Realtime is not the future its now

With so much talk about real-time insights from live job sites and the potential impact this technology can have in the real world, the penny finally dropped at this year's Futureworx show when Plantforce brought it all to life.

For Chief Operating Officer, Sam Mercer, this was a real opportunity to bring the backroom into the main room. Showing just what is possible when you have a connected fleet talking to you in real time.

But it's not just the fleet. It's the technology and how it helps support projects and individuals, as he explained: "Our industry is all about making the right decisions at the right time and recognising the potential of every investment you make whether that's in your people, technology, equipment or partnerships.

"The challenge, of course, is to understand what return this investment will have for your business and the sector at large. For Futureworx, we were able to bring this together in one place by creating a site at LP Training in Stratford and beaming it into the show live at the East of England Showground.

“By having a 3D modelled site, we were also able to show how both Leica Geosystems and Trimble machine control worked on a dozer and excavators. We even changed and updated the models in real time. 

“In addition, using our equipment monitoring partner, MachineMax, we were able to connect to every piece of equipment onsite, measuring key data like hours worked, fuel burnt, idle times, and CO2, all on a simple dashboard.

“What is critical about all of this is that the data from connected assets is turned into useful information. This allows the machines to speak to your team and for them to understand what is happening on site and the resources being consumed to achieve it. For example, knowing how much a trench costs to dig in monetary and carbon emissions terms with different equipment, is all part of how you cost and deliver a project. 

“With this in mind, one of the key topics constantly talked about is reducing idling time. In order to do this effectively you also have to understand what is true unproductive idling and what is a functional role of an idling machine. For example, an ADT waiting to be loaded is productive idling, but one idling in a traffic jam onsite definitely isn't.

“So being alerted to unproductive activity that might, for example, be due to a problem with a prime mover, or poor weather conditions impacting cycle times, allows you to act immediately. And this can ultimately save time, fuel, CO2 and money.

“A big part of the real-time journey is also how it makes you think about how you can invest to support new ways of working that are more efficient and impactful. For example, this approach has led us to be more mobile and agile with our training, taking our simulators to our operators in the field.

"To do this, we have invested in a mobile training centre that we can take onto our sites across the UK to upskill our teams. Our simulators are now also loaded with the latest 3D and safety system software we use, and we can have teams working together on different machines.

“What this does is allow us to support those operators and teams with training on specifics that can help them improve productivity and are more relevant to the specific project. It also allows us to show our clients how our machines operate and spend time with project managers to review the information we have already gathered onsite.

"The key to all of this is delivering the right information to those people that can use it to make real-time decisions, whilst also recognising how you can learn from one job to the next, using historical data analysis.

We have proven at Futureworx that all of this is possible. It's now time for the sector to put some real-time into the recruitment and upskilling of the people we need to rollout this essential part of our journey to Net Zero.