day.” Based on its experience installing Product Link on its heavy equipment, the company has installed XacTrac on its over-the-road stock. In addition to equipment management, Volas uses the system to manage her human resource assets. “I want to be able to know how fast our fuel truck drivers and our dump truck drivers are driving. The DOT requires a certain speed, and if they go over it they become a liability for the company. We’ve also given our foremen a lot of leeway, and there have been times where we haven’t been able to locate them. XacTrac will help us make them more accountable. They figure as long as they put in their time and the work’s getting done, what difference does it make. But when you have 10 men working on a trench, the foreman should be there.”

Once you’ve established your equipment is protected against theft and you can locate it when you want to, you’re in line to do some serious work on equipment utilization. “The utilization end of it is really where the rubber meets the road,” says Steve McGough, chief executive officer of HCSS, which has integrated its popular Dispatcher product with GPSs to make it possible for contractors to schedule where equipment will be days, weeks and months in advance, locate assets in real time, calculate equipment utilization, and analyze cycle times. Four years ago Don Kramer, service manager for Rudd Equipment Co., a Volvo dealer in Evansville, IN (Volvo markets Matris for monitoring and tracking), observed that contractors with mixed fleets of machines were going to find managing tracking and monitoring data a challenge because they would have to access the Web sites of individual manufacturers. What HCSS offers is the ability to integrate any type of GPS with Dispatcher software, which in turn makes it possible to manage all of a company’s assets in one place. “You may have some John Deere equipment with Qualcomm units on it or some CAT equipment with Trimble units and maybe some of our units,” says McGough. “This makes it possible to use the application software that sits on your desktop no matter whose units you’re using.” HCSS’s GPS also allows customers to establish a geofence around a moving target. A paver by itself, for example, can be a job, a feature that makes it possible to track cycle time.

At C.W. Mathews Contracting Co. in Marietta, GA, Jeff Rogisnky, vice president of the IT Division, appreciates both capacities of HCSS’s system. Roginsky initially equipped 800 pieces of heavy equipment with Cat’s Product Link, then installed HCSS units on 55 pieces of rolling stock. “We put Cat on our heavy equipment because their system transmits data via satellite rather than cell phones, and we couldn’t risk being out of communication.

“We were after two main things: We want to know where a piece of equipment is located and what type of usage it’s getting. That is, we want accurate hours on each asset. Comparing the data from the Caterpillar units with the foremen’s time sheet, for example, we found that a lot of usage was underreported, and a lot of this occurs when superintendents share equipment across divisions. The guy who lends the machine is expecting the other guy to record it, but because it’s not the other guy’s equipment, it’s not on his list, and he doesn’t think to add it. The problem is that if you consistently underreport your equipment hours over a period of time, the rate you charge for that piece of equipment will have to go up. And eventually you’re not going to be competitive.

“Capturing engine run time, we know exactly what’s going on with each piece of equipment. If we have ten D-8 dozers out there running, and one breaks down on the job, instead of instantly picking up the phone and renting another one we can run utilization reports, and hopefully we’ll find something that’s being underutilized and move it over. And because we’ve been doing this for quite a while, we can look at all of the units and all of the hours and determine if they’re meeting our anticipated utilization. If they’re not, we’re obviously not going to buy more equipment.

“A general superintendent is looking at his costs on the job, one of which is equipment. If he has equipment that’s sitting idle, he may want to keep it around because it helps him from time to time. However, when that division comes up and says it needs more of this or that piece of equipment, we’re going to look at the utilization and say, ‘No, you need to move it better.

“And when we do order equipment, we feel more confident that we’re ordering what we need. This has given us a lot more confidence that we’re making the right decisions.”

Roginsky also offers his own take on tracking cycle time. “We don’t own any of our dump trucks that haul our asphalt and gravel and aggregate. We sub all of that out. But if every truck out there had a GPS unit on it and we could put a geofence around our spreader, every time one of these trucks comes from the plant and gets within x number of feet of that spreader, he’d break into that geofence and we’d know he’s dumped. Having a real-time record of each truck would mean we could a fleet we don’t own.”

“I don’t know how you could put a number on what these systems have done for us,” says Roginsky. “But they’re helping us stay the low-cost provider, which is what we have to be.”

Echoing what Tim Lewis said four years ago, Mike Baker at Qualcomm expands on the concept of GPS as a management tool. “I refer to GlobalTracs as more of a solution and not so much a product,” says Baker. “Qualcomm discovered a long time ago in the trucking business that for our customers to be successful, we had to deliver a total solution. We help them understand what the various ROI [return on investment] opportunities are for their individual company and how this can be accomplished by modifying our product or providing customized software applications.”

Fisher Industries In Tempe, AZ, has installed Qualcomm’s GlobalTracs on 80% of its rolling stock, 300 pieces so far. According to equipment director Luke Manney, the problem was similar to what Roginsky documented at C.W. Mathews: underreported hours from the field because machines were being transferred without anyone knowing it. The other challenge was establishing accurate maintenance schedules. “When you don’t have people in the field reporting the hours correctly,” says Manney, you can’t tell when maintenance is coming due. With GlobTracs’s Fleet Utilization program, in two seconds I can figure out what each piece of equipment has done for a week. You couldn’t put that spread sheet together if you wanted to with regular data. I’d have to call 400 people. This allows me to be able to shuffle equipment and get rid of a few things I don’t need.”

But, says Manney, you have to make informed decisions. “You have to know what a job entails. Let’s say I’ve got a brand-new excavator that was used to dig a pond, which is good utilization of the equipment. But then the crew stashes it in a corner somewhere so it’s there to clean out the pond when it needs it. But you don’t need a big new machine for that. So I’ll give them the old 235 and send the new one to the pipeline crew. In the same way, a superintendent may be waiting to finish a cut with a D-10, then use the D-6 he’s holding on to to finish it up, which means he doesn’t want me to take the D-6 away—and it might be better to leave it there than ship it 800 miles to Henderson, NV, from Sedona, AZ. You have to measure these things. But at least now you’ve got something to talk about.”

Four years ago, contractors using GPS for this type of asset management observed that it requires changes in the way their companies do business, something that Lewis was also quick to point out. “Any time you incorporate technology, it can be painful,” said Lewis as Qualcomm prepared to enter the construction industry. “It requires a willingness to change the business process.” Today at Qualcomm, Baker echoes a similar thought. “By itself this is not going to solve all their problems,” he says. “Companies need to make a change in their organizational mindset to use this tool, or they won’t be successful. They’ve got to discipline themselves to use it.”

Four years ago, Al Colter, who was managing 2,500 pieces of construction equipment for Jones Bros. in Mount Juliet, TN, talked about the challenge of finding time to manage the data tracking and monitoring systems generate. “Information is great,” says Colter, “but you have to use it. If you’re going to develop a system, develop it to deliver information you’re actually going to look at.” And as Colter and today’s users point out, all this takes setup time and the clarification of who is going to be responsible for data management in your system.

The same holds true today. “We started with GlobalTracs in March 2007,” says Manney. “It takes a lot of effort to get to the point where we’ve got the geofences all set up properly. Right now, I’m managing the southern part of our territory, and someone else is managing up north. We also have someone in the office who’s taken over the maintenance portion, alerting the maintenance department to what needs to be done and updating the data base. And we have a guy in the field, who’s familiar with Qualcomm, who’s updating the system himself. It would be more efficient if we had someone managing this full time.” At C.W. Mathews, which has bitten the bullet and developed an IT division, Roginsky felt that the interface between Product Link and HCSS’s dispatcher was cumbersome, so he took the bull by the horns and wrote a new one himself.

“What we find at Qualcomm,” says Baker,” is the fleet manager and the job supervisors are typically the people who are looking at the data on a regular basis, along with the maintenance supervisor or the people in the maintenance shop. But we find our greatest success when we have what we like to consider a point person in an organization that we can train and who takes ownership, not only of the implementation, but day-to-day monitoring and who’s using the system and whether they’re using it on a regular basis.”

So some things have changed, and some things have stayed the same. In four years Lojack has expanded its coverage by 10 states. XacTrac has developed what it calls its Store Forward Function, which constantly monitors its system’s connection and, if the coverage is disrupted, writes all the information to a memory buffer. As soon as the device recognizes there’s a server again, it downloads the stored information. GPS Fleet Solutions has developed to help a company select from the array of GPSs, making it possible, says Vice President of Sales Harold Gardner, to help customers determine what they need before they source a product. Bill Pugh, group marketing manager at Dewalt Industrial Tool Co., says his company is satisfied with providing contractors with what he calls a passive product to secure assets as job boxes and tow-behind trailers. And GPS North America has solved the problem of keeping track of equipment that typically doesn’t have a power source with a portable, non-hardwired device that can be used to track anything from an ATV to a load of pipe.

So some things have changed in the asset management side of the construction industry, but just as many appear to have remained the same.                             

Penelope Grenoble specializes in environmental topics.

Equipment Management Software

Jeff Kumle keeps track of a lot of stuff. As the equipment manager at Yantis Co., a highway contractor based in San Antonio, TX, he is responsible for the procurement, maintenance, repair, and mobilization of more than 350 pieces of heavy equipment every day. And that doesn’t count miscellaneous items such as air compressors and extra buckets.

Kumle is quick to concede that he couldn’t do the job without help from his equipment management software package. With a click of a button, Kumle can see the location of each piece of equipment, how long it’s been there, and where it’s scheduled to go next.

“When I came to Yantis, they were trying to keep track of things on a legal pad,” said Kumle. “The software makes managing equipment so much easier.”

Equipment management software, such as “Resource Manager” by Yuba City, CA–based SharpeSoft or “Dispatcher” by Houston-based HCSS, makes easy work out of what otherwise can be a management nightmare. With information stored in and maintained by the software, contractors can make informed decisions about equipment purchases and rentals, and maintenance and repair schedules. It also has theft deterrence capability and can help a contractor keep more profit in his pocket.

“Almost anyone with more than 15 or 20 pieces of equipment—including support and ancillary equipment—should use equipment management software,” said Kumle. Next to labor, equipment management is a contractor’s second biggest cost.” With 45 active jobs on the board at any given time, all of which require heavy equipment, he has to know at an instant which pieces of equipment are assigned to which job sites, and which equipment is due for maintenance.

“Equipment management software gives the contractor more control and greater accuracy and communication, all of which translate to money saved,” said Brent Hooton, sales manager at SharpeSoft. “The value of the software is that it allows the contractor to speed up the [equipment management] process because he’s more organized.”

The software does more than just identify which backhoe and bulldozer are working at which site, however. It can track trends in usage and utilization, monitor the number of hours of operation for purposes of scheduling regular maintenance, track where pieces of equipment are scheduled for use, and even alert a contractor or someone else when the engine starts up on equipment that otherwise should be shut down for the day.

“People are using it to make better business decisions,” says Steve McGough, chief operating officer at HCSS. “Say you own a fleet of 10 bulldozers. They’re all out on jobs and one breaks down. So the dispatcher goes out and tries to rent one.” Had a utilization report been run to show the number of hours each bulldozer is in operation each day, however, the dispatcher—or contractor himself—could have discovered that one of the bulldozers has been running at, say, 20% utilization.

“The dispatcher can send that bulldozer to the job site that needs one and save the rental costs,” continues McGough.

Renting costs can take a pretty big bite out of a contractor’s bottom line and utilization reports, or trend charts, allow a contractor to make more informed decisions.

“The software can help the contractor make the most of a rental agreement,” says Hooton. “Suppose a contractor rents a piece of equipment and needs it on the site for, maybe, four days. But he rents it for a week because he can get a better rate. That means the equipment is available for three additional days. But if the foreman on another job site doesn’t know that, he won’t take advantage of it and get the most out of that rental.”

Similarly, trend charts allow the contractor or equipment manager track when and how much particular pieces of equipment have been used over a specific period of time and identify the most cost-effective way of maintaining it.

“You can make equipment purchasing decisions based on trends,” continues Hooton. “If a contractor sees that he rents a lot of backhoes during a particular time of year he might decide to buy one and save the rental fees.”

Adds Kumle, “When you rent a piece of equipment you identify it as a rental and you can run a report on that piece and find out how much you spent on rental backhoes. You might decide that with depreciation and [tax benefits from] capital expenditure, etc., you’re better off buying another one than continuing to rent.

With a host of other bells and whistles, equipment management software also takes the guesswork out of equipment maintenance. The software lets a contractor or equipment manager easily keep track of periodic and preventative maintenance schedules, warranties, and repairs.

According to Kumle, heavy construction equipment requires a check-up after every 250 hours of operation. Equipment management software has meter reading capability that counts the hours that the engine is running and lets the manager know when it’s time for, say, an oil change or lube job. The contractor, job superintendent, or foreman keys in the day’s usage for a piece of equipment and the software does the calculations. For example, it might indicate that a skip loader will be due for service after 30 more hours of operation. If the equipment is fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS), the readings are automatically fed into the software and the user doesn’t have to do anything.

“That enables you to dispatch the mechanic at the right time,” says Hooton.

Kumle sees the value in that.

“Planned or scheduled maintenance is always cheaper than a breakdown repair,” he says.

“When [maintenance] is tracked manually on paper, typically it goes into a file and you don’t get the true cycles you need. There’s too much guesswork,” notes McGough. “You may be servicing too early or too late.”

Knowing when a piece of equipment will be due for service allows the contractor to be more efficient with his equipment crews. He can take a look at his job schedule and figure out the best time for a particular piece of equipment to be out of commission. He may see, for example, that his backhoe will need an oil change after another 150 hours of operation. He calculates that out at 10 or 12 days of work on the job site. Estimating that after another couple of weeks he’ll be able to do without the backhoe for a few days, he arranges for the service to be completed during that window of time.

“A contractor wants to be operating his equipment at the lowest cost and maximum availability,” notes Kumle. “Next to labor, equipment management is [a contractor’s] second biggest cost.” He adds that he spends as much as 40% of his time analyzing his company’s equipment management costs and determining when to repair or replace equipment.

In addition to his equipment management package, Kumle uses computerized maintenance management software (CMMS), which allows him to do cost breakdowns and analyses of his company’s equipment. Michigan-based Ashcom Technologies’ MaintiMizer 4.0 is one example of CMMS.

“Every piece of equipment is composed of components and with CMMS you can track the cost and life of each,” he says. “Take a bulldozer, for example. When you set it up [in the system] you figure you should get 12,000 hours out of the engine and 8,000 out of the transmission. When the life expectancy is coming up, you run a report and it tells you what’s happening with that bulldozer. Then you can schedule downtime to do maintenance.”

Other products, such as HCSS’s Dispatcher, possess that same capability, taking a lesson from the accounting industry and working equipment management into inventory and parts systems.

Site Reconnaissance

By Shane Blackman

Ask contractor Van Tyler why, in one word, he likes using an ATV for site reconnaissance, and he'll tell you why in three words: global positioning systems. It's not the rocket science or the satellite constellations that get Tyler excited about his GPS-configured ATV; it's the time and money that he saves. Tyler has no misunderstandings about the value of time. "When you are working on contract work," Tyler asserts, "time is money." He's proud of his all-terrain-vehicle Kubota RTV-900, which he uses for layout and staking: "It has been well worth the investment because not only does it consume a fraction of the fuel that a pickup will; it can get into places better than the pickup." Greater mobility makes the GPS-configured ATV an attractive tool indeed.

Grading & Excavation Contractor also interviewed industry leaders who have built and developed this technology, and we did so to explore its advantages and disadvantages. Alan Sharp, segment manager for site positioning with Trimble's construction division, summarizes the benefits in this way: "A GPS-enabled ATV can be a very practical tool for contractors to get around on the job site quickly and can facilitate all phases of the construction process," from "performing initial site measurement and verification of original ground levels" to "checking finished grade" to "carrying out as-built site measurements." Sharp notes that "collected position data and their resulting surface models can be used to compute earthworks progress volumes, check and verify cut/fill around the job site, and set temporary grade stakes in order to keep machine operations running."

Jason Killpack, senior product marketing manager at Topcon, takes the idea a step further, observing that a key advantage to the mobile GPS configuration is that it permits the contractor to cover vast amounts of territory. "The purpose for putting GPS on an ATV," Killpack explains, "is to do mass measurements and grade checks over a large area. With a system on an ATV, the grade checker or superintendent can cover a large area and spot check or can continuously take measurements while covering the excavation areas to get volume calculations."

The technology and the concepts sound complex, but they're really rather simple, says Rich Calvird, machine control program manager for Leica Geosystems. GPS-configured ATVs offer the advantage of fast point-data collection, Calvird explains, which aids the initial reconnaissance process: "Data collected will be a compendium of discrete points for a given site, taken at set intervals." Timers can be set up to get points every 10 to 20 feet, every five to 10 seconds, for example, or every time the elevation changes. An ATV mounted with a rover receiver is a valuable tool, Calvird argues, because of the flexibility, speed, and accuracy that it brings to the grading process.

The bottom line with this technology is that it enhances control, says Murray Lodge of Topcon. "This grade management system allows one to have better control of the everyday job site." That's music to the ears.

Photo: Winke Trimble

Greater mobility makes a GPS-configured ATV an attractive tool.

Control is a concept we all can easily grasp. When we have our control processes in order, we can feel it. It's as if we have a sixth sense that comes into play when it comes to machine control. We understand that time is of the essence, that saving and making money gives us an edge in the market. Intuitively we know that to stay competitive in the grading and excavation game we must keep up with the latest technology. Maybe contractor Van Tyler says it best: "When I first started reading about GPS and saw how expensive it was, I kept telling myself that when those systems go to where a contractor like myself could justify the cost, then I was going to have one. When we did finally buy our first system, it was almost like getting another D-5N." Tyler weighed the costs and benefits and determined through experience that investing in GPS doubled his production time.

Now that we know what its purpose is, how do you set up a GPS-configured ATV?

According to experts, it doesn't require a rocket scientist or satellite engineer to sort it out. It's all pretty basic. The nice thing is that the Big Three—Trimble, Topcon, and Leica—have made life easy for contractors by manufacturing devices that keep things simple. Alan Sharp of Trimble states that "any of the modular GPS receivers or smart GPS antennas in Trimble Site Positioning Systems portfolio can be mounted for use on an all-terrain vehicle." These Trimble systems, Sharp highlights, are "available in a range of options to suit job-site applications, flexibility, and performance requirements." Sharp points out that getting things right, from the beginning, is important: "Optimal setup requires a GPS receiver with integrated power and a mounting bracket, with quick disconnect for easy dismounting to support point staking applications away from the ATV." From there, "The operator need only measure the height of the antenna from the ground," says Sharp, "and the system is up and running." Trimble offers the TSC2 handheld controller, which runs Trimble's SCS900 Site Controller Software.

Topcon has developed a similar system that, like Trimble's technology, places the GPS receiver and rod on the ATV. "Grade checkers can always see where they are on the design surface," Killpack of Topcon says, and can have at their disposal "cut and fill information anywhere they drive the ATV on the job site." Contractors on the front lines confirm Trimble's and Topcon's assertions as witness by Tyler's eagerness to share his experiences on this point. "The big benefit of having a GPS-configured ATV," Tyler notes, "is that the layout person can drive the vehicle almost anywhere on the job," have a rod mounted on the ATV, and "know the distance from this rod to the ground." The driver can move "right up to where he needs to put a stake and drop it from the bottom of this rod—it is plenty close enough," he says, "for rough grading when we are grading for roads."

How Do You Get the Data Out?
The purpose of GPS-configured ATVs is clear. The advantages are obvious. The setup is simple. But how do you get data out of it? Killpack explains the general principle. On the Topcon mounting system that holds the GPS receiver and rod, there is a place to attach a field collector. Data are stored inside this field collector and transferred out of the field collector via CF card, Bluetooth wireless download, or serial cable. Sharp describes the details of Trimble's system, noting that GPS points are collected many times per second and stored on the Trimble TSC2 handheld controller or tablet computer. The newly collected data can be used in the Trimble SCS900 site controller software to "create surface models, compute volumes, and visualize cuts and fills for the site." Data also can be synchronized from the controller in the office for later use in Trimble's Terramodel or Business Center software. There is nothing at all new about data collection. Contractors did it long before GPS-configured ATVs ever existed. But data collection has been revolutionized by the introduction of GPS/ATV and by the software applications that transform the data into usable information. Technology literally has paved the way for more efficient and more cost-effective grading and excavation. Contractors that don't stay informed on the latest developments won't survive. Contractors that do keep up with technology will get more bids and make more money. "Technology does not replace people—it enables people," says business writer Tim Richardson. "It only replaces people when they do not know how to wield it."

Of course technology is not without its limitations. True, ATV-based GPS collection allows for more data collection at faster speeds, but are there concerns about this configuration? Trimble's Sharp says yes. He offers a few caveats:

• Significant shock and vibration can impact precision positioning equipment if an ATV is driven fast over rough ground. "It is not uncommon for ATV-based grade checkers to abuse the equipment," Sharp warns, "not so much while they are measuring but when they are driving fast between locations over exceedingly rough terrain."
• Safety to operators is a more critical issue. Measuring steep slopes should be done with extreme care, Sharp cautions, or the consequences could be serious.
• Technical matters stand out in Sharp's mind too. "Since ATV-mounted GPSs do not correct position or elevation data for pitch and roll," he says, "the accuracy of these measurements when on slopes is not as good as measurements taken with a handheld rod taking static positions. ATV use is for speed rather than accuracy" and is used "primarily to augment machine operators, reduce staking time, and set quick, rough grade stakes to keep operations moving."

Photo: Topcon

A key advantage of the mobile GPS configuration is that it allows to cover vast amounts of territory.

Contractors should be aware of these caveats. They can keep their operators safe, their equipment tuned, and their slope measurements well defined. The best contractors are getting it right when it comes to site reconnaissance.

"I consider our little Kubota a piece of equipment along with the other equipment we have," Van Tyler says. "We keep it serviced and cleaned just like we do the other pieces of equipment." No wonder good things are happening at Van Tyler Excavating.

Triangulated Irregular Networks
What are triangulated irregular networks (TINs), and what on Earth do they have to do with site developement?

Simply put, a TIN is a mesh of non-overlapping triangles that is used to represent a surface of a construction site. The triangles are made by connecting irregularly spaced three-dimensional points. Since any triangle can represent only a single plane, an elevation for any point on the triangle can be easily interpolated from the corner elevations.

A TIN of existing elevations establishes preconstruction site conditions, while a TIN of design or proposed elevations can be used for both quantity estimating and machine control. In this regard, you might consider these two TINs as the digital go-betweens linking the initial and finished jobsite.

"Suppose we collect data about a site," explains Rich Calvird of Leica Systems. "The points, viewed by themselves, would just be a collection of dots in space. To get a 3D map or surface model, there needs to be a way to link the points and fill in the blanks between them. The TIN file is a method for making a ‘faceted' surface model based on taking sets of three points at a time and defining a triangle-shaped facet—so if you have a location within the three points, a fairly accurate height can be calculated."

TABLE 1: TIN

"The triangle mesh as a whole forms a 3D surface. The breaklines, volume boundaries, and outer boundaries force triangle sides to follow the line defined by the breakline," adds Alan Sharp of Trimble's construction division. "No triangle side is allowed to cross a breakline." As a result, Sharp continues, "Breaklines effectively force creases into the surface, so that the surface is accurately represented by the minimum number of measured points."

Sound like too much engineering information for a contractor? Not so, says Sharp. Trimble's representative drives the point home to the job site. "The fundamental benefit of the TIN," Sharp explains, "is that it helps contractors visually understand the data and compute volumes quickly and accurately." Errors in collection or design can be easily identified with 3D visualization. Comparing original, design, and current surfaces allows the contractor to see and move in 3D around the model to better understand the surface, as well as the cut-and-fill requirements. "The most common application for TIN models," Sharp notes, "is to calculate surface contours and volumes," and volumes "can be used not only for payment purposes, but also to monitor progress and plan work."

Establishing a TIN of Existing Site Conditions
The process of creating a TIN model of existing conditions begins by recording spot elevation data into a data collector using a total station or GPS rover. The recorded data is in relation to established control points set permanently on the site. The points contain the coordinate (usually northing, easting) and an elevation value.

How many mass points do you need? If it's a meadow in Kansas, only a few points may fill the bill, but a washboard area north of Phoenix is liable to require intense collection. The issue here is the resolution required to provide an adequate site description. The more points you collect, the more accurate the TIN model.

Steve Warfle, product manager at InSite Software in Rush, NY, adds, "Many factors, such as topsoil stripping, demolition, type of cut material, and the quality of required fill, will affect the ultimate cost of the site development, but an accurate TIN model of existing grades is required first."

The data provided by the engineer is often in conflict with what the contractor observes in the field, Warfle adds. "Disagreement over quantity can be caused by a variety of things, but spending the time to establish a good existing TIN model is money well spent."

Contractors may be wary of technology because it's not always easy to use. "Fortunately, such manufacturers as Topcon, Trimble, and Leica have recognized that interfaces to their equipment in the field have to be user friendly, and they have done a good job," says Warfle. "Developing an accurate TIN model of the site is not difficult."

Benefits of Good Proposed TIN Model
What's a TIN mean for the everyday contractor during construction? Sharp opens the picture. "Using a TIN model of the design with the current XYZ position enables the user" to look at any "features of the design and know if the ground has the desired elevation or if the break in the surface is at the proper position." Field software also enables the user to see an entire roadway cross-section relative to the position on an alignment.

Warfle gives us a way to visualize it by discussing machine control. "A machine control system," he explains, "compares the current location of a machine blade with the desired grade at that location and either displays the difference or automatically makes a blade adjustment." The current location of the machine is obtained either by GPS or a robotic total station. The desired grade at each location is provided by a special file containing a triangulated surface or TIN. "Unlike a staking file," Warfle says, "a triangulated surface file contains a 3D elevation for every location on the site."

"The 3D visualization available from the TIN model in the office," Sharp concludes, "is in effect brought to the field so that the user can drive the design, locate the specific area of concern, compare current to specified conditions, and look at the ground to make real-time decisions."

In the next installment of Technology in Construction, we will delve more deeply into the development and then use of TINs in real-world situations.

By Andrea Estrada

Equipment Management Software
Jeff Kumle keeps track of a lot of stuff. As the equipment manager at Yantis Co., a heavy highway contractor based in San Antonio, TX, he is responsible for the procurement, maintenance, repair, and mobilization of more than 350 pieces of heavy equipment every day. And that doesn't count miscellaneous items such as air compressors and extra buckets.

Kumle is quick to concede that he couldn't do the job without help from his equipment management software package. With a click of a button, Kumle can see the location of each piece of equipment, how long it's been there, and where it's scheduled to go next.

"When I came to Yantis, they were trying to keep track of things on a legal pad," says Kumle. "The software makes managing equipment so much easier."

Equipment management software, such as Resource Manager by Yuba City, CA–based SharpeSoft or Dispatcher by Houston-based HCSS, makes easy work out of what otherwise can be a management nightmare. With information stored in and maintained by the software, contractors can make informed decisions about equipment purchases, rentals, and maintenance and repair schedules. It also has theft-deterrence capability and can help a contractor keep more profit in his pocket.

"Almost anyone with more than 15 or 20 pieces of equipment—including support and ancillary equipment—should use equipment management software," says Kumle. "Next to labor, equipment management is a contractor's second biggest cost." With 45 active jobs on the board at any given time, all of which require heavy equipment, he has to know at an instant which pieces of equipment are assigned to which job sites, and which equipment is due for maintenance.

"Equipment management software gives the contractor more control and greater accuracy and communication, all of which translate to money saved," says Brent Hooton, sales manager at SharpeSoft. "The value of the software is that it allows the contractor to speed up the [equipment management] process because he's more organized."

The software does more than just identify which backhoe and bulldozer are working at which site, however. It can track trends in usage and utilization, monitor the number of hours of operation for purposes of scheduling regular maintenance, track where pieces of equipment are scheduled for use, and even alert a contractor or someone else when the engine starts up on equipment that otherwise should be shut down for the day.

"People are using it to make better business decisions," says Steve McGough, chief operating officer at HCSS. "Say you own a fleet of 10 bulldozers. They're all out on jobs and one breaks down. So the dispatcher goes out and tries to rent one." Had a utilization report been run to show the number of hours each bulldozer is in operation each day, however, the dispatcher—or contractor himself—could have discovered that one of the bulldozers has been running at, say, 20% utilization.

"The dispatcher can send that bulldozer to the job site that needs one and save the rental costs," continues McGough.

Rental costs can take a pretty big bite out of a contractor's bottom line, and utilization reports and trend charts allow a contractor to make more informed decisions.

"The software can help the contractor make the most of a rental agreement," says Hooton. "Suppose a contractor rents a piece of equipment and needs it on the site for, maybe, four days. But he rents it for a week because he can get a better rate. That means the equipment is available for three additional days. But if the foreman on another job site doesn't know that, he won't take advantage of it and get the most out of that rental."

Similarly, trend charts allow the contractor or equipment manager to track when and how much particular pieces of equipment have been used over a specific period of time and identify the most cost-effective way of maintaining it.

"You can make equipment-purchasing decisions based on trends," continues Hooton. "If a contractor sees that he rents a lot of backhoes during a particular time of year, he might decide to buy one and save the rental fees."

Adds Kumle, "When you rent a piece of equipment you identify it as a rental and you can run a report on that piece and find out how much you spent on rental backhoes. You might decide that with depreciation and [tax benefits from] capital expenditure, you're better off buying another one than continuing to rent."

With a host of other bells and whistles, equipment management software also takes the guesswork out of equipment maintenance. The software lets a contractor or equipment manager easily keep track of periodic and preventative maintenance schedules, warranties, and repairs.

According to Kumle, heavy construction equipment requires a checkup after every 250 hours of operation. Equipment management software has meter-reading capability that counts the hours that the engine is running and lets the manager know when it's time for, say, an oil change or lube job. The contractor, job superintendent, or foreman keys in the day's usage for a piece of equipment, and the software does the calculations. For example, it might indicate that a skip loader will be due for service after 30 more hours of operation. If the equipment is fitted with a global positioning system (GPS), the readings are automatically fed into the software and the user doesn't have to do anything.
"That enables you to dispatch the mechanic at the right time," says Hooton.

Kumle sees the value in that. "Planned or scheduled maintenance is always cheaper than a breakdown repair," he says.

"When [maintenance] is tracked manually on paper, typically it goes into a file and you don't get the true cycles you need. There's too much guesswork," notes McGough. "You may be servicing too early or too late."

Knowing when a piece of equipment will be due for service allows the contractor to be more efficient with his equipment crews. He can take a look at his job schedule and figure out the best time for a particular piece of equipment to be out of commission. He may see, for example, that his backhoe will need an oil change after another 150 hours of operation. He calculates that at 10 or 12 days of work on the job site. Estimating that after another couple of weeks he'll be able to do without the backhoe for a few days, he arranges for the service to be completed during that window of time.

"A contractor wants to be operating his equipment at the lowest cost and maximum availability," notes Kumle. "Next to labor, equipment management is [a contractor's] second biggest cost." He adds that he spends as much as 40% of his time analyzing his company's equipment management costs and determining when to repair or replace equipment.

In addition to his equipment management package, Kumle uses computerized maintenance management software (CMMS), which allows him to do cost breakdowns and analyses of his company's equipment. Michigan-based Ashcom Technologies' MaintiMizer 4.0 is one example of CMMS.

"Every piece of equipment is composed of components, and with CMMS you can track the cost and life of each," he says. "Take a bulldozer, for example. When you set it up [in the system] you figure you should get 12,000 hours out of the engine and 8,000 out of the transmission. When the life expectancy is coming up, you run a report and it tells you what's happening with that bulldozer. Then you can schedule downtime to do maintenance."

Other products, such as HCSS's Dispatcher, possess that same capability, taking a lesson from the accounting industry and working equipment management into inventory and parts systems.

Whatever capabilities an equipment software package brings to the table, they have no value if the software itself is cumbersome or difficult to master. For the most part, equipment management software is designed to emulate the way contractors do their jobs. Screens mimic the white magnetic boards on which contractors track their jobs and equipment. Moving a piece of equipment from one job to another in the software program is as easy as taking a magnet and moving it from one space on the white board to another.

Hydraulic Systems: Pumps
We already know that backhoes, bulldozers, excavators, and other pieces of heavy construction equipment derive their power from hydraulic systems, which operate via pressure applied to fluid contained in a chamber or reservoir. Apply force to the liquid to push it through a tube or small opening, and you have action on the other side. Remember the piston pump, which has been discussed in a previous Technology in Construction section. As described in that example, the pump has two pistons sitting in parallel cylinders. Pressure applied to the first piston forces it downward and pushes on the fluid beneath it, which, in turn, moves into the second cylinder. The fluid, under pressure from the force applied to the first piston, pushes the second piston upward.

Without a hydraulic pump, however, no pressure would be exerted on the fluid; it wouldn't move, and the hydraulic system couldn't operate. The pump supplies the flow of hydraulic fluid to the system. It converts mechanical power—provided by the engine—into hydraulic power.

Hydraulic pumps work by moving fluid from one side (the inlet) to the other (the outlet). As fluid moves from one side to the other, it creates space for additional fluid to enter from the reservoir that holds the fluid.

Hydraulic pumps generally fall into two categories—gear pumps and variable displacement pumps. In a gear pump, the hydraulic fluid is pressurized by a pair of intermeshing gears that rotate within a housing. Fluid moves into the inlet where it gets trapped between the gear teeth and is carried around to the outlet. Pressure in the outlet area builds until it is great enough to release the fluid. Gear pumps work well, but have the disadvantage of the pressure changing as the speed of the engine increases or decreases. To get and maintain high pressure, it's necessary to run the engine at full speed.

In a variable-displacement pump, specifically the common axial piston pump, a series of piston cylinders fixed in a ring inside a barrel create the pressure that makes the hydraulic system work. The cylinders revolve as the engine spins the barrel around. Extending out the back of the barrel, the pistons are attached to an angled swash plate. When the barrel spins, the angle of the swash plate pushes the pistons in and pulls them out. As the swash plate pulls the piston out, the hydraulic fluid is released from the tank; as the swash plate pushes the piston in, fluid is pumped into the hydraulic system.

The flow of hydraulic fluid—and, consequently, the amount of force created—is adjusted simply by changing the angle of the swash plate. When the swash plate is perpendicular to the axis of rotation—pressed against the barrel completely—no fluid flows; when it's at a sharp angle, a lot of fluid moves.

In addition, in a load-sensing hydraulic system, the system itself determines the angle of the swash plate at any particular time by monitoring its own needs. Variable-displacement pumps are extremely efficient because they pump only the amount of fluid the hydraulic system requires at any given time.

Machine Control
In grading and excavation work these days, practically no one operates equipment that doesn't have some form of machine control. Similarly, practically every piece of heavy equipment that rolls off the manufacturer's assembly line comes equipped with some form of machine control or, at the very least, has the built-in components that will be necessary for adding machine-control functions in the future.
Machine control consists mainly of laser and global positioning systems, machine interface systems, controls, and displays. A machine-control-ready piece of equipment is manufactured with all the electronics, hydraulics, harnesses, and software required to make them work. In fact, according to Thomas E. Bucklar, regional manager of the machine-control and guidance division for Caterpillar Inc., these pieces of equipment should be able to "plug and play" with the various position sensors and be on the job working in less than an hour.

"Plug the GPS [global positioning system] sensors on in the morning to grade a golf course, and install laser sensors on the machine-control-ready equipment in the afternoon to do house pads," he says.
As we've discussed previously in the Technology in Construction section, machine-control systems fall into two categories—indicate and automatic. With an indicate system, the operator achieves the grade specified in the design requirements for his particular area by tracking information that appears on a display inside the cab. Indicate systems provide the operator with visual guidance so he can place and adjust the cutting edge or bucket properly, but he maintains control of the equipment. In an automatic system, the operator drives the machine, but the various systems—laser, GPS, sonar, etc.—control the movement of the blade or the bucket to achieve the same result. The operator doesn't have to do anything apart from keeping the machine moving in the right direction. The automatic system places the cutting edge appropriately on the design surface, and the machine does the rest.

An indicate system still requires the operator to know where to fill, where to cut, and where to deposit dirt, but the automatic system allows him to achieve his specified grade more precisely and efficiently.
Machine control has revolutionized the construction industry by making it possible for jobs to be completed more quickly and with the highest degree of accuracy. With a wireless computer in the cab of his pickup truck, a contractor can receive up-to-the-minute progress reports from his equipment, download design changes sent by the engineer, and blend the two seamlessly by programming the new design specs into, say, the GPS-controlled hydraulic system.

Machine-control systems operate through microprocessors situated deep within the equipment, which monitor every aspect of a machine, including such operating information as engine temperature, fuel consumption, and oil use. They also control the critical hydraulic system that allows a blade or bucket to move with ease and accuracy.

Let's take a quick review of the machine control provided by lasers, sonar systems, and GPS.
A laser is a specific kind of light whose characteristics make it ideal for construction purposes. Laser light is monochromatic and contains one specific color that is easy to recognize. In addition, laser light is a very tight and highly directional beam that stays strong and concentrated even over a distance as far as 2,500 feet.

A construction laser consists of the laser beacon itself, which produces the beam of light, and a receiver that registers the beam and lets the equipment operator know whether or not he's on target. The laser beacon sits atop a tripod strategically located on the construction site. The receiver is attached to the appropriate area of the equipment—the blade of the bulldozer, for example. In that case, it would be situated on a measuring rod, allowing the operator to place the blade properly in relation to the site's benchmark.

A sonic system uses sound waves to measure distance from one point to another, much like a radar system in a submarine. A transducer in the bottom of the sensor generates sound pulses and listens for echoes. The amount of time between the original pulse and the return echo indicates the distance between the transducer and the area being located.

GPS, based on a collection of 24 man-made satellites that orbit the Earth 24 hours a day, allows construction engineers to calculate the required position of equipment and survey lines with unprecedented accuracy. Also, by combining GPS data with 3D site plans, a contractor can create an automatic grade-control system in which the blades and buckets on his grading and excavating equipment adjust up and down automatically, without direction from the operator.

Each GPS satellite circles the Earth twice a day in a very precise orbit. To make sure the satellites can be detected from anywhere on the Earth's surface, they are divided into six groups of four. Each group follows a different path, creating six orbital planes that completely surround the planet. The satellites are spaced so that from any point on the Earth, at least four can be detected at any given time.

The satellites transmit information via radio signals. These signals are captured by ground stations, each of which consists of a receiver and an antenna. In grading and excavating, GPS receivers are attached to construction machines. The receivers pass data to onboard computers that hold digitized site information. In real time, the information broadcasts from the satellite constellation to the receiver and on to the computer to guide the equipment's movements.

By keeping a constant watch on the equipment's location in relation to the site, GPS lets an equipment operator move dirt with tremendous accuracy, but it does something else, as well. It keeps track of piece of equipment's location and movements. If a GPS-equipped backhoe makes an unauthorized trip off the construction site, for example, the owner knows where it went and when.

"All our new machines, particularly excavators, come equipped [with GPS]," says Tony den Hoed, of Volvo Construction Equipment, which features a Care Track System. "We have two types of systems. One is monitoring and the other is basic functioning."

Older machines, whether manufactured by Volvo, Caterpillar, Kobleco/New Holland, or another company, generally can be retrofitted with the components necessary for adding machine control as an after-market feature.

"The costs vary from machine to machine and also from after-market companies and individual dealerships," notes Caterpillar's Bucklar. "Machine-control-ready options from original equipment manufacturers do have a cost associated with them, and aftermarket installations have labor charges plus their retrofit kits. The difference either way—and I have seen each more expensive—is closer to 1K than 10K."

Volvo's den Hoed notes that ordering parts as an after-market kit is only marginally more expensive than buying it factory installed.

"It's similar to buying a car," he says. "Options taken at purchase are more reasonably priced. The key to factory installation is you save on the installation cost."

Still, as Eric Winkler of Kobelco/New Holland acknowledges, "It could cost a few thousand dollars to retrofit a machine, but [an owner] might rather do that than spend $100,000 on a new machine."

Like our ancestors who looked to the sun, moon, and stars to guide their travels across land and sea, we in the 21st century still gaze upward for direction. However, our information derives not from the natural firmament but from the global positioning system (GPS), a collection of man-made satellites that orbit the Earth 24 hours a day. We use the data they provide not only to determine our precise location at any given time or in which direction we must proceed to reach our intended destination but also to identify where other things and people are situated on the planet.

On the construction site, GPS makes it possible for construction engineers to calculate the required position of equipment and survey lines to achieve unprecedented accuracy. Also, by combining GPS data with 3D site plans, a contractor can create an automatic grade control system in which the blades and buckets on his grading and excavating equipment adjust up and down automatically, without direction from the operator.

"You don't need a surveyor checking grade or laying stakes," says Kirk Shadel, head of 3D data preparation and support for Precision Laser & Instrument Inc. "All the information is there with the operator."

Before exploring the benefits GPS brings to the job site, let's take a look at how the technology works.
GPS is a worldwide radio-navigation system formed from a constellation of 24 satellites and their ground stations. This particular constellation, originally designated Navigation System with Timing and Ranging (NAVSTAR) was launched and is operated by the United States. Other constellations are orbiting roughly 12,000 miles up in space, including GLONASS, operated by Russia, and Galileo, launched by the European Space Agency.

The first GPS satellite was launched by the United States Department of Defense in 1978 as a tool for navigation and precise positioning. Its purpose in the early days was to help military personnel accurately determine the worldwide location of vehicles, planes, ships, and even soldiers. In the 1980s, however, the government made the system available for civilian use. GPS is now utilized in both commercial and scientific endeavors. Commercially, it is used for navigating airplanes, boats, and cars and by outdoor enthusiasts for activities such as hiking, fishing, and kayaking. On the construction site, GPS enables an equipment operator to pinpoint his exact location so he can position his bucket or blade precisely where the site plans indicate. Scientists, on the other hand, use GPS as a tool for studying earth sciences. The technology enables meteorologists to forecast the weather and study global climates, for example, while geologists use it in surveying and earthquake studies to