About 500 B.C., a guy named Marcus Haulancus was working on the new Temple of Jupiter in the City of Roma. The pay was pitiful, the treatment by overseers cruel, and his back hurt every evening. Yesterday, his best friend Appius was killed when he fell from collapsing scaffolding and there were those six others who were buried when the new wall fell on them.
Twenty-five hundred years later, one of his descendants, Mark O’Halloran (the name meaning “foreigner” in Gaelic) did what his ancestral family had always done, he worked in construction. His job was to carry a heavy hod of bricks attached to a wooden pole, up ramps and ladders. Sometimes the scaffolding collapsed killing friends and an occasional relative. Face it, hauling materials was hard work; lifting them was worse. The pay was bad, the foremen bullying, the backaches fierce, and the people who got all the glory were the thinkers not the doers…the architects not the workers. Christopher Wren built St. Paul’s Cathedral, somebody told Mark. How many bricks did he carry, huh? How much did he know about the pain on construction?
And you thought technology in construction was new! How the forefathers of Mark O’Halloran blessed the man who introduced the simple cart that let them wheel blocks of stone up the ramps instead of humping them! And that little Etruscan who had brought pulleys and hoists to the site! How, centuries later, workers blessed the arrival of locking scaffolds! And digging machines with engines, big shovels called excavators, and carrying machines called loaders. Once you learned how to use them, they were great. Faster, safer, and healthier.
There’s no need to go back to ancient Rome to see the importance of technologies in construction. Look at the last few decades. Look at the changes in our own lifetimes that have been accepted and have improved not only the efficiency of our work but also its safety and satisfaction.
Some new ideas never lasted because they were impractical, or because they led to quick improvements on themselves. Chances are you’d have trouble remembering the last time you used a fax machine, but it seemed like a permanent solution when it first arrived. And it was, indeed, most useful…only nothing in this world stands still.
Underlying every new technology in construction for the last few thousand years is the fact that the user must learn how to use it and how to use it to its best advantage. Everybody in construction has benefited from new technologies: laborers, operators, foremen, managers, contractors, and project owners.
Imagine being a sharp-eyed bird that circles over construction sites to observe what is happening. Today, the bird sees machines, darting here and there, faster than his feathered father ever saw them, in straight lines and careful curves. He may not notice the ease with which today’s workers manage those machines. The construction site is busy with excavators, graders, loaders and scrapers. Years ago, a building site would have looked just as busy, with fewer machines but many more workers, and the progress of the building would have been much slower for all that human effort. Today’s job sites and offices are connected. (A timely and thorough article on this aspect of construction is Pete Hildebrandt’s “Connected and Safe, Above and Below,” in this issue.)
Learning the Ropes: Buttons and Simple Arithmetic
Our Roman ancestor, Marcus, had to learn how to run the pulley so that it raised the stone building block to the right place but didn’t crush his fingers or fall down to destroy three days’ work below. Similarly, when a dozer with hydrostatic transmission is placed in your care you must learn how the transmission works for you, how you need to adapt old habits of maneuverability and control to make it work perfectly. The know-it-all who jumps on that dozer and tries to control things as he used to control that good ol’ machine with all the heavy gears and levers (and an uncomfortable seat) has a very good chance of tipping the new model over on its first slope.
No, it’s not the technology’s fault. It’s the ignorant operator’s fault, and I mean ignorant in the pure sense of “not knowing.” We must know how to use advantages we are given. We must take time to learn. Something frank must be said here. Are the sellers of new technologies doing their share to teach their customers how to benefit most from those new products? Graders, excavators, and software programs for project management are not like cars. One shouldn’t sell them and forget the buyer. The responsibility for learning the right things about new technologies in construction lies with everybody involved: designer, seller, owner, and user.
Many technologies that have helped contractors are concerned with numbers. Calculators you could carry in your pocket were a new technology not so long ago; they saved time, money, and paper napkins at the local restaurant. They are so common now that nobody thinks that a mechanical or electronic calculator is a technology. (When was the last time, if ever, that you used a slide rule?) The downside of calculators may be that too many people have never learned how to count or do simple arithmetic; some shoppers and checkers are unable to make change without a machine. With numbers, two key words may be speed and accuracy (essential ingredients for a successful bid). It’s the numbers and their accuracy that make machine control systems today so beneficial. Instead of needing three or four passes with an expensive-to-run dozer, today’s operator can do it in one. That saves machine time and worker time; it saves money. (Read Dan Brown’s comprehensive article on GPS, lasers, and machine control, for an excellent study of this aspect of earthmoving.)
When the manager in the office knows what must be done at the job site, when the specs are all studied and approved, when the numbers are accurate and recorded, how can he or she communicate the perfect information to the employees at the site? How does everybody benefit from the available connectivity? We used to spend hours on the telephone and learned how inaccurately the spoken word could be sent and received. Or we spent time and money driving here, there, and everywhere to give simple messages and instructions, or drawings on paper that could be blown away, torn, or somehow lost in transit. How frustrating it was to have perfect plans ruined by imperfect communications! The star technologies in construction today may be those that enable us to communicate accurately, in all directions, to anywhere, at any time. For this capability we must thank computers and the Internet; for that we must thank those microprocessor chips that started it all.
Most of today’s helpful innovations come from computer-based products, hardware and software. The iPad may be today’s equivalent of the three-ring-binder for many contractors, as more and more of them want to have accurate control over every aspect of the job, from the digging, to maintenance, to payroll, to asset management, to invoices and inventory. (For an excellent look at how today’s contractors can control more and more, read “Assembling the Software,” by Carol Brzozowski, in this issue.) Our learning about chips and computers does not require that we understand how to make them or repair them, but we must learn what they can do for us and how they can do it to our best advantage (whether we are office-based or operating machinery onsite). The trouble many people have with learning is that they equate it with the classrooms of their much younger days, when learning was not all fun, when it was not always clear why we were learning something new. Training and education for construction work does not all happen in a classroom.
In learning anything it helps to have a good teacher. The source of the new information must be accurate and reliable. It would not be wise to have a colleague who is out of touch with advances in contracting techniques and methods training new employees. Today, that teacher may not be a person standing in front of a class; it can be mechanical, like a simulator. (“Training in Construction: Necessary, Important…and Possible,” is an article by Penelope Grenoble in this issue. It is well worth your study.) I’ve heard loader operators say how well they learned about their machines from simulated programs, some directly from manufacturers, others from companies that have developed training programs for specific machines and jobs.
Time for another blunt question? Are our schools doing a good job of training their students to be employed? If you feel that your local school district and colleges are ignoring the desperate needs of all businesses concerned with maintaining and improving our infrastructure, you should tell them. Too often in the last few years I have heard people from all kinds of businesses regret that applicants for jobs don’t know simple arithmetic and don’t know how to communicate sensibly with the written or spoken word. Who are going to use the wonderful technologies we now have? The only workers of tomorrow who will be valuable (and well paid) are those who have learned how to run the machines and management programs of tomorrow.
Where Is It? Where Are We?
Honestly, I don’t know how GPS works, how a television works, how the little, controller box of my sprinkler system works to save water, how most medications work. I don’t have to know how they work. I have to see the results they bring and learn how to use them. When providers hurl initials and long words at you, don’t let that put you off or impress you too much. There’s LiDAR, for example. You don’t need to know how it’s done, what the letters stand for, you just need to know what it can do for you at the job site, and how your crews can use it correctly. Long words and initials, beloved of designers, engineers, pharmaceutical companies, and experts who don’t want you to know what they know, don’t make the item involved work. As far as the customer is concerned, it’s performance that counts. If the GPS, LiDAR, laser, reciprocator, equilibrator, postdiluvian shovel, gyrating gizmo, or whatever tool you are considering saves you time and money on the job, it’s worth research. (Carol Wasson’s article on telematics, photogrammetry, and LiDAR will give you an excellent idea of what is possible and available in this area.)
If numbers are important aspects of all construction work, so is location. Where is my equipment? Where are my crews? Where should we be at this stage of the project? The location of most machines and instruments in construction can be pinpointed today. A good number of stolen machines are recovered because their location, even when they are whisked away by thieves, can be located. It’s all done by what you and I would probably call little boxes. (And the technology involved may be best known by its initials!) The bird flying over the job site can see all the machines and people moving about, but it cannot see what happens underneath the surface. Think how well we can trace underground utilities now, and all the pipe and that makes up our water and sewer networks. Today we can do all that without digging up Main Street (and without, more expensively, replacing what we dug up).
Telematics is one of those “long words” that make some people wary. What can it do? It lets you connect objects that used to be considered stand-alone components of your business-the pickup, the excavator, the dump truck, the office. I remember reading in a white paper by Glen Allmendinger, president of Harbor Research Inc., about the usefulness of having devices (or machines) connected. While his research was concerned mostly with manufacturers and their products you can see how the same strategies could be applied to those businesses whose prime offerings have always been considered services, such as earthmoving. He talked about “smart services,” services that go beyond traditional ways of seeing services and using them in establishing growth and profits. “Smart services are a wholly different animal from the service offerings of the past,” comments Allmendinger. “To begin with, they are fundamentally preemptive rather than reactive or even proactive. Preemptive means your actions are based upon hard field intelligence.” Smart services are based upon actual evidence, for example, that a machine is about to fail or that a shipment of materials has been delayed. “For customers, smart services create an entirely new kind of value, the value of removing unpleasant surprises from their lives. It is impractical to deploy humans to gather and analyze the real-time field data required, smart services depend on machine intelligence. Reliable and blindingly fast microprocessors do what they are very good at doing: digesting billions of data points, talking to one another about the data, controlling one another based upon the state of the data, all in a matter on nanoseconds. Humans cannot do this, nor should they. This incessant stream of business information should be invisible to people. At the same time, all this background activity gives managers and decision makers much more visibility into a business’s assets, costs, and liabilities, precisely when they need or want it.” Today, virtually all products that use electricity have inherent data-processing capabilities. Each has a wealth of information to offer about its current status, usage, history, and performance.
We Keep Coming Back to Square One
The other articles in this issue of Grading & Excavation Contractor are full of good and helpful information about the technologies that can help contractors today. Written by some of the best authors in this sector, the articles will give you a clear and unprejudiced picture of what we should look for. For all the subjects, be it software, telematics, simulators, underground location, or machine control, we keep coming back to that first premise, the Square One of any equipment ownership. The user must know what the product can do and the best way to achieve that success.
The number of quotations, comments, and letters about the failure of too many schools and colleges to educate employable people seems to be growing. Many citizens believe that the burden for the job-related education of individuals is almost entirely on the employers of today and that is neither just nor intended. The situation will not change quickly. We can try to influence our educators, we can try to influence our state and national representatives, and we should do so, but we must also accept that the education of our workers to make them productive and successful will be in our hands for some years yet. While complaining can be an enjoyable pastime with a rather grim satisfaction, we must, at the same time, try to correct the problem.
In some cases, there may be people who feel their jobs are threatened by any new technologies. Those whose skills and jobs depend on products and services that are being gradually pushed aside by better techniques should not assume that their presence in the construction industry is not required now. The job that springs to mind is that of surveyor. With the elimination of stakes by machine guidance systems some surveyors have grumbled that they are being pushed out. Not true! Is that all a surveyor knows or can do? There are many skills included in a good surveyor’s portfolio and they will all be most helpful as new, software technologies take hold for contractors. We must all adapt to new conditions, to stay in business. We can all learn new methods, and nobody is too old to learn.
