Streamlining the design to dig process adds value

Family run O’Brien Contractors in Leamington Spa has always been at the forefront of adopting new technologies and solutions, gaining a competitive advantage in doing so. And now, as the third generation looks to continue to invest, Peter Haddock caught up with Director Tom O’Brien to get his views on the future.

Tom: “Our challenge has always been to stay ahead of the competition whilst offering our clients the services and approaches they want to deliver their projects. As one of the first businesses in the UK to take on 3D machine control from a single supplier well over a decade ago, we have certainly seen the benefits technology can deliver.

But as this technology becomes the norm, we have now moved to a new model by offering 3D machine control from all three main suppliers, namely Leica Geosystems, Topcon, and Trimble. This is a client service-led decision as we often work on sections of larger projects that use one machine control solution throughout.

However, with this approach, we are faced with overcoming other challenges when it comes to designing models for machines that could be operating on the Leica Geosystems MC1 platform one day and the Topcon 3D-MC the next.

This is why our latest investment in technology has been around software that can streamline the whole project management cycle from tendering to delivering the final ‘as built’ models to our clients. As part of this process, we analysed the time and resources put into key stages of our business and recently invested in the AGTEK software solution that has been popular in the US for many years to tackle our bottlenecks.

Critically we are only successful if we win work at the tender stage, so it’s here where we have been able to make major changes that have already paid dividends in securing projects. By loading information into AGTEK from PDF’s and survey data at the start of the process, our engineering team are able to turn 2D into 3D and even overlay the project on Google Earth.

By manipulating the model in real-time in the cloud, we can perform value engineering tasks that now take days rather than a week or more. And we can now get highly accurate material data on the muck we need to shift and the aggregates we need to import.

With all of this data is now shared with our clients we can work together to understand the value we can bring to the project and the cost savings that can be delivered. Importantly when we are successful in winning the job, we already have the model to work from, so we can mobilise our team with the right equipment and 3D machine control solution very quickly.

The practical benefits we realised when we got to our first project also made a difference, as we were able to show the model to the project management team and our operators. This led to subtle changes in the site layout for the placement of materials to cut down equipment movements, whilst ensuring no material was placed on plots or roads, even when we had an open field.

This was possible because we could see the layout of the site from the start of the project, and our operators were also involved in the site management and ideas around the overall project delivery.

By being able to integrate our earthworks models that are designed for the machines into AGTEK, we now also have ‘one version of the truth’, so there is no confusion. This is particularly important when you get changes to a project as each change is then sent directly to the right machine with the machines sending ‘as dug’ data back to our engineers. 

This is itself, has reduced the need for engineers to travel to the site to check progress as the 3D enabled machine is now a surveying tool helping to deliver the final finished model to our clients.

The whole process has transformed the way we work and actually brought the teams together more, as everyone knows what we are trying to achieve and can see the progress. So with the bottlenecks now removed and a much simpler process we can realise cost and time savings at every stage of a project ensuring we deliver profitable jobs to a high standard.