As James French, Solutions Specialist at Teletrac Navman writes, telematics is helping to ensure the efficient operation of construction sites.
Australia’s economic, social, and environmental future relies on infrastructure. It supports progress across the nation, powering growth. Unfortunately, while construction sites forge our nation’s future, they can be difficult places to work.
Project managers need to balance competing demands such as project deadlines, quality management, and compliance in an environment that can be loud, busy, and sometimes dangerous. Without adequate visibility, these demands become hard to meet.
On top of that, with people and light vehicles operating alongside a variety of plant and equipment, managing safety can be complex. This is where telematics technology can help.
Telematics provides complete visibility across the project site, improving safety and productivity while freeing staff to concentrate on the project.
Asset visibility
Whether building roads or upgrading infrastructure, telematics provides real-time complete asset visibility, ensuring a safe and more productive project with an objective evidence trail and a single source of truth for many on-site activities.
Light towers are a common feature on job sites; however, monitoring and managing them can involve a lot of travel to and from the units. On large sites, locating them can be time-consuming. Telematics can help with this. Lights can be programmed to switch on and off automatically based on the project’s work schedule and requirements.
Data including engine performance, light status, fuel levels and fault codes are available remotely. Removing the requirement to drive to a light tower to check fuel or to check whether the unit is on or off results in immediate benefits in terms of safety and productivity.
Consider plant and equipment maintenance: proactively maintaining plant reduces downtime and unscheduled maintenance and improves fuel efficiency while keeping operators safe at the controls.
Meanwhile, predictive equipment management solutions use historical data to identify and alert operators and fleet managers of what equipment needs maintenance and when. The digitised systems fully automate maintenance routines with custom schedules and real-time access to equipment diagnostics and inspection reports.
This provides complete visibility without administration staff having to sort through paper-based reports, which is time-consuming.
What does this all mean for businesses? It means complete visibility over the status of assets, allowing operators to address potential problems before they occur — so they can successfully and safely complete projects on time and on budget.
Traffic management
The construction industry doesn’t operate within a single, defined parameter. Individual job sites can cover large areas, so ensuring work is completed safely and efficiently can be challenging.
With vehicles entering and exiting sites, machinery constantly on the move, and people moving and working across a site, managing traffic on a worksite can be one of the most frantic, stressful, and time-consuming elements of worksite management.
Telematics combined with site management solutions like Site360, which was implemented on the WestConnex Rozelle project, provides a condensed view of all traffic and machine movement across the project.
Automated allocation allows Site360 to direct inbound vehicles to the correct entry gates and pick up or deliver on approaching the site. This reduces delays and improves traffic management, minimising disruption in built-up areas. The implementation of telematics frees up engineers to concentrate on production rather than traffic management.
Powering Australia’s future
By adopting intelligent telematics solutions, contractors will have complete visibility over their operation, improving the safety and efficiency of job sites.
Simple changes like light tower monitoring, proactively maintained equipment, and automated traffic control can have a significant impact. Our future relies on construction sites — by investing in workers’ safety and efficiency of job sites, operators are investing in Australia’s tomorrow.
This article was originally published in the July edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.
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