Savvy Is as Savvy Does

Embracing change can be a difficult task, and while embracing new technology may feel demanding, the end result is worth it. Integrating the contracting industry with vehicle tracking technology in 2017? It just makes sense.

The basic tenet of productivity is doing more with less, which has clear financial outcomes for the business through greater profitability. Although there are ongoing issues around inefficient operations, there has been a reluctance to utilise new technology to achieve greater efficiencies, so there is huge opportunity in this area.

Emerging trends

The emerging trend that I think will be big in 2017 is savvy contractors who are getting smart about going after higher margin work, and are using technology to give themselves an edge in winning the business.

Savvy contractors are focusing on how they can better compete and how they can improve productivity to win the high margin work. Now we’re seeing more contractors realising that in order to efficiently manage such complex jobs with higher margins, they need a lot more information. They need data, lots more data, and they need it on a day to day basis to help them make real time decisions.

Working with the data

Making sense of data and using it as an asset is one of the core functions of a GPS vehicle tracking system. Civil construction firms can either drown in a deluge of data, or harness it to gain competitive advantage for their business.

In the Civil construction industry, there is a need to capture data from both plant and people. What’s needed are systems that can enable enterprises to further drill-down on data and draw out informative insights. A telematics system allows a construction company to monitor and manage their assets and their operators as well as service vehicles to ensure efficient and safe usage.

Remote management and monitoring

For some of the more complex, high margin work, contractors also need the ability to manage the job remotely and make data-based decisions remotely. I think that remote management of jobs will become more and more important, as contractors choose to take on more complex projects.

In my experience, construction companies often don’t want to be monitored but if you turn that on its head – by monitoring you can demonstrate what you’ve done, so this is a positive thing for contractors. Being able to prove the amount of time worked (through measuring ignition on/ignition off, for example) helps contractors to respond with hard data to any disputes over invoices.

Government’s role

Another challenge for 2017 is for the industry to reduce the time taken from inception to completion of work. How to go about this? I think that Government and local authorities need to be faster to approve works. But contractors also need to be smarter about processes and products.

Taken together there are many challenges for the Civil construction industry in 2017, but I’m seeing a clear shift amongst smarter contractors toward embracing technology to improve efficiency. Only time will tell how tell how long these initiatives will take to flow more widely through the industry.