Read the article in Construction Business Owner magazine
Understanding Holistic Fleet Management
Smart software solutions & how they can pave the way
for improved processes
by Kathy Wells
March, 2018
Heavy construction requires heavy equipment, and how a contractor maintains and manages his or her fleet has a big impact on the ability to meet project deadlines and budget targets. Mark Hooks, a sales engineer at B2W Software, says technology presents the opportunity to take a more holistic approach that can cut maintenance costs, increase uptime and drive collaboration across maintenance, scheduling/dispatching and field management workflows. B2W Software provides estimating, bidding and operations solutions to civil construction companies focusing on transportation, utility, energy and specialty contracting projects. Hooks provides customized demonstrations of the B2W ONE Platform for estimating and operations to contractors throughout North America. Construction Business Owner (CBO) recently sat down with Hooks to get his perspective on the most effective methods of fleet management. Read the following for his insights.
With so many workflows impacting profitability, why should a heavy civil contractor focus on equipment maintenance and management as a priority for process improvement?
Equipment is essential for heavy construction. Contractors that track the costs of ownership and maintenance know they account for a large share of the budget and, conversely, any savings or increases in uptime go right to the bottom line.
The fleet and individual assets are also part of a greater operations ecosystem. How they are managed has a major impact on crews, materials, planning, dispatching, project schedules, safety, and ultimately the ability to deliver projects on time and on budget.
Finally, I would emphasize that technology developments like software applications, mobile capabilities, telematics and GPS have converged to present exciting new opportunities to manage assets more effectively.
In your experience with contractors throughout North America, what are the prevailing tools or systems being used to manage equipment maintenance, scheduling and dispatching and field operations?
I’m biased, coming from the software side, but I’m surprised by how many companies still rely on what I call manual or off-line solutions. These include spreadsheets, whiteboards, paper forms or various combinations of these.
This is changing gradually with the proliferation of better software options and the competitive pressures to deploy them. Still, even for companies that have adopted software, we still see the functions that you mentioned – maintenance, scheduling and field operations – being managed independently, with their own disconnected tools. An emerging challenge is figuring out how to connect the workflows and the data.
What’s wrong with independent software for specific workflows? Isn’t there an advantage to applications that are highly specialized?
Specialized applications can provide significant advantages over manual, off-line solutions. The problem is that equipment related workflows intersect and overlap. They’re not isolated. When the software is isolated, it’s hard to ensure accuracy, share data, work collaboratively and maximize efficiency.
One frustration we hear over and over from contractors is, they’ve deployed several software applications over the years to solve specific problems, and now they are struggling to get them to talk with each other. The time and effort they spend on integration and on synching multiple data sources offsets many of the gains they achieve with the individual applications.
I would add that we also still see a lot of phone calls, e-mails and text messages being used to cover the gaps between the field, the office and the shop. They’re fast and direct, but the lack of structure and visibility creates problems, and it is nearly impossible to build reports and dashboards based on this fragmented data.
What are the key advantages of connected applications or a more unified approach?
The quick answer is real-time collaboration and access to information that can help teams across the organization make better, data-driven decisions.
Can you give some actual examples of how the maintenance team and managers in the field benefit from a cohesive system?
Sure. Maintenance software is designed to drive a more preventive approach and to bring efficiencies to the work order processes. Cohesion with the scheduling application gives the shop the benefit of seeing exactly where equipment is and where it is going, including any changes as they occur in real-time.
Equipment repair requests from the field are also everyday occurrences. When these can be completed in the field tracking application with photos, videos and other supporting data and then seen instantly in the maintenance application, the shop has better information and can react quickly and more effectively.
Let’s look at foremen or supervisors in the field. To build and complete projects, they also have to build and complete field logs. By importing data directly from the scheduling software, they avoid mistakes and cut down on manual, repetitive data entry.
Scheduling and dispatching also have a major impact on equipment costs and utilization. How about some examples?
Knowing the current and future maintenance status of equipment assets is obviously critical to the scheduler or dispatcher. When the two applications are in sync, he or she has up-to-the-minute insight into when equipment can be deployed. The maintenance and scheduling personnel can also collaborate to strike the optimal balance between preventive maintenance schedules and production schedules in the field.
Likewise, transparency between the field tracking and scheduling applications gives dispatchers instant and accurate awareness of resource requests made in the field. They can react quickly and in the most effective manner possible.
Isn’t it difficult to implement a sophisticated software platform in the construction environment – especially one covering multiple workflows – without resistance from employees?
Advanced and sophisticated are not synonymous. Construction software solutions today, the good ones at least, are extremely intuitive and easy to use. Employees are also less resistant. They’re more and more used to technology in their everyday lives. Increasingly, they want and expect to use the latest technologies on the job.
This being said, success is not as simple as just buying the software and plugging it in. The ROI potential is huge, but to achieve it, contractors should have a strategy for deploying technology that matches their business objectives. Follow through from senior management, training and a focus on improving processes to optimize the software are the other common ingredients to the success we see historically across our client base.
