ROKBAK STRIKES GOLD AGAIN WITH ROSPA HEALTH, SAFETY AWARD

Five winners will each win an all-expenses-paid trip with a guest to the Case Customer Center in Tomahawk, Wis., to learn how to operate construction equipment with country music superstar Jon Pardi.

Case Construction Equipment is working with CMA and ACM Award-winning singer/songwriter/producer Jon Pardi to bring greater attention to careers in construction through the “Get Down Up North” contest: Five lucky winners will each win an all-expenses-paid trip with a guest to the Case Customer Center in Tomahawk, Wis., to learn how to operate construction equipment with the country music superstar.

“We need to keep teaching kids that careers in construction bring great pride, lifelong earning potential, and the ability to build a world and path of their own,” said Pardi. “I love every chance I get to go to Tomahawk, and I can’t wait to spend time with another wave of guests there who are eager to learn more about careers in construction.”

The contest corresponds with the launch of Pardi’s Ain’t Always the Cowboy tour — with Case as the headlining sponsor. The tour is traveling across the United States now and finishes with a headlining show at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater on Oct. 1. A full tour schedule and tickets can be found at JonPardi.com/Tour.

“We are passionate about building up the workforce in the industry, and Jon is a

great ambassador who grew up in the industry and understands the value of hard work,” said Terry Dolan, vice president, North America, Case Construction Equipment. “‘Get Down Up North’ will be a great time, but it will also be an opportunity to get a taste of a career path some may not have considered — and we welcome all with open arms.” Those interested in the “Get Down Up North” contest can enter for their chance to win at www.CaseCE.com/Pardi. Winners will be announced at ConExpo-Con/AGG 2023, and the training event will take place in summer 2023. Training includes a basic overview of equipment and safety practices, as well as skill challenges and stick time to give operators a feel for operating the equipment. The contest continues the longstanding partnership between Case and Pardi, which has included an exclusive performance at ConExpo-Con/AGG 2020, ongoing earthmoving projects with Pardi — who is an experienced equipment operator, as well as an inaugural training event with Pardi in Tomahawk in 2021. For more information, visit CaseCE.com and JonPardi.com.  Rokbak Strikes Gold Again With RoSPA Health, Safety Award

Rokbak has received a RoSPA Gold Health and Safety Award for the steps it has taken to ensure its employees get home safely to their families at the end of every working day. This is the company’s second successive Gold Award — the previous one being received last year, when it was still known as Terex Trucks, following on from four successive years of Silver Awards.

Organizations receiving a RoSPA Award are recognized as being world-leaders in health and safety. Every year, approximately 2,000 entrants apply to achieve the highest possible accolade in what is the UK’s longest-running health and safety industry awards.

With safety being deeply embedded in both the Rokbak and parent company Volvo Group’s philosophy, the spate of these awards highlights the many improvements made at Rokbak’s Motherwell manufacturing site and in the training and welfare of its employees since the acquisition of Terex Trucks in 2014.

“Health and safety has always been a priority for us so we are thrilled to be recognized with a gold award from RoSPA,” said Paul Douglas, Rokbak’s managing director. “We’ve had a busy year with the rebrand and the various updates and changes that came with that, as well as lots of new team members on the shop floor, so to hold firm and

win our sixth consecutive award is a fantastic result. This achievement is a testament to the whole team, their efforts have ensured our working environment remains a safe place.” “This is a fantastic and welldeserved accomplishment,” said Julia Small, RoSPA’s achievements director. “All our award entrants demonstrate their unwavering commitment and passion for keeping people safe at work. By receiving this recognition, Rokbak joins like-minded businesses and organizations worldwide, who represent the very best in their approach to health and safety. “I would like to add my personal thanks for all the work that it has taken to secure this well-deserved award — congratulations to all those involved, who champion and drive up health and safety standards every day. You are a fantastic example to others in your sector.” For more information about the RoSPA Awards visit Rokbak has been awarded a prestigious RoSPA Gold Health and Safety Award. www.rospa.com/awards. 

KSM Employment News... Kirby-Smith Machinery Names Sam Schneider as New GM, Industrial Equip.

Sam Schneider

Kirby-Smith Machinery Inc. (KSM) has hired Sam Schneider as its new general manager of industrial equipment.

Schneider comes to KSM after having served as regional product manager of Takeuchi Manufacturing since 2014. He has a strong background in equipment dealership development with nearly 20 years of experience related to sales, parts and service support, and is widely regarded in the industry as a “go to” resource for machine knowledge, product training and best-in-class sales practices, according to the company.

Jeff Weller, chief operating officer of KSM, is grateful to add Schneider’s expertise to the leadership of the heavy equipment distributor’s industrial product lines, which include, but are not limited to, known industry manufacturers such as: Takeuchi, Terramac, Gradall, JLG, Multiquip, NPK, Fecon, Sullair, SkyTrak, Thompson, Trail King, Stanley and all related attachments.

“As the saying goes, ‘good things come to those who wait,’ and having long considered Sam to be a turn-key organizational fit for this position, we are grateful to have him officially onboard,” said Weller. “Sam served as a tremendous resource to our team and customers over our past six years with Takeuchi and brings both excellent product knowledge and a wealth of industry relationships with him to KSM.

“He is a terrific addition to our culture and possesses the drive for excellence needed to lead in this important position for our company.”

Schneider, who will be based out of KSM’s Kansas City branch, has worked closely with KSM’s sales team for years and is both humbled and honored to now make KSM his “port of call.”

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this amazing company,” said Schneider. “I look forward doing my part to strengthen the legacy that has been built here.”

For more information, call 888/861-0219 or visit kirby-smith.com. 

Canton Branch Maintains Focus, Evolves With Times

BRANCH from page 12 Ross, who previously served as branch coordinator is now parts manager at the Canton branch. In addition, the current service roster includes Brandon Diehl, shop mechanic, and Bo Utley and Josh Howard, field service technicians.

All service technicians have received extensive factory training, and the field technicians are MSHA certified and are prepared to work on all makes and models to meet customer needs.

“Our target is a 24-hour maximum response time,” said Tim Diss, service manager. “Our technicians are on call on weekends and we’re always ready to adjust our work schedules to accommodate the customer’s timing requirements.”

Mike White has recently been named branch manager of the Canton location. White came to Highway Equipment with extensive equipment and management experience gained from work ranging from operations manager, to branch manager and regional project manager in the oil & gas and water transfer industries.

The Canton Branch’s sales representatives, Gene Rogers — covering Cleveland and surrounding communities; Mike Rayz — covering the Akron/Canton market; and Jason Shankleton — covering Cambridge, Columbus and the West Virginia panhandle, have a combined construction equipment experience of more than 60 years.

Opened seven years ago, Highway Equipment Company’s Canton branch is a relatively recent entry in the Ohio market. As the authorized dealer providing sales, rentals and service of Anaconda crushers, screeners, scalpers and trommels; Bell trucks; Kato-CES compact construction equipment; New Holland skidsteers; Rammer hydraulic attachments; and Sakai compaction equipment, it has gained a strong reputation as a solution provider.

The dealership’s reputation is largely the result of the company’s three pillars business approach: ï solutions partner ï urgent about uptime ï joy to work with

For more information, visit highway-equipment.com/.  CEG

Gene Rogers, Canton sales

Mike Rayz, Canton sales

Common Research Interests Lead to Collaboration On Zip-Form System

RESEARCH from page 14

“We can apply these principles to materials that already have a flatness to them and manufacture pieces that are more efficient in strength and yet use fewer resources,” he explained.

The opportunity to prove it came when Baker ran into Ismail at a conference, found they had common research interests, and invited him to speak to her class. While Ismail was talking to her class about beam optimization, a lightbulb went off over her head: Maybe the Zip-Form system could be used to help Ismail create a beam of complex curvature?

What followed were months of collaboration. Inherent in their discussion was that fabrication methods were inextricable from the design.

As Ismail explained, “We’re trying to develop methods that are fabrication-aware. When we’re actually designing and optimizing the structure, we know how it’s going to be built, and the rules of how it’s going to be built go back into the design process so it’s more circular and not as linear. So, we had months of conversations with Emily and Edmund about the actual mathematical principles behind their ZipForm system. What were the limits? What were the con-

straints? And then we found a way to put that into our structural model.”

Finally, Ismail was ready to see his unorthodox beam design become a reality. Harriss’ computations and Baker’s jig-system were essential to shaping the formwork, which was created at the Fay Jones School’s Build Lab in Fayetteville, where Baker oversees the digital steel lab.

Her method allowed them to make steel formwork with complex curvature like Ismail wanted almost as easily as she could make formwork for a flat beam.

“This is a vast improvement on other methods that might be used to make curving formwork,” she said in describing the process. Common Materials Make Up Beam’s Concrete

Cameron Murray, an assistant professor of civil engineering at UA who advises Poblete, assisted with the pouring of concrete into the formwork the week prior to the test.

While he said there was nothing unusual about the concrete used, he noted “all of the materials were made in Arkansas. The coarse aggregate was quarried in Hindsville, the sand was from the Arkansas River in Van Buren, the cement was made in Foreman, [and] the water was from Beaver Lake. Concrete is inherently a local material.”

The conventionality of the materials underscored Ismail’s larger goal: he is interested in more efficient and sustainable design, but not necessarily revolutionary new materials. While he is excited about the potential for things like 3-D printed housing, that is decades away, and people need homes now, he said.

“Our group is interested in what is applicable today, like what can we go out and build right now. And that’s why we’re looking at regular strength concrete, regular strength steel, and fabrication methods that are relatively cheap and affordable, which is why this Arkansas project was so exciting. Emily and Edmund had been working on a method that can be replicated anywhere in the world quite easily.”

Beam Successfully ‘Failed’ Test as Hoped

The actual beam test proved uneventful in the way success often does.

It was designed to carry 8,500 lbs., and beyond that, the goal was to fail safely, in what Ismail describes as a “slow, ductile manner. You don’t want it to collapse suddenly and in a scary way.”

His beam performed the way he hoped, as it exhibited small cracks and minor bowing, or what Poblete described as “flexural cracking and deflection.” The test proceeded through a series of steady weight increases followed by temporary plateaus, the spidering cracks documented by graduate students wielding black markers crawling under and around the beam.

Finally, the load was increased to 12,000 lbs., a weight far above its design strength, at which point an obvious failure occurred when a large chunk finally broke off, according to an article on the university website.

When the test was concluded, Ismail was relieved that his beam had done what it was designed to do, and with a lot less concrete than usual.

Ismal also believes the stress test’s results revealed the tip of the iceberg.

“There’s so much more we can do,” he explained. “There are more complex structures we can design, and then there’s more testing that we can do that gets into much more rigorous things like dynamic loading, testing for vibrations, and all sorts of things that the Arkansas structures’ lab is definitely capable of. So, this was, in a lot of ways, proof that this idea can work, and now we need to actually develop it further.” 

Photo courtesy of the University of Arkansas website Graduate students examine the concrete beam for hairline fractures after stress was applied.

Photo courtesy of the University of Arkansas website A form designed through the Zip-Form system allowed a concrete beam to be poured using less concrete but maintaining strength. BRANDEIS MACHINERY & SUPPLY COMPANY

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Volvo photo Volvo conservatively estimates electric equipment has 35 percent lower maintenance costs and up to 45 percent reduction in operating hours due to the machine turning off instead of idling, reducing wear and tear.

Toro photo When Toro decided to introduce the e-Dingo 500 in 2020, the company knew rugged battery power would be part of the future.

ELECTRIC from page 8

“The typical contractor way overestimates how much time they’re actually putting on a machine,” Odegaard said. “With a diesel engine, if it’s running, you’re consuming fuel. With the T7X, if you’re in the cab and you let go of the controls, that’s almost like turning the machine off.”

Similarly, the e-Dingo has an auto-idle feature that powers off the machine after it has been idling for a certain amount of time.

“The machine also shifts to low idle after five seconds of non-use and shuts off when not in use for more than 30 seconds,” Thaker said. “The operator can then instantly restart the machine by double-tapping the traction control lever. An off-board 1,200-watt charger recharges the compact utility loader in less than eight hours.”

For those worried that the advent of electric construction equipment will mean the extinction of diesel equipment, manufacturers believe both will be around for the foreseeable future. Caldwell said that as fuel costs rise and advancements in electrification become more affordable, the industry will begin to shift away from diesel-powered machines with traditional hydraulic systems.

“Compact equipment has the ability to make that shift sooner than larger equipment, which certainly applies to the landscape industry,” Arnold said. “However, infrastructure and mindsets still need to shift as well. We believe heavy equipment will be a mix of electric, hybrid, conventional and other options for several more years.”

Benefits of Electric Construction Equipment

Despite concerns over runtimes, electric construction equipment offers power, low noise, zero emissions and the possibility of winning certain jobs.

In the case of Bobcat’s T7X, going all-electric allows the machine to peak significantly higher than the diesel engine.

“For the most part, those two machines will feel very similar,” Odegaard said. “They’ll operate the same. People can hop from one to the other and get the same amount of work done, but when you’re really working it hard, those brief peak periods where you’re trying to demand everything out of that machine, all those functions, we can consume or draw more of that power from the battery.”

The electric construction equipment also is significantly quieter, making it ideal for working near homes, schools and businesses. For instance, the sound level at the operator’s position is reduced by more than 22 percent when going from Takeuchi’s TB216 diesel-powered excavator to the battery-powered TB20e.

“Jobs that previously relied almost entirely on manual labor due to noise ordinances can now look to battery-powered equipment to bring efficiencies to the job site,” Thaker said.

With the T7X, Odegaard said snow removal companies in particular are excited about how quiet it is, at 92.7 dB for bystanders, as it enables them to conduct residential snow work at times they normally couldn’t. Similarly, it can allow for earlier start times on residential landscaping projects.

“This is a machine you don’t have to turn off to be able to talk to somebody that’s outside the machine,” Odegaard said. “You and I can have a conversation at this level and the machine can be running right in between us and we can hear each other just fine.”

Electric construction equipment also can provide cost savings as there is less maintenance required and no need for fuel.

When it comes to possibly winning jobs with electric construction equipment, Caldwell advises considering the project’s timeline, the client’s environmental preferences and the positive impact on the surrounding area.

see ELECTRIC page 80