Heavy construction draws on digital capabilities to meet sustainability demands
Christian Luttenberger, Vice President Heavy Construction, Business Development, Hexagon Geosystems
DIGITALISATION underpins the future sustainability of the construction industry. Today’s technology is ready for companies to build their own digital foundations for efficiency gains and reduced environmental impact.
Traditional processes in the global heavy construction industry have similarities to super tankers: To change direction, you need foresight, planning and patience.
However, the mantra ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ is giving way to new technologies, new practices and new people. The next decade, indications in the industry promises to deliver a paradigm shift in priorities and, indeed, the way things are done.
The industry is slowly beginning to adopt new digitally connected technology, but it’s years behind the curve. One only has to take a look at mining to see how a similar heavyweight industry is already reaping significant productivity gains from digitalisation, remote capabilities, and data-driven operations.
Granted, the mining industry’s standardised processes may lend themselves more easily to digitisation. On the flip side, the heavy construction industry can leverage recent advances in digitalisation and travel a long way up the technological scale in a short period of time.
The industry is slowly beginning to adopt new digitally connected technology, but it’s years behind the curve. Technology can play a significant role in optimising resource utilisation on the jobsite.
A recent Dodge Construction Network study shown that 54% of contractors say their field staff is lacking on training how to gather data, 49% say data gathering is time-consuming or too difficult and 31% have concerns about productivity impacts.
As such it is important to choose the right digital solutions, allowing contractors to get job done efficiently, effectively and dirt-simple.
Technology helps to be on time, on specs, on budget, on safety and on sustainability
Crucial metrics for any heavy construction project are accuracy (as in, built to specification), time, budget and safety.
Tag sustainability on that list – as pressure to reduce environmental impact will increase.
Luckily, these metrics are aligned: Maintaining tight control over your processes and closely monitoring physical operations leads to greater efficiency and tighter cost control. Greater efficiency also means less waste and fewer emissions.
Hexagon’s Heavy Construction solutions, including the Leica iXE3 machine control solution has excavator automated functions.
Creating point-cloud-generated digital twins will unlock the potential for far greater use of digitisation, making processes more accurate, more sustainable, safer and less susceptible to human error.
For instance, using the semi-automatic excavator functionality helps perform complex excavation tasks such as slope creation and trenching.
Another digital solution (Leica ConX) facilitates a remote, cloud connection between crews and machines on and off-site for data and design exchange, productivity analysis and reporting of project progress.
Better planning leads to success
From a project perspective, if you have a more concise picture of the site that can be accurately prioritised and assets streamlined, with precise work plans reducing site movement by digging, moving and replacing only what needs to be dug, moved and replaced.
Utilising digital technologies has follow-on effects too. Better planning and less rework could potentially mean fewer or smaller vehicles, which reduces the need for people onsite, lowering a project’s emissions. In summary: Quicker completion, less pollution, lower costs and greater safety.
Implementing sustainable practices
Being able to explain your sustainability practices and demonstrating your ability to reduce your impact on the environment will likely be crucial to business success. Some countries already introduced regulations demanding boosts in plant and machine efficiencies.To help achieve climate goals, governments increasingly use environmentally responsible procurement as an instrument to influence the sustainability of contractors. In fact, sustainability aspects are no longer nice to have, but become a core part of tenders.
Being able to explain your sustainability practices and demonstrating your ability to reduce your impact on the environment will likely be crucial to business success. Some countries already introduced regulations demanding boosts in plant and machine efficiencies.
Creating point-cloud-generated digital twins will unlock the potential for far greater use of digitisation, making processes more accurate, more sustainable, safer and less susceptible to human error.
Semi-automated processes already exist, but autonomous solutions face legislative hurdles and, as a result, is further down the road.
It will likely start with slower-moving machines, such as pavers, and then migrate to other parts of the project as the industry and operators become more confident in the technology.
Christian Luttenberger, Vice President Heavy Construction, Business Development, Hexagon Geosystems
christian.luttenberger@leica-geosystems.com