AEMP Journal of Equipment Management 2023

—JOURNAL OF—

TECHNOLOGY IS A WAY OF LIFE

DRIVE THE CHANGE

ADAM RALPH, CEM | AEMP 2023 CHAIRMAN

THE 3 PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILTY: PLANET, PEOPLE, AND PROCESS

CASE STUDY: THE AEMP STANDARD

AEMP 2022 TECHNICIAN OF THE YEAR: ROBERT KESSELRING

CONSTRUCTION FLEET MANAGERS TAKE ON THE NETZERO CHALLENGE

2023 | www.aemp.org

The AEMP Core Content Educational Framework AEMP offers online educational opportunities and hosts multiple conferences and meetings every year to engage our membership and the industry. Through our conference offerings, AEMP offers some of the most engaging education and professional development for heavy equipment management professionals in the world. We accomplish this with our education committee work through member volunteers to establish the topics and areas of strategic focus that will drive our industry forward and has been established around the framework of what we call the AEMP Core Content Areas.

These core content areas are also established around the various levels of experience found within the Equipment Management Profession. The core content areas and levels are as follows:

Technologies

Essentials

Selection and implementation of technologies that reduce operating costs and increase growth is a significant part of the Equipment Management (EM) role.

Traditional Equipment Management responsibilities have a big impact on a company’s bottom line.

Financials

Connections

Some of the largest capital investments made by a company are often in their equipment assets managed in this role.

While equipment is a valuable company asset, skilled professionals and relationships create a positive culture in any organization.

Visit www.aemp.org/core-content

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—JOURNAL OF—

12 Technology Is A Way Of Life — Drive The Change

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6 AEMP Board Of Directors And Committees

16 Heavy Equipment Comparator Survey Results

24 AEMP 2022 Technician Of The Year: Robert Kesselring, Branch Civil

26 Fleet Masters: Kwest Group Fine Tunes Equipment Operations Driven By Customer Service For A Second Win

30 Fleet Masters: How Manatee County Adjusts To Acquisition, Supply Chain, And Labor Difficultes 36 AEMP CONNECT @CONEXPO/CON-AGG 2023 40 Construction Fleet Managers Take On The Net-Zero Challenge 46 Why People — Not Technology — Are Key To Lowering CO2 Levels In Construction 47 AEMP Statement On Sustainability

52 How Construction Can Seize Its Strengths To Lead The Sustainabilty Revolution 60 The Fundamentals Of Equipment Economics 62 Telematics Leader Roundup: 6 Telematics Leaders Take On The Latest Technology 72 The Ultimate Guide To Becoming A Heavy Equipment Fleet Manager 90 It Starts With You: 5 Tips for Building Trust And Creating A Culture Where People Want To Work 98 Case Study: The AEMP Standard 20 2 3 | A E M P .O R G

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Journal of Equipment Management

BY KO KL IA NG 19 81 |A DO BE ST OC K

PH OT O UR

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CO TE SY

OF AE MP

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TECHNOLOGY IS A WAY OF LIFE - DRIVE THE CHANGE page 12 ADAM RALPH, CEM AEMP 2023 CHAIRMAN

CONNECT

WITH US ASSOCIATION OF EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS - PHOTOGRAPHER

Journal of Equipment Management

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The Journal of Equipment Management (JEM) is the principal publication of the Association of Equipment Management Professionals.

The JEM provides a serious source of thought-leadership that advances the equipment management profession.

Statements of fact and opinion are the responsibility of the authors alone and do not imply an opinion on the part of the officers or members of AEMP. Submitted articles are reviewed by members of the Editorial Committee.

Submit article proposals and completed manuscripts to chris@aemp.org. For further information on equipment management topics, or to provide opinion of contributors, contact: Publisher, AEMP, 1818 Parmenter St, Ste 300, Middleton, WI 53562, or call 970-384-0510. ©2023 AEMP. Published by the Association of Equipment Management Professionals.

Produced by AC Business Media.

All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced or translated without written permission from the publisher. Contact AEMP for reprint permission.

Editorial Offices: Chris Turek, 970-384-0510, chris@aemp.org AEMP

AEMP and the AEMP Foundation work together to bring the most comprehensive collection of services and resources to equipment management professionals.

AEMP is an individual membership organization. Its members manage private and public fleets in 18 countries.

Our Cause (why we exist) AEMP helps fleet professionals build fleet efficiencies through world-class education and collaboration.

Our Value (what we do) AEMP connects great ideas and great people to inspire innovation within the heavy equipment industry.

Our Promise (how we serve our stakeholders) AEMP delivers a collaborative community within the Equipment Triangle, with exceptional tools to make equipment managers successful.

Our Guarantee

If any AEMP program, product or service does not fulfill our promise, we will make the situation right or refund your money.

2022-2023 AEMP

BOARD OF DIRECTORS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Chairman of the Board Tim Morgan, CEM, Branch Civil, Inc. Chairman Elect Adam Ralph, CEM, Traylor Secretary Treasurer Tim Giggee, CEM, Blattner Immediate Past Chairman Dan Hubbard, CEM, CRH Americas Materials Chief Executive Officer Michael Battaglia, CAE, MBA, CNAP

BOARD OF DIRECTORS DIRECTORS AT LARGE

INDUSTRY DIRECTORS

Ben Caldwell, CEM, Manhattan Road & Bridge Co.

Director of Strategic Partners Mike Granruth, Trimble

Casey Dowling, CEM, RIPA & Associates

Director of Associates Joe Baker, Housby

Ernie Stephens, CEM, Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives, Inc. Jon Kaye, Miller Bros Construction, Inc. Kirby Yakemchuk, CEM, Forbes Bros.

Matthew Case, CEM, Manatee County Government Steve Riddle, CEM, New River Electrical Corp.

Our Mission

Building Excellence in Equipment Management

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Journal of Equipment Management

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

2023-2024 AEMP

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

AEMP STAFF

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Michael Battaglia, CAE, MBA, CNAP Chief Executive Officer Board of Directors

Chairman-Elect Tim Giggee, CEM, Blattner

Rachel Connor Chief Learning Officer

Chairman of the Board Adam Ralph, CEM, Traylor Bros.

Secretary/Treasurer Ernie Stephens, CEM, Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives, Inc. Immediate Past Chairman Tim Morgan, CEM, Branch Civil, Inc.

Kim Potter Membership

Chief Executive Officer Michael Battaglia, CAE, MBA, CNAP

Alexandra Harjung Meetings And Events

BOARD OF DIRECTORS DIRECTORS AT LARGE

INDUSTRY DIRECTORS

Matthew Case, CEM, Manatee County Government

Director of Strategic Partners Roberto Bogdanoff, Volvo

Jon Kaye, Miller Bros. Construction Steve Riddle, CEM, New River Electrical Corporation

Jackie Kimball Membership

Director of Associates Joe Baker, Housby

Jeanne Weiss Marketing And Communications, And Online University System Administrator Natalie Girard Marketing And Communications Gina Staskal Finance

Kirby Yakemchuk, CEM, Forbes Bros.

Craig Worrell, CEM, ASRC Energy Services Chad McKee, CEM, Kwest Group, LLC

info@aemp.org

Brett Faucett, Brasfield & Gorrie Peter Gage, Bulk Equipment Corp.

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

2023-2024 Board Of Directors

Adam Ralph, CEM

Peter Gage

Brett Faucett

Joe Baker

Chad McKee, CEM

Craig Worrell, CEM

Steve Riddle, CEM

Jon Kaye

Matthew Case, CEM

Tim Morgan, CEM

Ernie Stephens, CEM

Tim Giggee, CEM

At every CONNECT Annual Conference, AEMP welcomes a new slate of officers to the Board of Directors.

Adam Ralph will be leading a strong group of Board members this year. Congratulations to Ernest Stephens, CEM as new Secretary/Treasurer, as well as Chad McKee, CEM, Craig Worrell, CEM, Peter Gage, Brett Faucett and Roberto Bogdanoff as new Directors. Kirby Yakemchuk, CEM, Jon Kaye, and Joe Kirby Yachmechuk Roberto Bogdanoff Baker will continue as Board members. AEMP would also like to sincerely thank our outgoing Board members for their service – Dan Hubbard, CEM (Immediate Past-Chairman), Casey Dowling, CEM, Ben Caldwell, CEM, and Mike Granruth (Directors).

Please reach out to these members to offer your congratulations and don’t hesitate to share member feedback. The AEMP Board helps ensure that the association stays true to its mission and continues to achieve our strategic objectives.

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Journal of Equipment Management

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

AT LEFT, ADAM RALPH, CEM (ON RIGHT) OFFICIALLY STARTED HIS TERM AS AEMP CHAIRMAN AFTER A PASSING OF THE GAVEL FROM TIM MORGAN, CEM. AT RIGHT, NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS SWEAR IN FOR THEIR 2023-2024 TERM. DURING THE CONNECT CONFERENCE.

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

ALWAYS CONNECTED. ALWAYS RUNNING. WITH JOHN DEERE CONNECTED SUPPORT,™ your machines are constantly under the watchful eye of both John Deere and your local dealership. Together they can reduce, or even prevent, costly downtime.

All of which keeps you up and running, so that you can Run Your World.

JohnDeere.com/Connected

AEMP 2023 CHAIRMAN

TECHNOLOGY IS A WAY OF LIFE — DRIVE THE CHANGE With the labor shortage, technology is more important now than ever.

Automation allows us to be more efficient and data helps us be cleaner and more sustainable…that’s if you embrace it.

by Adam Ralph, CEM, Equipment Division Manager at Traylor Bros, Inc.

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ost of us got into the industry because we wanted to hold onto the experiences that brought us joy in our childhood and as young adults - the hands-on work, and the playing with big toys. I, for one, have always been a tinkerer and a garage inventor, and am now passing that love on to my three children.

Helping to build something bigger than myself and seeing iconic projects come together with my team is work I’m proud to do. I drive over a bridge we built and tell my children about it. One day they will tell their children.

We didn’t get into this field because we like technology. Those of us career veterans went to our first jobsites without it. But it’s a fact of life in 2023, and it is transforming everything we do.

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Journal of Equipment Management

Technology is more important now than ever with the labor shortage. Automation allows us to be more efficient with fewer people, and we now have the data to be cleaner and more sustainable. It’s all there for your taking. That is, if you embrace technology.

“AEMP is in a great position in 2023 to fill in those gaps. OEMs, dealers, and end users form the equipment triangle. We make each other stronger.”

Our association is a great place to talk to other construction companies to see what they’re doing. Our footprint is all over the world and in some areas, like California and Europe, that have a longer track record with technology, especially to push sustainability initiatives. Sometimes it takes hearing a success story from someone else to inspire you to implement it yourself.

We have vendor partners who are on the cutting edge who can help us get better and who let us know what’s now and what’s coming. These software companies produce the tools to drive your career and your company to the next level. They don’t replace reading and researching yourself. You can use technology for that too. LinkedIn is a great place to start.

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

AEMP 2023 CHAIRMAN The best technology tools are simple and make your job easier.

When I think about the technology we choose at Traylor Brothers, we’re looking for the same things we look for in our equipment. It needs to be reliable. Instead of fixing it, it’s fixing us.

Look for technology that is accessible to your whole team, and that gives you answers without digging.

Instead of having to pull reports, you can empower your team to use it. Self-sufficiency is key, but it’s not everything.

Sometimes I miss the way we did business pre-pandemic. We’re all on video calls for remote operations, and equipment troubleshooting.

We can’t just walk over to a coworker to get answers. Doors are shut. People are at home. You don’t have that personal connection unless you really work on it. Business is better and more productive than ever, but our new tech-enabled relationships are a work in progress. We have lost a little bit, but we’ve gained a lot.

of transition, and we have big issues ahead to address as an industry.

We must find and adopt new sustainable power sources – whether it’s electrification, hydrogen, combustion engine improvements or something else. We must promote diverse and inclusive cultures that welcome creative minds from all walks of life.

We must use software to capture the tribal knowledge of our aging workforce before they retire.

The combination of online and in-person communications our events facilitate makes a difference. Video-based training and certifications cater to new ways of learning, while AEMP CONNECT at CONEXPO infused a whole new energy into our member community.

We have lagged in the past. Now we lead. It can be scary, but we can do it.

The technology of the future is here today. This isn’t just a dream anymore, it’s a reality. I look forward to working together as an association to drive the change.

In the next year we need to capitalize on that momentum. We are in a year

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Journal of Equipment Management

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

HEAVY EQUIPMENT COMPARATOR SURVEY RESULTS

BY ANOO | ADOBESTOCK

A SURVEY ON HEAVY EQUIPMENT FLEET MANAGEMENT WAS CONDUCTED DURING AEMP CONNECT AND CONEXPO-CON/AGG. HERE ARE THE RESULTS.

T

he 2023 Heavy Equipment Comparator presents a detailed analysis of the key performance indicators (KPIs) of construction companies operating heavy equipment fleets. This report includes the abridged results of data collected for the 32 KPIs divided into nine categories which are essential to effective fleet operations and performance.

The results are further segmented by: • Primary Industry: Highway and Infrastructure and Heavy Construction • Construction Revenues: Under $100 Million, $100 to $250 Million, and Over $250 Million • Best in Class: Using a selection of KPIs that are closely linked to fleet performance, a weighted scoring system was developed to identify the top overall performers (top 10%) This report is a culmination of a three-year project launched as a collaborative effort between the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) and the Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP). A key objective of this effort is to bring to the industry a set of common standards to evaluate and measure equipment fleet performance. By using common metrics to measure equipment maintenance performance and costs, companies can compare their results against industry benchmarks, better understand the health of their operations, and make critical adjustments to achieve their strategic objectives. By identifying areas for

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Journal of Equipment Management

THANK YOU TO THE AEMP/CFMA TASK FORCE MEMBERS AEMP/CFMA KPI Benchmarking Committee Rich King, CPA, CCIFP (Co-Chair) Preston Ingalls (Co-Chair) Caryl Coronis, CPA, CCIFP (Chair Advisor) Randy Bosman, CEM Herb Brownett, CCIFP Brian Cooney, CCIFP Tim Giggee, CEM Ben Tucker, CEM Mike Vorster Proofreaders Chris Christiansen William Kohler Garrett Schemmel AEMP & CFMA Peer Reviewers Yvette Aubin, CPA, CCIFP Matthew Case, CEM Adam Ralph, CEM Ernie Stephens, CEM Bob Tinglestad Jyll Waters, CPA, CCIFP Special Thanks: Support & Sponsorship Michael Battaglia, CAE (AEMP Sponsorship) Rachel Connor, (AEMP Staff Support) Monica Di Lorenzo (CFMA Sponsorship) Kristy Domboski, CAE (CFMA Staff Support) Mike Elek (CFMA Staff Support) Michael Fiez (AEMP Staff Support) Samantha Lake (CFMA Staff Support) Justin Smith (TBR Strategies/Industry Support) Brian Summers, CAE (CFMA Sponsorship) Survey participants And many other industry members and friends

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improvement and sharing best practices across the industry, participating companies should be able to achieve better equipment reliability, improved utilization, and lower costs.

The 2023 Heavy Equipment Comparator was compiled, tabulated, and analyzed

by Industry Insights Inc., an independent professional research and consulting firm that specializes in conducting financial surveys, compensation studies, market assessments, customer satisfaction research, educational programs, and other forms of customized research.

This report has been designed to help companies evaluate their own performance relative to that of similar companies to evaluate the health and effectiveness of their fleet operations and to identify improvement opportunities. The statistics in this report represent broad performance “yardsticks” against which a company’s performance can be measured.

Using the information within this report, industry members can compare their own company’s statistics against construction companies of similar type, companies of a comparable total revenue, and the Best in Class companies (the top 10%). Identifying significant differences between a company’s performance and the comparable aggregates can be the first step toward recognizing opportunities to improve performance.

independently based on the companies that reported for that item. As a result, mathematical relationships do not always exist when different ratios are used together in the calculation.

Figures reported were not used unless they were in accordance with the survey instructions and definitions. In cases where the number of respondents was considered inadequate for the computation of a meaningful figure, an asterisk (*) notation is included to indicate insufficient data. At a minimum, five valid responses were required to show any metrics.

In using this study to evaluate your own company’s performance, you should refer to the data aggregations that most closely correspond with your company’s profile. This detailed information should be kept handy and referenced from time to time as a tool for better controlling and managing your business.

The series of tables and graphs in the comparator have been abstracted from the comprehensive set of statistics. The data represents a good overall gauge of performance in nine major measurement categories: Financial, Cost, Utilization, Safety, Preventive Maintenance, Planning and Scheduling, Labor Efficiency, Reliability, and Inventory Efficiency.

HIGHLIGHTS Utilization Utilization metrics are designed to measure how well the business is putting fleet assets into action or service. It is a measurement in an hours or dollars basis of the actual vs. planned use of the construction equipment fleet. By using telematics and tracking the reasons equipment may be unavailable (via an appropriate work order system), these metrics assist in diagnosing the underlying cause(s) of lack of equipment utilization and strategies to improve it.

INTERPRETING THE NUMBERS In most cases, the arithmetical average and median results are displayed for each respective measure. Unlike the mean, the median is not distorted by a few unusually high or low values that may exist in the sample due to special circumstances. The median value represents the mid-point of the data for a particular measure, with one-half of the firms reporting figures above it and one-half below. Each median was computed

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Journal of Equipment Management

PERCENTAGE OF RESPONDENTS THAT TRACK THE FOLLOWING FLEET MANAGEMENT METRICS Higher Level (>70%)

Medium or Moderate Level

Lower Level (<50%)

(50-70%) Equipment Repair &

Equipment Utilization (Percent of

Emergency Work Hours as Percent of

Maintenance Costs as a

Planned Equipment Utilization)

Total Maintenance Hours

Maintenance Costs as

Maintenance Labor

Down Events Per

a Percent of Construction

Overtime Percent

1,000 Hours

Percent of Revenue Equipment Repair &

Equipment Replacement Value Equipment Repair &

Fleet Utilization

Maintenance Costs as a

(dollars based)

Mean Time Between Failure

Percent of Throughput Equipment Repair & Maintenance Labor as

Shop Mechanics Total

Maintenance Backlog

a Percent of Equipment

Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR)

(in weeks)

Repair & Maintenance Costs Total Preventive & Predictive Return on Net Assets

Maintenance as Percent of

Percent Corrective from PM/PdM

Maintenance Hours Equipment Repair & Maintenance Labor as a Percent of Revenue

Equipment Damage $ to Total

Schedule Compliance

Man-Hours

Average Internal

Engine idling percent

Service Level

Hourly Shop/Field Rate

(On-road & Off-road)

(percent Fulfillment Rate)

Percent of Man-Hours Charged

Wrench Time as a percent

to Work Orders

of Total Man-hours

Equipment Cost Component as a Percent of Total Costs Capital Expenditures/ Free Cash Flow

Average External Hourly Shop/Field Rate

Repair & Maintenance Hours to Equipment Hours Worked

Percent Planned Maintenance

Inventory turns

Percent Rework Hours

Planned Maintenance & Predictive Maintenance as a Percent of Work Orders Preventive Maintenance Schedule Compliance

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Get The Full Report Members can purchase the full PDF plus one peer report credit or credits a la carte as needed ($60 each). For a company with many employees, we recommend the Subscription with includes the full report and unlimited peer reports and users.

The variance in utilization between respondents wasn’t that extensive, but utilization is reflected by many characteristics and not just reliability. Planning, operational efficiencies, coordination, workload, and other factors affect utilization, not just availability. As a result, utilization is a critical output metric which can often be the key to identifying root causes in other areas of fleet management, which are negatively impacting fleet and/or overall company results.

FLEET MANAGEMENT Effectively managing a fleet of heavy equipment is critical to To access the full report and all success in the industry. This involves ensuring that equipment metrics, including Best in Class, is properly maintained, repaired, and serviced to minimize visit: downtime and maximize productivity. Preventive and predictive https://www.hecomparator.com maintenance (PM/PdM) play an important role in increased reliability and extending the lifespan of equipment and vehicles.

The Best in Class group dedicates 21% of its total maintenance hours to PM/PdM tasks vs. 14.5% for the typical respondent. This leads to earlier detection of issues prior to breakdown or emergencies.

With proper PM/PdM activities, issues or deficiencies should surface, which need to be corrected. The metric percent corrective from PM/PdM measures how often preventive work identifies additional corrective activities which are needed. The Best in Class group reported that 35% of PM/PdM work orders were for corrective maintenance activity compared to 19% for the typical respondent. This reinforces the notion that higher and better preventive maintenance activity yields detection of anomalies, which can be repaired before a breakdown.

It should be noted that the Best in Class segment experienced a much higher mean time between failure and fewer down events per 1,000 hours than the typical respondent. There is a direct correlation between high levels of preventive maintenance and lower levels of down events. Industry experts concur with that relationship as the purpose of preventive maintenance is to extend the life and function of equipment and minimize unplanned events.

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AEMP 2022 TECHNICIAN OF THE YEAR:

ROBERT KESSELRING, BRANCH CIVIL

BY BETHANY CHAMBERS, FORCONSTRUCTIONPROS.COM PH OT OS CO UR TE SY OF AE MP

Q. WHY DID YOU GET INTO FIXING MACHINES? When I was a kid, my family didn’t have the money to replace things on a whim.

If I wanted my things to work, I often had to fix them. The first time I remember fixing something was when I took the receiver from an RC car that had a broken differential and put it in a different RC car that had an inoperable receiver to make one car that worked. Later on, when I got my first real car, I didn’t have the money to pay for someone else to fix it, so I had to learn to fix it myself. Having acquired enough skills and tools to maintain my own equipment, it was just a small jump to fixing other people’s.

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Q. WHAT TRAITS SET APART TECHNICIAN LEADERS? Ingenuity and enjoyment of helping others. Ingenuity will help you discover efficient ways to diagnose and repair things. If you also enjoy helping other technicians that run across the same problems you’ve already solved, then they’ll start coming to you for assistance with things. Being the go-to technical guy is really the only kind of leadership that I want.

Q. WHAT’S ONE THING YOU DO EVERY DAY TO MAINTAIN A SAFE WORK ENVIRONMENT? Maintain an attitude of eliminating any risk that I can, even if it’s small. If you do things every day that have a 99.99% chance of working out ok, eventually that 0.01% risk will catch up with you on an unlucky day. Risk can never be completely eliminated but look for opportunities to reduce it wherever possible.

Q. WHAT IS THE MOST VALUABLE ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED ABOUT BEING SUCCESSFUL IN THIS INDUSTRY? It could be applied to any industry, but maintaining the awareness that there are no superhumans. If you see someone else who’s been successful at something you want to do, that proves that it’s possible.

If someone else can do it, you can too.

If you decide you’re going to invest the effort, you can take success as a foregone conclusion.

Journal of Equipment Management

Q. WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF IN THE MANY PROJECTS YOU’VE DONE AS A TECHNICIAN? Getting my World Class certification from GM. It’s kind of silly, as other people’s opinion of my abilities shouldn’t really matter to me and GM isn’t even a person, so their certification should matter even less. But it is the thing that took the most time and effort and there is a natural correlation between effort invested and pride in accomplishment.

Q. WHAT CURRENT OR EMERGING TECHNOLOGY TOOLS DO YOU THINK WILL MAKE THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE FOR TECHNICIANS IN 2023 AND BEYOND? Anything related to electrification.

It’s a rapidly growing technology in the automotive sector, and it will be coming to off-road equipment as well. Besides being cleaner, It’s simpler, easier to manufacture, easier to maintain, has a longer service life, and has better performance characteristics than diesel or gasoline. It might not be feasible for the wilds of Alaska, but if you’re operating anywhere near electric lines, where chargers could be installed in a laydown yard, then it’s a fundamentally better technology in every way. I expect battery electric machines to be the norm within my career.

Q. WHY SHOULD PEOPLE CONSIDER A CAREER IN EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT? This is hard to answer as I am not in a management position. I would consider moving to a management position perhaps when I get older and my body can no longer keep up with the physical demands of being a technician. I do think that the best managers have that technical experience background.

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FLEET MASTERS:

KWEST GROUP FINETUNES EQUIPMENT OPERATIONS DRIVEN

BY CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR A SECOND WIN

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY KWEST CATERPILLAR EQUIPMENT

BY GREGG WARTGOW, CONSTRUCTIONEQUIPMENT.COM Originally published May 2023, ConstructionEquipment.com.

K

west Group won its first Fleet Masters Award in 2020. The celebration was short-lived, though, when the emerging Covid-19 pandemic forced an abrupt end to CONEXPO/CON-AGG, where the AEMP Connect conference had been held.

The Kwest equipment team made a vow to do it all again in 2023, the next time AEMP Connect would be co-located with CONEXPO/CON-AGG. The Kwest equipment team returned to Las Vegas to celebrate the accomplishment of its goal, having been named the small-fleet (<$100 million estimated replacement value) winners of the 2023 Construction Equipment and AEMP Fleet Masters Award.

“Our team has made big strides over the last three

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years,” says Chad McKee, CEM, equipment operations manager. “Everything we do is driven by customer service. Our field staff are our customers, and we’re always striving to make sure they are taken care of.”

In addition to McKee, the Kwest equipment team includes Brooke Speiser, CEM, equipment operations coordinator; Adam Turner, field operations coordinator; and Terry Perry, DOT logistics coordinator.

Seamless communication between all four has been key to delivering superior service.

Over the past two years, Kwest has implemented a custom-built software application created by in-house developers. The software makes it easy to track and schedule not only equipment, but also DOT moves and attachments.

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bringing our individual departments together so nobody falters in any way,” Speiser says. “Thanks to this new software, everything is there in black and white for all of us to see. And the information comes directly from the field, so we know exactly what crews need and when. That makes it seamless for all of us to execute.”

Kwest Group is a civil construction and environmental services firm.

The company performs work throughout the country with two offices in Ohio and one in Texas, along with a newly opened facility in Roanoke, Virginia.

“As our footprint has continued to grow, we as an equipment team remain focused on doing everything we can to maintain the level of customer service we provide,” McKee says.

To that end, the equipment team has undertaken several

Journal of Equipment Management

campaigns over the past couple of years to help improve efficiency, accuracy, and accountability.

EQUIPMENT SHOP ORGANIZATION Kwest Group’s board of directors, which includes McKee, identified a strategic corporate objective of implementing 5S in the equipment department.

5S is a lean management methodology for creating a more organized and efficient workspace. In the case of Kwest Group, 5S would be applied to the equipment shops.

McKee tapped Turner to oversee implementation.

Turner worked with his team to clean and declutter the shops. An equipment team meeting was also held to discuss shop organization and work processes.

That initial phase of 5S implementation resulted

in an almost immediate improvement in speed and efficiency. “Simply by cleaning up and getting rid of some unneeded inventory, our team has been able to respond much faster to requests coming in from the field,” McKee says.

The fervor for 5S has now spilled over to other facets of the equipment department. Speiser has even revamped some of her processes as equipment coordinator. For example, she has always had a process for tracking equipment, but it was clumsy and prone to confusion, due to its reliance on texts, emails, and phone calls between departments.

Now everyone is using the custom software application, including the foremen, to monitor where equipment is and how it is being utilized.

DIGITAL EQUIPMENT INSPECTIONS The Kwest equipment team has also been leveraging technology to streamline another historically clumsy process.

The migration to digital equipment inspections started in 2020, but an important step has been added in recent months.

Five photos are now required with every inspection.

Drivers and operators use their smartphones to take the photos and complete the inspections.

Foremen review the inspections on their tablets.

“Pictures help tell the story, which helps the operator save time when filling out their inspection form,” McKee says. “Pictures also allow us to establish accountability if there is equipment damage.

We are also able to better manage maintenance items

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY KWEST CATERPILLAR EQUIPMENT

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because our maintenance request forms are based on deficiencies found in the inspection forms.”

“If there ever is a discrepancy in a maintenance request, it helps to go back and look at the photos,” Speiser adds. All past inspections are searchable by various criteria including job, operator, equipment ID. The new inspection process also has aided in tracking service. For example, if an invoice comes through for a certain part, it’s easy to look up that machine’s inspection forms and maintenance requests to confirm that the correct maintenance was performed on that machine.

STRONGER DEALER RELATIONSHIPS One other benefit of the new inspection process is that the forms and photos can easily be forwarded to vendors. This is becoming increasingly necessary as Kwest Group takes on projects throughout the country, making it impractical for the company’s locally based technicians to efficiently service all equipment.

“If we have an out-of-state job that’s heavy on equipment, I’ll reach out to the area dealers in advance,” Speiser says. “Because we have that relationship in place, most dealers are usually pretty

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good about going “ by the sites once in a while to make sure everything is OK.” Case in point, Kwest Group was recently working on a project in North Carolina with seven owned pieces and one rental, all of the same brand.

“When we signed the rental agreement, I’d asked for the names and numbers of the dealer’s field maintenance technicians, which the dealer was more than happy to provide,” Speiser says. “The service we get from our dealer partners has been great. And again, it’s because we work hard to build those relationships upfront.”

Those of us at Kwest Group are just bricks in the wall. Our partners are the mortar that holds those bricks together. We mention communication a lot,, but that’s really what forms these partnerships and helps keep the wall standing.”

TELEMATICS TRIGGERS FASTER SERVICE Whether leaning on dealer partners or inhouse technicians, Kwest’s equipment maintenance is using machine data to play a bigger role. The equipment team had been leveraging data on machine location and utilization for years, but is now adding diagnostic fault codes to the mix.

When a machine throws off a fault code, text alerts are PAGE

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— CHAD MCKEE, CEM, EQUIPMENT OPERATIONS MANAGER, KWEST GROUP

sent to both Speiser and her in-house technicians. If an issue is more complex than the in-house technicians can handle, Speiser forwards it to the dealer. She’ll also send any photos and inspection forms that help describe the situation.

In either case, this helps the technician prepare for what’s coming their way, Speiser says, ”If a piece of equipment throws a fault code, there’s a good chance we’ll see a maintenance request in a day or two. A technician can start planning accordingly by figuring out what parts will be needed.

That helps ensure that the equipment will be serviced as quickly as possible.”

Journal of Equipment Management

RATES STRUCTURED ON COSTS The Kwest equipment team has also been playing an active role in helping the company achieve its financial goals. That has involved stronger collaboration with departments outside of the equipment team. For instance, the equipment and estimating teams worked together to develop a new internal rate structure. It’s a tworate structure consisting of ownership and operating costs.

“We examined historical data on our operated and standby hours for each class of equipment,” Speiser says.

“The two-rate structure allows us to charge a full,operating rate, when a piece of equipment is actually being used, or a,standby rate,when a unit is located to a project, but

just sitting idle. The standby rate is our way of accounting for underutilization and ownership costs.”

The intent of the two-rate structure is twofold. First, being able to charge jobs a standby rate has helped improve utilization. Second, the analysis of historical equipment cost data has led to a more accurate rate structure based on true utilization. “This has allowed us to increase competitiveness at the bid table, while simultaneously allowing us to better manage our internal equipment costs,” Speiser says.

The Kwest equipment team has also ramped up collaboration with the accounting department and has added its own dedicated accountant.

“This will help us track and dissect our costs in a more detailed way, which will further help us with budgeting, lifecycle cost management, and how we go about charging for different pieces of equipment,” Speiser says.

The Kwest equipment team accomplished much over the past three years, but McKee and Speiser say they are not stopping here.

Kwest Group is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and it is focused on moving the company forward. The equipment team will continue playing a pivotal role in maintaining that momentum.

ASSOCIATION OF EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS - PHOTOGRAPHER

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

FLEET MASTERS:

HOW MANATEE COUNTY ADJUSTS TO ACQUISITION, SUPPLY CHAIN, AND LABOR DIFFICULTIES

BY FRANK RACZON, CONSTRUCTIONEQUIPMENT.COM Originally published July 2023, ConstructionEquipment.com.

T

he world has changed in the three years since Matt Case, CEM, and his team at Manatee County (Florida) Government Fleet last won the Fleet Masters award in 2020.

First, there was a worldwide pandemic, followed by economic and supply chain chaos. As a result, what worked when Manatee won in 2020 had to be thoroughly examined and adjusted for the not-so-brave new world of 2023.

Manatee County won the

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Construction Equipment and AEMP Fleet Masters title again this year (the fifth overall for the county) despite challenges in acquisition, the parts supply chain, and the labor market.

“One of the biggest things we had to do was to be more fluid with the changing environment of equipment acquisition and the problem of hiring and retaining staff,” Case says. “We had to look at our training program, we had to look at our pay grades, but the biggest part for us was the finance side and the acquisition side on the equipment.”

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With the less-heralded pandemic of “price realization” from the manufacturers, code for multiple increases, that meant asking administrators and elected officials for more money.

“The first thing we did was meet with our county administration team and had discussions with them regarding the changing in pricing and the volatility of the equipment market,” Case says.

“By doing that, not only did we have to educate them on the constant changing prices, but we also had to gain their trust

Journal of Equipment Management

as to why we’re coming to them and asking for another $2-5 million on an acquisition cycle.”

INFLATION AND THE ACQUISITION PLAN Case and his team were able to secure the funding because there was already trust in the bank. “We had been dead-on with our five-year replacement projection ever since I took over in 2018. We are right on.”

That didn’t mean there was no preparation for the meetings.

“I did give them some scenarios,” Case says. “A pickup truck bought in ‘21 versus a pickup truck bought in ‘22; same exact configuration meant about a 10% price difference. Same with equipment. We’ve seen anywhere from 5-20% price increases on some things.

Because of the five-year projection that we already had; they knew we were asking for something we need.”

Discussions with the powers that be aren’t always so smooth. Case says one of the first comments he heard was about extending lifecycles. Not that simple. “[I said] we’re already running this equipment as far as we can within its economic lifecycle, but the problem we’ve also found with some equipment is the manufacturers are not supporting it longer term. In the old days, we could run

Journal of Equipment Management

something and get parts 7-10 years later. Well, now those manufacturers are no longer supporting it that long,” Case says. “Now you have a broken piece of equipment, you can’t get parts, and you can’t do the job. So, that was really important to sell to [the board].”

Case has previous experience working in luxury automotive manufacturing where he learned selling new is always the primary goal. “The only reason we fixed equipment is because sales makes the sale, but service brings back the next sale. That is going to be [the construction equipment manufacturers’] business case—selling new equipment.

Unfortunately, it’s going to hurt a lot of people who run long lifecycles. Or those who rely on buying old, surplus equipment and refurbishing it.”

With these problems, end users working their “equipment triangle” relationships with manufacturers and dealers becomes more important.

“We’ve been good on some very expensive equipment; landfill compactor is a great example,” Case says. “We have two in our organization, one is an older 836 that was aging and had already been rebuilt once. We went back to Caterpillar, told them what we were thinking about, and they advised us they were phasing out that model because there just wasn’t enough demand. So, we bought a new one.

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“Our second one was coming due two years later,” Case says. “It was in an age range with a serial number where they are continuing to support it, so we rebuilt that machine.”

That decision saved the county almost $600,000.

“We write the specifications internally, hand it to them, they do their inspections and make sure the frame still looks good,” Case says. “We have world-class maintenance, so our machine is good, and they came back with some things we needed to fine tune and actually helped us. That machine is getting ready to go for rebuild now.

“I did catch some heat because I wanted to rebuild it a hair early and not run it to where it was going to be completely worn out,” he says. “It’s actually great we did that, because our replacement machine for the first one was delayed almost a year. And you can’t have a compactor not running in our organization. When a compactor is down, that’s like an ambulance that doesn’t run.

It’s mission critical.”

Case says careful

A E M P .O R G | 20 23

examination and planning is seeing the county through the post-pandemic headwinds.

“Planning, planning, planning. That’s what it all boils down to,” Case says. “You really have to have that business hat on. If you don’t, you’re basically going to turn into a glorified maintenance shop.”

Through all the difficulties, Manatee County has still maintained an impressive 95% fleet availability with a 2,000-asset mixed fleet. Even with the supply chain issues, Case’s employees have had a minimum 93% requirement written into their performance evaluations. That goes for his evaluation, too.

“If we miss that, you do not meet expectations,” Case says. “But staff continues to meet that 95%. It’s been very tough, and a lot of that is sourcing parts, but a lot of it is

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continuing to keep the equipment moving in and out. But if you get where your average age is near that average lifecycle, you’re going to be a glorified maintenance shop and half your stuff is going to be broken—and you can’t get parts,” he warns.

Keeping equipment running longer is not an automatic answer.

The county has a fleet of seven motor graders in a very demanding application.

“We used to run graders nine years,” Case says. “Our motor graders are grading shell roads nonstop all day long.

Eastern Manatee County is very rural, and it’s an agriculturebased community. Because of availability issues with parts and availability issues with labor, we’ve actually cut those back down to seven years.

“An advantage of that is I’m selling a machine with fewer hours, and yeah, could I run it a little longer? It’s a maybe.

And I’ve kept fleet availability up on that equipment over 90%, so it’s basically preventive maintenance and cycling them in and out,” Case says.

“If you run until fail, that’s a great example; we can’t grade the roads, ambulances can’t PAGE

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run the roads, people can’t get out of their houses. We were hit with a near-category 5 hurricane this year. We look at all that when we calculate the risk worth taking. The machines have to run.”

Manatee’s fleet includes ambulances, with similar availability issues to yellow iron. Case says purchase order to delivery was generally 12 months, and now they’re pushing 24 to 36 months. And mileage and hours are two different things in planning.

For Manatee’s equipment, particularly on-road, the fleet has come up with a formula to help define age and wear.

It balances the city and rural environments to come up with a fair and equal weighing system.

“In our organization, 20,000 hours is equivalent to 600,000 miles,” Case says.

How was that decided?

“We did a traffic study, drove one end of the county to the other, and ended up with an average speed of 30 mph.

So, every equipment hour is equivalent to 30 miles of run time. So, if something has 10,000 hours, that’s got 300,000 miles on it,” Case says.

When an administrator, or anyone, questions why the fleet is looking at replacement for a vehicle with only 75,000 miles on it, Case points out that it has 10,000 hours on it, and it may well take him two years to receive a new one. “We have to constantly educate, and you

Journal of Equipment Management

just have to stay on your plan.”

The other factor that plays into good maintenance practices is the labor shortage.

Retaining technicians has been difficult.

TOUGH TO ATTRACT TECHNICIANS “For the current staff, we try to keep them as comfortable as possible,” Case says. “That means buying them fans, t-shirts, Gatorade, pretty much anything they need to be comfortable and safe. We also have a very liberal vacation policy here. I do not like telling anybody they cannot take a day off. I like to see a minimum of a week of education a year or more, for just about everyone.

If someone comes to us and points out a class that fits their career and track, we always approve it.”

It has not been as easy to attract the new technicians.

“To attract new talent, we use the same things, but when it boils down to it, it’s money,” Case says. “It’s all money. We have been really lucky for a long time here by treating the people well and educating them, but unfortunately I have lost some staff now due to pay. And it’s substantial.”

Case has had techs poached by private contractors, who at this point can offer much more cash. “In the last six months now, I’ve lost four technicians to private firms with salaries the county can’t match,”

Journal of Equipment Management

Case says. In addition to a substantial raise, private firms are throwing in perks like take-home vehicles and gas cards.

“We’re seeing in our market, an experienced technician, an ASE Master, especially in the field, that’s $50 an hour they’re going to make,” Case says.

“Our administration is now aware of it, but I also present to them what it costs to outsource that work,” he says. “We already outsource collision work, major in-frame repairs, things that we can’t do quick and fast here. That equates to about five technicians’ worth of work right now that we outsource, which is huge in our organization.”

Case wishes he didn’t have to.

“You lose control. As an OCD, ADD, alpha fleet manager like we all are, we want control. I want to know every step!”

The county does outsource more now post-pandemic than it historically has, but in-house maintenance still rules the day—and the bottom line.

“We do about 40,000 labor hours out of our shop, and through a labor rate study and for what we charge, we save the county commissioners about $3 million a year just in labor,” Case says. “And that doesn’t include the markup in parts. So, we sell parts at cost plus an

“We do about 40,000 labor hours out of our shop… we save the county commissioners about $3 million a year just in labor.”

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-MATT CASE, CEM, MANATEE COUNTY (FLORIDA)

administrative fee, while you pay list at these vendors. The other thing that’s tough on that is that a lot of people have negotiated rates with vendors.

“I’ve stopped doing that because what I’ve found is the vendor says, ‘Oh, they’re only going to pay this per hour, and we’ve got all this other customer pay work, so we’re going to do those [first],’” Case says.

“Now if we get prices and they’re above a certain threshold, we’ll negotiate it down. That’s really helped up with the vendors. Until I feel the market has stabilized and the people that make a quarter million dollars a year understand we need to pay technicians better, I think the market it going to suffer and the equipment industry is going to suffer,” Case says.

“Where we may see some blessing is the more electric equipment that comes online requires less maintenance and repair; I think that’s going to help.”

A E M P .O R G | 20 23

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AEMP CONNECT @

CONEXPO/CON-AGG 2023

RELIVE THE CONVERSATION What happens here, only happens at AEMP CONNECT. The 2023 annual meeting and conference was held during CONEXPO/CON-AGG. AEMP Rep. Dan Nichol of BearingPoint Consulting and Rachel Connor, Chief Learning Officer at AEMP.

AEMP members at the CONNECT 2023 Opening Reception held at the Westgate Hotel, Las Vegas. A special thank you to the conference sponsors and our strategic alliance partners!

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L to R, Chad McKee, CEM, and Broooke Speiser, CEM, of Kwest Group stand tall after being named one of the receipients of the 2023 Fleet Masters Award.

Read their full story on page 26.

EDUCATIONAL TRACKS AEMP helped organize 21 sessions in the CONEXPO/CON-AGG 2023 Educational Program—primarily in the Equipment Management and Maintenance track. Other tracks included Sustainability, Technology Solutions and Business Best Practice.

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Journal of Equipment Management

AEMP CONNECT brings together insiders and experts throughout the equipment industry. L to R, Alex Kraft, founder and CEO of Heave, a heavy equipment field servie provider; Aaron “Chief Dirt Nerd” Witt, CEO of BuildWitt; and Barry Schlouch, President of of Schlouch Inc. — a full-service provider of site deisgn and construction services.

LEADING THE INDUSTRY AEMP members and leaders served as moderators for the educational sessions .

>> Chris Caldwell, CEM of Branch Civil, speaks with other AEMP members within the AEMP booth at the tri-annual CONEXPO/CONAGG show — scheduled next for March 3-7, 2026.

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

Hard work must be recognized. Congratulations to AEMP’s new class of CEM and CESP recipients!

>> 20 2 3 | A E M P .O R G

Networking at its finest. L to R, Dave Bolderoff, CEM, of the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, and Ken Burke, CEM from Bechtel take a moment and pose for a photo.

Chris Caldwell, CEM of Branch Civil, congratulates Brandon Rondeau, CESP of John Deere during the CEM Pinning Ceremony.

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Journal of Equipment Management

L to R, Conrad Lauer, senior account manager, and Adam Williamson, area sales manager, of JJ Kane Auctions.

SHARING THE WISDOM Over 1,500 people attended AEMP led education sessions at CONEXPO/CON-AGG 2023.

AEMP members took time to network and celebrate during the CONEXPO/CON-AGG Pre-Game Party held at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas.

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>> A E M P .O R G | 20 23

Sustainability PART 1

Construction Fleet Managers Take On The Net-Zero Challenge Originally published July 2023, EquipmentWorld.com

BY TOM JACKSON, EQUIPMENTWORLD.COM

A

t the evening meet-andgreet prior to the Association of Equipment Management Professionals’ Sustainability Summit in Denver, Colorado, heavy equipment fleet managers were mostly in agreement about one thing.

They all had serious concerns about the viability of battery electric machines and didn’t want to be railroaded into using them to meet arbitrary goals created by people outside the industry.

Unlike 20 years ago when the topdown federal imposition of diesel exhaust regulations (and ultimately Tier4 Final) sowed chaos and confusion throughout the industry, the AEMP-led push to net-zero is a bottom-up, industry wide collaboration. It is building consensus from a diverse range of global environmental organizations, OEMs, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and

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companies involved in every aspect of the construction value chain.

A PLAN COMES TOGETHER “Sustainability is the next disruptor for our industry,” said Brett Faucett, director of operations at Brasfield & Gorrie and chair of the AEMP Sustainability Task Force. “We need to control our own destiny and not let other folks who know nothing about our business dictate what is required.”

The task force had its first meeting in May 2021 and took a survey of AEMP members to see where they stood on the issue. That was followed that fall by a presentation at the group’s Equipment Shift conference and meetings later with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers and the American Rental Association.

“We thought we were going to have to spend a lot of time playing catch up, said Faucett. “But we found that AEMP is fast PAGE

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Journal of Equipment Management

THREE PILLARS

AEMP sees the foundation for environmental progress in construction based on three pillars: Plant, Process, and People.

We’ll dive into each of these on the following pages: Page 46 — Why People - Not Technology - Are Key To Lowering CO2 Levels In Construction Page 52 — How Construction Can Seize Its Strengths To Lead The Sustainability Revolution

becoming a leader at this point as it relates to sustainability, and we want to maintain that.”

Particularly notable in the presentations on the first day of the summit were just how many of the world’s biggest US-based construction and heavy equipment users have already pledged to cut carbon emissions and how many were well on their way towards those goals. The norm was CO2 reductions of 20% or more before 2030 and net zero by 2050—all mandated and supported from the top down.

reduction in CO2 by 2030, said Joann Barlow, CEM, manager—technology, corporate heavy equipment. “On the collection side of the house, we have garbage trucks using CNG and RNG. And they’re looked at looking at piloting electric trucks and equipment, and monitoring CO2 emissions and idling.

Skanska’s stated its goals to cut emissions 70% by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2045.

Among other initiatives, Skanska requests environmental declarations from all the manufacturers who produce materials for its buildings and uses a scorecard from the US Green Building Council as a baseline for all projects.

Another company with an aggressive approach to sustainability is Stantec. This $4.5 billion design and engineering firm has instituted a comprehensive sustainability structure, linked executive pay to ESG (environmental and social governance) performance and put ESG-related KPIs (key performance indicators) in its Sustainability

BIG DOGS ARE ALL IN “From a 2019 baseline, our goal was to reduce CO2 15% by 2025, but we think we can get 30% by then,” said Ken Burke, CEM, global equipment operations manager, Bechtel Equipment Operations, and sustainability taskforce founder and member. “Our decarbonization goals are to reduce our carbon footprint by 70% by 2030 and get to net zero by 2050.”

Waste Management is aiming for a 42%

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

Report. The company also aligned itself with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals in regard to coastal resilience, ecosystem restoration, smart cities and urban places, and energy transitions.

FLIP THE SCRIPT Construction is often faulted for being one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world, said Dietmar Grimm, vice president of corporate strategy & sustainability solutions at Trimble. But this sector has been driving carbon reductions since the beginning by being more productive and more efficient. As an example, Cummins engines have been steadily squeezing more power out of a gallon of fuel ever since the beginning, he said.

“We should embrace and celebrate that and use it as a way to drive the way things will be handled going forward,” said Grimm. “The construction industry has an opportunity to flip the script.”

Eventually, said Grimm, sustainability will touch every area of your company from capital planning and budgeting, design and survey, fabrication, construction management, site operations, as-built surveying and mapping, and lifecycle asset management.

NEW ROLE FOR EQUIPMENT MANAGERS While emissions from heavy equipment might seem the most obvious target for CO2 reductions, AEMP and the more environmentally advanced construction companies are looking at the full construction value chain for reductions—not just equipment.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol initiative created by the World Resources Institute breaks down emissions into three categories: Scope 1, 2, and 3. The WRI created these scopes as part of its Corporate Accounting Reporting Standard to provide a global framework and standards for measuring and managing GHG emissions across all industries.

Heavy equipment fleet managers might

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SCOPE 1 — Direct emissions from things like heavy equipment.

SCOPE 2 — Emissions from electricity from powering offices and buildings.

SCOPE 3 — Emissions created by subcontractors and material producers. only be directly responsible for emissions/GHG in Scope 1. But the fact that they already use telematics and sophisticated reporting and analytic systems to measure fuel burn, idle time and other machine metrics makes them the best equipped team in a construction company to develop reporting systems for Scope 2 and Scope 3.

Fleet managers are also tied in with the rest of the company divisions—operations, finance, bidding and estimating more than any other division. And all this falls perfectly in line with the data-driven, analytical approach to fleet management that AEMP has been teaching its members for the better part of four decades.

Depending on how you look at it, this puts the fleet manager in the catbird seat, or the hot seat. But AEMP is determined to rise to the challenge just as they did with telematics 15 years ago. The organization was instrumental in developing and promoting the first brand agnostic telematics program, which eventually resulted in an internationally recognized (ISO 15143-3) standard and which is now offered or incorporated in almost every OEM telematics program today.

here – each organization is focused on selfimprovement. We have hundreds of years of shared knowledge and experience in this room to draw upon. We brought some answers – but will jointly develop many more over the next day and a half.”

The global value of sustainable improvements between now and 2030 is said to be worth $26 billion, said Clancy.

And sustainability measures can boost profits as well as brand enhancements.

Twenty-six states and several federal agencies are procuring at least a portion of their infrastructure construction with consideration for environmental values. And academic research shows that strategic sustainability has a positive impact on brand in infrastructure construction, he said.

Even if you take away all the environmental positives, it still makes sense, said Clancy.

“A lean organization is a sustainable organization. And efficiencies can boost bottom line profits as much as 60%.”

The focus on people is an interesting twist from what too often is characterized as a technological problem. AEMP members are adamant that the construction industry and fleet management will need lots of new, young, highly educated and highly motivated people to turn these environmental goals into realities. They also emphasize that to attract talent at any level in the future, a company must have a strong sustainability message.

ONE STEP AT A TIME While the challenge might seem daunting, and a huge expansion of the equipment managers’ role, Mike Clancy, partner and strategy practice lead at FMI, and moderator for many of the AEMP Sustainability Summit sessions, says it can be taken one step at a time.

“Sustainability is not a destination – it’s a journey that we each take for ourselves,” Clancy said. “You are not competing with your peers

Journal of Equipment Management

For more information about upcoming AEMP Sustainability announcements and future educational sessions, go to https://www.aemp.org.

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

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Sustainability PART 2 PEOPLE

Why People — Not Technology — Are Key To Lowering CO2 Levels In Construction

Originally published August 2023 EquipmentWorld.com.

BY TOM JACKSON, EQUIPMENTWORLD.COM

T

he future of environmental improvements in the construction industry will be almost entirely dependent on communication skills and personnel management.The Association of Equipment Management Professionals is well known for teaching its members a data-driven, engineering mindset to maximize uptime and ROI on the heavy equipment assets of some of the largest construction fleets in the world.

But backstopping all the rigorous analytic work has always been a unique emphasis on the people part of the equation — recruiting, training and promoting tomorrow’s fleet managers.

This same human resource emphasis was a big part of the AEMP Sustainability Summit held in Denver, Colorado, in July. One of the key messages from that two-day event was that the future of environmental improvements in the construction industry were almost entirely

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dependent on communication skills and personnel management.

MOTIVATORS “We have to focus on the people perspective, what drives people to want to have a sustainable organization,” says David Bolderoff, CEM, fleet manager for the sanitation districts of Lost Angeles County and a Sustainability Taskforce founder.

“Identify stakeholders with a common interest, customers, clients communities. Understand the drivers there. Make sure we’re doing the right thing for all of them.”

Fortunately, the push for reducing CO2 at many of the biggest construction companies represented at the Sustainability Summit was coming from the top of the organization: boards, presidents and CEOs. CROSS FUNCTIONAL TEAM BUILDING For smaller companies, the push may need to come from below. That’s a big PAGE

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Journal of Equipment Management

AEMP Statement On Sustainability AEMP’s mission is to build excellence in Equipment Management. AEMP recognizes that equipment selection and usage as well as efficiencies in equipment operation and maintenance greatly impact the carbon footprint of its member companies. It is AEMP’s goal to provide members education and resources to inspire them to be the sustainability champions within their companies.

AEMP strongly encourages equipment managers to take advantage of their unique position in the industry as stewards of our global environment and use their ambition and know-how to solve looming issues that give rise to new opportunities.

Sustainability can be defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. AEMP’s sustainability education and resources will focus within these pillars as follows: (A) People — Collaboration and partnerships: Both internal and external, including addressing health, safety, wellness, diversity, inclusion, equity, work-life balance, and the impacts of these issues to the local communities our member companies work in.

(B) Planet — Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and waste to lesson our impact on the planet, including using environmentally friendly sourced products, and alternative and renewable fuels.

(C) Process — Improving efficiencies (optimization): Realizing gains in efficiently procuring, utilizing, operating, and maintaining equipment, including advocating for and deployment of improved equipment, vehicle, and facility technology.

In addressing these pillars of sustainability, AEMP’s efforts will achieve: (A) Member companies having a better relationship with stakeholders. This includes employees, workers in the value chain, customers, and local communities.

(B) A significant reduction in GHG emissions, resource usage, and waste generated by member companies.

(C) Improved financial performance and profitability of members companies.

AEMP Sustainability Taskforce Members • Brett Faucett, Taskforce Chairman, Director of Operations, Brasfield & Gorrie Equipment & Supply • Dave Bolderoff, CEM Taskforce Founder & Member, Fleet Manager, Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County • Ken Burke, CEM Taskforce Founder & Member, Global Equipment Operations Manager, Bechtel Equipment Operations, Inc. • Mason Ford, CEM Taskforce Founder & Member, Director of Sustainability & Equipment Services Skanska USA Civil • Ernest Stephens, CEM Taskforce Member, Sr. Vice President of Equipment Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives, Inc. • Rachel Connor, AEMP Staff Taskforce Liaison, Chief Learning Officer, AEMP Updated September 26, 2022

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

Jillian Bowlin, senior consultant at FMI, listed a number of questions fleet managers and others should be asking themselves about their management of high-tech workers.

• Do they have the right skills for the job?

• Can we measure those skills and test for them?

• How do we get skilled workers involved in planning?

• Are we providing clear performance feedback at a good cadence?

• Have we given skilled workers formal management training?

• Who are our top performers and have they identified promising successors?

• How are those successors being developed and prepared for future rules?

The implication in all of this is that training and management of new employees will have to increase in quality and quantity.

COMMUNICATING WITH EXECUTIVES One of the biggest challenges in this arena is taking the message to the top, says Mike Clancy, partner and strategy practice lead at FMI and moderator of many of the Sustainability Summit sessions. In a show of hands at the Summit only a handful of about 60 attendees said their CEO came up through the fleet side. The rest were all operations people. “Your ability to affect change is going to be directly tied to how well you can connect to people outside your division,” he said.

Communicating with executives can be more effective if, instead of bombarding them with long reports and numbers, you give them charts and graphs of key points, something they can grasp at a glance. You’re not going to get much time in the boardroom or executive suite, so making your information easy to

responsibility, but nobody is better positioned to connect all these disparate individuals and divisions in a construction company than the fleet manager.

“You have to advertise it throughout the company, get the operators, project managers and estimators involved on a team to get buy-in,” says Dan Maitland, fleet manager at Ajax Paving in Fort Myers, Florida. In doing so, you raise the visibility of the fleet management division and eventually get it involved in more of the major decisions.

“I was fortunate to have ownership that wanted to make the equipment division better,”

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said Maitland. “But there are probably a lot of fleet managers out there doing great things that are not getting recognized.”

The process Maitland used to bring more visibility to fleet management didn’t require the bane of so many frontline workers, that being outside consultants. Instead, Ajax used its own people.

“We didn’t hire people to do our audit process. We used our own project managers, estimators and superintendents,” he said.

“Each division met periodically with the fleet team over the course of up to a year in some cases, learning what fleet management did and how they could work together better.”

And building these cross-functional teams is essential in creating not only the structure needed to analyze and reduce the company’s carbon footprint but also to motivate others in the company who may not understand that they, too, can be doing good for the environment. It’s one of the oldest and strongest motivators out there—helping people take pride in contributing to something noble and worthwhile.

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• Unrealistic schedules • Difficulty staffing (lack of skills and labor) • Balance between leading teams and executing work.

digest and remember will win you points.

You have to differentiate between information and data, says Clancy.

“Sometimes we think we’ve done our jobs when we give people access to the data.

But we haven’t. Data is not the same as information. We need to give people the data already analyzed, which is information.”

CULTURE MATTERS Company culture also plays a crucial role in recruiting and retaining talent. This is especially true of young, digitally literate, high-tech workers who are in high demand across all industries.

Good company cultures learn how to recognize burnout and take steps to alleviate it. The old rough-and-tumble culture of construction no longer works for many of the most important people you hire. More progressive companies are recognizing this with things like on-site gyms to bolster fitness and well-being or just to let people burn off the brain fog from too much screen time.

Flexible work schedules that help employees meet family needs are also a huge attraction.

And a clearly defined career path is necessary to keep valuable employees from seeing their next step up elsewhere.

The good news here is that many of these young people come from a progressive mindset. They want to be doing good and socially relevant work. If you can demonstrate to them as recruits how seriously your company takes environmental issues, if you can show how their future contributions will directly impact the environment for the better, you stand a good chance of landing them as employees and getting their best effort.

THE TALENT CLIFF A big part of the problem in tackling longterm challenges like sustainability is the lack of employees with high-tech talent willing to stick it out with a company for a long duration.

The whole country is facing what Jillian Bowlin, senior consultant at FMI, characterizes as a “talent cliff.”

What that means numerically is that as industry spending grows, employment shortfalls will become more pronounced. In surveys cited by Bowlin, 93% of companies report that talent shortages and having a high to severe impact on their operations and yet only 19% have succession plans for key strategic roles. Shortages are also expected to intensify in the next five years, with turnover rates of 22% for executives and 30% for skilled workers.

Despite those concerning numbers, few companies have extensive training and succession management programs in place.

The pandemic only aggravated this problem, but it’s acute for the construction industry owing to the limited opportunities for remote work. “Other industries now offer flexible hours, remote or hybrid locations and the possibility of taking a break on short notice,” according to Ken Simonson, chief economist at the Association of General Contractors.

Companies that need young, high-tech employees to execute ambitious sustainability plans should focus on the high skill positions, says Bowlin. And these types of employees cite three challenges they face in the workplace:

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

Equipment, wherever and

With the largest, most diverse fleet of construction and we are a one-stop shop for whatever you need, delivere

Call 800.UR.RENTS or visit UnitedRentals.com to br

© 2021 United Rentals, Inc.

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d whenever you need it.

industrial equipment in North America, ed on time and ready to go.

rowse the largest fleet in the industry.

Journal of Equipment Management

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

Sustainability PART 3 PROCESS How Construction

Can Seize its Strengths How Construction to Can Lead theIts Strengths To Seize Sustainability Lead The Sustainability Revolution

Revolution

Originally published August 2023, EquipmentWorld.com.

BY TOM JACKSON, EQUIPMENTWORLD.COM

T

hough there’s a lot of work to be done, the construction industry has a big head start in reducing CO2 emissions. Now, we need to standardize the processes and measurements, record the results, and continue to improve.

One of the first PowerPoint slides shown at AEMP’s Sustainability Summit in Denver, Colorado, last month cited two recent quotes from the news media:

But what few in the media and the general public realize is that construction, as far back as the building of the pyramids, has always relied on process for success.

That gives construction a big head start in the race to reduce CO2 emissions. Even better news is that construction companies and fleets have worked hard at reducing fuel use and boosting equipment efficiency for the last 20 years. Most of the technology and thinking needed to further these environmental improvements already exist.

The task remaining is simply this: standardize the processes and measurements, record the results and work toward continual improvement.

• “The construction industry remains horribly climate-unfriendly.”

— The Economist • “Concrete: the most destructive material on earth.”

— The Guardian

WHERE TO START In a survey conducted before the summit hosted by the Association of Equipment Management Professionals, some 40% of attendees said they felt like they should be doing something, but they didn’t know what or where to start, said Mike Clancy, partner and strategy practice lead at FMI, and moderator

While those are British publications, they nevertheless represent how many people view this industry. And construction, when you consider all the machinery and materials that go into it, accounts for almost a third of greenhouse gases.

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BY PARRADEE | ADOBESTOCK

for many of the AEMP Sustainability Summit • Upgrade vehicle and equipment fleet with sessions. electric and hybrid And yet, a majority of survey respondents • Upgrade equipment with improved said they are taking steps to reduce fuel use technology (see chart 1). chart 1 “This is where we can start; the things that we already are doing or We Are Actively Working To Reduce The know we should be doing. We just Emissions And Carbon Impact Of Our need to get a plan put together to Fleet In New Acquisition Decisions do it,” said Clancy. “If we break it down into smaller bites and chunks, 50 every one of us can make some 42% progress in this direction. This would 40 include things like fleet utilization, engine idling, and good maintenance 30 processes to start.”

EQUIPMENT MANAGER ROLE According to information provided by Mason Ford, CEM, director of sustainability and equipment services at Skanska USA Civil and a Sustainability Taskforce founder and member, the equipment manager has a huge role to play, such as:

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0

in real time from the cloud, eliminating delays and miscues on site.

The ultimate goal here is to have a connected, accessible workflow from the architects and engineers (design) to contractors (build) to asset owners and clients (operation of facilities) and working on the project together in the cloud, said Grimm.

STANTEC’S PROCESS Using information provided by Stantec, a sustainable engineering, architecture, and environmental consulting company, Grimm showed how this company has measured, managed and analyzed its carbon footprint since 2010. It reports and validates greenhouse gas emissions for all three scopes* and has a validated science-based target (SBT) it is achieving. The company is geographically diversified in three regional operating units namely Canada, the United States, and Global,

BY GABIN | ADOBESTOCK

• Improvements in facility lighting and project office upgrades • Increase efficiencies in machinery selection and technologies • Lead and train • Design and monitor carbon budget • Provide realistic feedback to equipment manufacturers • Internally advocate for carbon targets in contracts • Train the organization on CO2 reduction

Greenhouse Gas Emissions for All Three Scopes

TODAY’S TECHNOLOGY The technology developed in the last 10 years has already given contractors huge gains in heavy equipment productivity and efficiency. This would primarily include GPS/ GNSS machine automation and telematics.

According to Dietmar Grimm, VP of corporate strategy and sustainability solutions at Trimble, the next step is to start managing data in the cloud, including a multitude of technology trends that will help enable better processes such as: • Electronic billing, evolving from paper receipts to connected data.

• API-based ERPs. Get the utility companies to write an API for your energy usage that goes directly into your accounting software.

• Connected site management. All parties get the same information and changes

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*As mentioned in “Construction Fleet Managers Take On The Net-Zero Challenge” (page 40), the scopes include direct energy sources, indirect energy sources and other emissions sources.

Think of it as: Scope 1 — Jobsite emissions Scope 2 — Office and vehicle emissions Scope 3 — B usiness travel, commuting

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chart 2

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counts and industry-recognized intensity factors.

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USING MACHINE AUTOMATION TO REDUCE FUEL CONSUMPTION Mike Granruth, business development director at Trimble, gave a presentation at the AEMP Sustainability Summit that showed just how much fuel could be saved by using GPS/ GNSS machine automation.

With a team at Trimble, Granruth took 16 operators with varied levels of experience. Each operator was instructed to dig three trenches: one conventional (manual), one with GPS/GNSS guidance (indicate only) and one with fully automatic GPS/GNSS control.

All the operators in the test achieved significant time savings (see chart 2).

Even more interesting was how all much time was saved by the various skill levels. In charts 3, 4, and 5, N=novice, I=intermediate and E=expert skill level. Not surprising the novice operators gained the most efficiency but even the experts when switched from conventional (manual) to automatics increased their efficiency by a whopping 46.05%.

The takeaway from Granruth’s experiment is that more productive machines help reduce CO2 emissions by burning less fuel to achieve the same results. There is also a savings in

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offering similar services across all regions.

In Stantec’s process, jobsite emissions from equipment are relatively easy to calculate with modern telematics. With mostly leased office spaces, utility costs can be more complicated to measure, so the company collects usage data from landlords to reduce the need to extrapolate.

For purchased goods and services, business travel, fleet, drill rigs and leased residential units, Stantec engages with vendors for relevant usage reports and uses internationally recognized extrapolation figures. For employee commuting and office waste, emissions are based on employee chart 3

chart 5

chart 4

CONVENTIONAL TO AUTOS

GUIDANCE TO AUTOS

CONVENTIONAL TO GUIDANCE

80 70

62.18%

60

60

50

38.11%

40

46.05%

53.66%

50

40.32%

40

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46.05% 38.11%

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“The inefficiencies in construction cost us globally over $1.6 trillion per year.”

-ROB PAINTER, CEO OF TRIMBLE

BY FLYALONE | ADOBESTOCK

embodied carbon by reducing the number of machines to do the job and extending the life of the machines due to the reduced wear and tear.

per year,” said Rob Painter, CEO of Trimble.

“That’s the size of the GDP of Canada. The data tells us that 80% of projects are late, and 40% are over budget. And wasted effort is the number one cause of inefficiency in our industry. And the good news is that we know that productivity is generated by using technologies such as machine control and guidance,” he said.

Bechtel Equipment Operations started working on sustainability about three years ago, said Ken Burke, global equipment operations manager. “Brendan Bechtel was the chairman of the board and said this was going to be his legacy to the company and the industry.

“We’re a 120-year-old company and Riley Bechtel, Brendan’s father, started out with safety as his legacy,” said Burke. “Sustainability is going to be Brendan’s. We are going to be net zero by 2050. And we’re going to do it the right way. We’re not going to buy our way into it; we’re not going to fake our way into it. That’s hard and there’s a lot of still to do.”

THE PLANET Nobody doubts that the environment is a big topic in the news today, maybe the biggest.

And governments around the world are putting enormous amounts of money into addressing the problem. Here in the U.S. we have the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act with a total spend of $1.2 trillion. And the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allocates $391 billion for energy security and climate change plus $270 billion in tax incentives.

THE COST OF DOING NOTHING People will argue for years about climate change and how much is tolerable. One thing is for certain however, is that wasteful processes in construction have no place on a planet with limited resources.

“We know that the inefficiencies in construction cost us globally over $1.6 trillion

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Additional Bodies, Resources Globally there are additional governing bodies and resources including: • EU Fit for 55: increases renewables and building efficiency requirements, https://www.europarl.europa.eu • The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Core Option (Appendix A), https://www.sustain.life • The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, https://sasb.org/standards • The UN Global Compact, https://unglobalcompact.org • Science Based Targets Initiative, https://sciencebasedtargets.org • The World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas Protocol, https://www.wri.org/research

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Harness the power of data to optimize your job site Enhance workflow across your operations by leveraging integrated technology to achieve your goals. With Smart Construction solutions, Komatsu can help you digitally transform your job site today.

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WHAT’S YOUR NEXT MOVE?

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF EQUIPMENT ECONOMICS PROGRAM GUIDE

COURSE OVERVIEW

»THE CURRICULUM INCLUDES:

Mike Vorster is a well-known, respected thought leader in the equipment management field, and the author of “Construction Equipment Economics.”

Caterpillar has worked with Vorster to bring to market The Fundamentals of Equipment Economics – a video-based training program designed to lower costs and improve business performance by building expertise in equipment costs and lifecycle management.

• Management topics such as critical success factors and equipment management functions, organizational structure, the complex flow of funds and more.

• An in-depth overview of owning and operating costs including definitions and characteristics of owning and operating costs, repair parts and labor curve based on personal company data, how to estimate operating costs from first principles, depreciation, interest costs and more.

• How to understand rate and cost management, economic life and minimum cost.

• An assessment of reliability that covers the impacts of inspection and prevention, the role they play in machine reliability, how to measure and understand reliability and the relationship between machine age, cost and reliability.

• Understanding stakeholder needs and the quantitative tools they use to perform better.

• How to find and attack the causes of cost in order to reduce them.

This course teaches vital information that will help equipment managers and those involved in overseeing the equipment at their company accelerate their careers and drive increased value to their business. The course covers a diverse range of topics that will help individuals better approach business decisions.

The course is available now through Caterpillar University.

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COURSE DETAILS COURSE ACCESS & REGISTRATION PROCESS COMMERCIAL ACCOUNT CUSTOMERS Cat® Commercial Account representatives are encouraged to send their customers information about the course. The customer will have the opportunity to purchase several course registrations on behalf of their employees.

The cost of the course is $750 per person. https://www.CaterpillarUniversity.com/equipment-economics DEALER CUSTOMERS Cat dealer representatives are also encouraged to promote the course to their customers. Customers can be directed to Caterpillar University, where they will find more information and register for the course. The cost of the course is $750 per person and customers can pay via credit card or PayPal through the Caterpillar University website.

DEALER EMPLOYEES Dealer employees can access the course through https://dlms.logicbay.com. The cost of the course is $750 per person and will be billed monthly. Standard dealership workflow approvals apply. Dealer employees will not be required to take a prerequisite quiz.

PROMOTION Caterpillar has developed customizable promotional materials that dealers are encouraged to utilize to help raise awareness about this course among their customers.

Caterpillar will also be running a promotional campaign to drive registrations. To maximize the promotional impact, a coordinated schedule targeting all key customer audiences is recommended.

The following customizable design files are available on dealer.cat.com: • TV monitor graphics • Email • Pull-up banner • Poster • Flyer

CONTACT INFORMATION For questions regarding the course or customer promotions, contact: For technical support regarding the course, contact: CYNTHIA WEINGART DEALER PERFORMANCE CENTER Construction Digital & Technology. dpc_support@cat.com 309-675-9341 Weingart_Cynthia@cat.com

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A E M P .O R G | 20 23

Telematics Leader Roundup

6 Telematics Leaders Take On The Latest Technology

BY BETHANY CHAMBERS, FORCONSTRUCTIONPROS.COM

W

hen most equipment managers think about telematics, they picture the vehicle telematics that goes into managing and operating your fleet. But telematics – or the combination of telecommunications and informatics – is much more than that. Any technology used to collect, send, store and share information digitally falls into this bucket. When you broaden that definition up, it can become overwhelming. The financial investment, the effort, the reallocation of team resources to vet, select, and implement – it’s a lot.

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The best place to start is your peers, who know exactly the challenges you face. AEMP members have the benefit of connections throughout the equipment triad – end users, OEMs, and dealers. We’ve asked them what problems they hoped to solve with technology, why they went the route they did and how it worked. Here’s what they had to say.

lifts and telehandlers). We were looking for a software solution that could easily track all of them on one platform. We were also looking for a software solution where we could input existing machine hours and mileage and where we could backload the existing service log. Finally, we wanted to be able to geofence locations with alerts for equipment entering and leaving the site.

Q. Have you gotten a return on your investment?

We had a scenario where a $50,000 machine mysteriously left a jobsite and thanks to the alert option, we were able to track the machine’s location via “pings.” With the aid of the local authorities and GPS tracking, we were able to recover the machine, get it back to the jobsite, and get our crew back to work that day.

That ROI was priceless.

Q. How do your telematics tools benefit from the AEMP Standard?

Being able to blend equipment data from multiple manufacturers into one portal is critical. For our fleet alone we would need to manage 13 different equipment manufacturers. Equipment tracking and management would be a vicious position to be in if you had to use a different software for each.

Q. What current technologies offer the biggest opportunities for equipment professionals?

Tablets or handheld devices are one of the biggest assets and opportunities for our industry. Having a tablet so that a manager and a field tech/operator can see the same information saves money and time. Devices with cameras, video calling, app-based technology and abilities to document items are key. The more robust these tools become, the quicker equipment can get back to supporting the work being done.

MAKING BACK-OFFICE BUSINESS IMPROVEMENTS Brent Genseke is the project manager for cranes & equipment at Area Erectors, Inc., a steel and precast concrete service, in Rockford, Ill. He has been managing and monitoring equipment fleets for a decade. Over the past seven years, he revamped and streamlined Area Erectors’ fleet to improve service and uptime.

Q. What challenge were you hoping to solve by implementing back-office technology?

We were looking for a solution that would help us track equipment time on jobsites for internal cost accounting and usage hours for projecting equipment life cycle, which all affect our business.

Q. When it comes to new technology, what is one piece of advice you can offer other equipment professionals?

To be brutally honest, there is no “perfect” software to solve all your needs. They all do great things in their own respect and are constantly improving and adapting to the needs of the industry. When evaluating, drill down into the challenges that you are actually looking to solve and find a software solution that can do that or be manipulated to do that.

Q. Which key features were ‘musthaves’ for you when vetting the tech tools out there?

We had an existing fleet that was growing and changing, with mobile equipment (semis and trailers), attachments, conex boxes and construction equipment (cranes, scissor

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MAXIMIZING EFFICIENCY WITH TELEMATICS SOLUTIONS

Q. How do telematics tools benefit from the AEMP Standard?

Obviously, the AEMP standard creates consistency in off-boarded data. But it also allows all dealers to have a similar frame of reference when talking with customers about features and benefits of data visibility, and what that looks like for specific pieces of equipment.

Q. What current and emerging technologies offer the biggest opportunities for equipment professionals?

Technologies that manage production and equipment health in real-time and make that data useable are critical. In the past, many machines had the enriched data that equipment and production managers needed, however, the technology to off-board the information was not there or was not cost-effective. I believe telematic devices are catching up with what machines have been able to provide for a long time and, as such, costs will become more attractive to the end user.

Mark Schulke is the equipment solutions manager for Foley Equipment, Caterpillar dealer for Kansas and Missouri, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. He has 20 years of experience working with telematics, condition monitoring, customer value agreements and service operations.

Q. What challenge was Caterpillar hoping to solve by integrating telematics solutions?

We needed a way to have dynamic visibility of equipment hours to manage the customer’s preventive maintenance schedule. As our business grew, it was not sustainable to continuously reach out to the customer to get hours off of equipment. Telematics not only solves this issue, but allows for seasonal and historical trends to help predict changes in how the customer’s equipment is operated.

Q. Which key features or benefits are ‘must-haves’ for you when vetting new technology?

We need the ability to integrate in current systems, and the flexibility to allow for growth.

Q. When it comes to adopting and implementing new technology, what is one piece of advice you can offer?

There are a lot of manufacturers of telematic devices and platforms to pick from. Make sure you partner with those that understand your business and your needs, and that have the support structure in place to make you successful. Many providers offer compatibility across many industries, types of equipment and manufacturers, but when you go to do it, that compatibility isn’t there.

Q. How are you helping your customers quantify ROI on their investments?

I think it comes down to the customer adoption of telematics today. We still have opportunities to increase customer implementation in the future.

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USING TELEMATICS FOR DATA ANALYSIS Matt Finch is the equipment manager for Norris Asphalt Paving Co. and Douds Stone LLC, an asphalt paving and limestone production company based in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

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Q. Are you “democratizing data” so everyone on your team can use it?

We’re breaking into it more and more. I helped filter it and set up dashboards, and now more people are getting in, especially comparing this month this year vs. this month last year. It’s also being used more broadly by upper management. On the operator side we can use the data to go back and walk through training on individual things we see in the data, like wheel slippage.

Q. What advice would you give to anyone trying to use more data?

The younger people you’re hiring don’t have the skillset the older guys retiring did. They are hungry to learn, but they need to be shown more. It’s all about training, not learning from the school of hard knocks.

He started his career working with on-highway trucks before making the transition to offhighway equipment three years ago.

Q. How do off-highway equipment telematics differ from the tech you were using in on-highway trucks?

We started implementing this tech in on-highway trucks back in 2008, and it has been around a lot longer on that side of the business. But what I like on the equipment side is that there is a lot more robust data. On the truck side we just looked at engine health, speed and hard brakes, but on equipment side we can track so much more.

Q. Is there a challenge that comes with that much data?

Employees feel like Big Brother is watching them. We have to educate them about how this makes them more efficient and helps them utilize the equipment, so they don’t have to work as hard.

Q. How do you manage that much data?

It’s getting a lot easier. You pick and choose which key performance indicators (KPIs) you really want to see and then you hide the rest of them. The software is getting a lot better. Before, data came like crazy and there was no way to filter through it. The platforms are more user-friendly. You set your parameters and see where your machine is at against those. Before it might send me an alert when guy didn’t put seatbelt on; I don’t need that much information. Their dashboards are so much better now where you can turn them into whatever you want.

Q. What KPIs are must-haves for data analysis success?

Fuel usage, idle time and workload are the three I look at daily. Being able to see equipment work cycles is also important for an equipment manager. Your light-duty part of work cycle versus extreme duty is information you need to right-size your fleet and see if you’re using equipment that’s too large or too small.

Journal of Equipment Management

ADVANCING ELECTRIFICATION Aditya Sharma is the manager of business development and strategic opportunities for Moog Construction, a global designer and manufacturer of high-performance motion control products and solutions in the electrification and robotics space. He is an electrical engineer with expertise in batterypowered equipment and digital connectivity solutions.

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BY ATTW – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

Q. What are the top reasons construction companies are turning to electrification today?

The top reason is environmental, sustainability and governance (ESG) standards forcing the reduction of carbon emissions.

Electrification now also offers benefits like less noise, less vibration and performance that’s equal to or better than diesel.

Q. What is the most important electrification trend equipment managers need to pay attention to today?

Charging infrastructure expansion. It is important that there are options like fast charging, on-site charging and public charging to support the operation of electric equipment effectively. You might be able to find that in an urban environment, but when it comes to civil construction sites or large machine needs, you don’t have support. So, I think for the equipment manager has to pay attention to the risks and trends.

Q. How important are the OEMs in pushing electrification forward?

Many OEMs are working to bring this technology to market themselves. But there are Bobcat, Komatsu and Case that have decided to work with us on our TerraTech solution, which has components, sensing, machine control

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and digital insights and IoT. Our platform gives them the opportunity to apply the whole system at once.

Q. How long does it take for electrification investment to pay off?

We see a three-year return. It should decrease in the future when electric becomes mainstream. Of course, your cost will go down as the overall units increase. Do a cost analysis to identify the up-front and charging infrastructure costs. Then identify your operational cost savings, maintenance and service productivity gains and quantify the value of fewer health hazards to your labor.

Q. Does the AEMP standard have a place in electrification strategies?

By aligning with the AEMP standard, equipment professionals can leverage established guidelines and integrate electrification into their heavy equipment strategies. The data analysis doesn’t have to be different between a diesel machine and electric one.

Q. What developments or enhancements can we expect to see in electrification in the near future?

Vehicle-to-vehicle power transfer technology will play a pivotal role on remote sites in the near future. Let’s say you have a remote site with multiple machines and you PAGE

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BY CREATIVE DIGITAL ART – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

are using an excavator for larger operational time, and you have another machine which is only required sometimes and has more battery. You can transfer the energies to fulfill the overall operation, so it’s more productive.

Bidirectional energy flow between electric vehicles or equipment and vehicle-to-grid could come down the road, but that’s a little futuristic.

Q. How far in the future are we talking?

We anticipated five years ago that electric machines were still far away. Now almost every OEM has launched their electric machines.

So the curve is going exponentially faster than what we expected in the industry and regulations are playing significant role into that. In the next two or three years we’re going to see a lot of change.

technician before moving into mining and construction technology. He values helping business experts learn to use rich data sets to make informed decisions.

Q. What is the top challenge most of your customers are trying to solve in implementing fleet tracking technology?

Each business unit and customer has a unique challenge, but ultimately they share the same problem: The culture within the organization isn’t conducive to applying a business decision and working through the change. People mostly struggle with change management.

Q. What tips can you offer to overcome that?

The ADKAR change management model is what we use. First, we try to create awareness.

Then we try to create desire by showing ROI, and then we give them the knowledge to do it themselves. Finally, we give them the processes, tools, and resources they need to be successful and then we reinforce it using the data and information after the change so they can see the fruits of their labor.

LOOKING AHEAD TO THE NEXT GENERATION OF FLEET TRACKING & OPTIMIZATION Tyler Simmons is the director of worksite solutions for Western States Equipment Company, a Caterpillar dealer based in Meridian, Idaho. He started his career as a

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BY BANNAFARSAI – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

Q. How long does it take to recognize the ROI on fleet tracking solutions?

If I’m working with a customer and they’re struggling with machine utilization and seeing 30-40% idle times, we do some simple math on how much fuel they are burning, and their increased maintenance cost based on the hours on the machine. We look at increasing their used equipment values by reducing wasted hours. With a $10,000 investment in telematics and an annual software subscription of $5,000 a year, that ROI can be achieved in a month or less.

Q. Which key features or benefits are customers looking for in fleet tracking?

Are there other benefits they should be looking for but aren’t?

With Cat VisionLink, people want to see a physical location on a map, clear fault codes, and machine hours. We’re trying to get all customers who are onboarded to also use it to track total cost of ownership, which includes maintenance, fuel, and operator costs. We find that equipment owners are already tracking machine asset value but that total cost of ownership is an area of opportunity.

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Q. When it comes to adopting and implementing new technology, what is one piece of advice you can offer other equipment professionals based on your experience?

Be patient. It’s not about the technology, it’s about helping the people in the organization and enabling them to do something different to provide better results.

Q. How does your fleet tracking system benefit from the AEMP Standard?

There are two ways: We use it to export data out to third-party platforms and we consume data from the other OEMs. We need to use the data to get where we want to be as an industry.

The AEMP standard enables us to do that.

Q. What emerging technologies offer the biggest opportunities for equipment professionals?

Remote operations is the biggest opportunity because of our labor shortage. We focus on the productivity of the machine, yes.

But how much more productivity can we get out of our operator? With Cat Command, you can have one guy running three machines on a jobsite, switching machine to machine.

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Q. What kind of data and information will the construction companies of the future demand?

It really comes down to the standardization of codes. As that starts to build and as the years move forward and companies start to work better together, we’ll move beyond the current AEMP feeds, which are very basic to get much more than engine data or fault codes that you currently get on your OBD II ports and what you’re able to get from the SAE codes. More standardization in the industry would make things a lot easier for customers who have mixed fleets. In the future I see equipment managers being able to manage one protocol as opposed to having VisionLink, JDLink, and more.

Q. What does telematics hardware look like when you look down the road five or ten years?

Hardware is not the precursor to what flows through to the user interface and the data manipulation and all the scorecards and benchmarking that works through that.

In the future there will be less reliance on the hardware itself and more reliance on the software.

Q. What can we do to leverage the AEMP standard to improve the industry in the coming years?

When we went from Version 1 to Version 2 that was an evolution. We don’t know yet what Version 3 will look like, but when that happens, all of the equipment data will flow into one software dashboard, like MyGeotab, seamlessly and without each manufacturer having to work with each hardware provider and each software provider. On one pane of glass, you’ll see everything you’re running off-road.

You are enabling a highly skilled operator and allowing them to get multiple jobs done on the site and allowing the entry-level guys to handle the other jobs.

HOW THE AEMP STANDARD MAKES EVERYONE’S LIVES EASIER Steve Carozza is the business development manager for specialty trucks at Geotab, an open platform, and telematics hardware provider for multiple industries. He has expertise in both off-road and on-road equipment and has spent the better part of three decades working to make mobility solutions more accessible and easier to understand for users.

Q. What do off-road equipment managers need from their telematics solutions?

Off-road is really telematics circa 2011, so going back a decade where you’re not getting everything that’s built into your system unlike the on-road industry, which has become very sophisticated. Some of the things that you are able to get on off-road equipment that would really help a fleet manager is GPS coordinates for equipment, fuel usage, PTO usage, and alerts on weight parameters and equipment misuse that could be a safety issue for the operator and company.

Q. What’s unique about those needs from a hardware perspective?

Off-road equipment needs to be IP68 to IP69K rated so that it’s encased to be put into the elements – hot water, high-pressure washing, and dust resistant. But you want it to have “the same guts” as what you can get for use in on-road vehicles and your hardware should be able to produce the same amount of data.

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THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BECOMING A HEAVY EQUIPMENT FLEET MANAGER

BY KAREN SCALLY, GEARFLOW.COM

BY ANOO – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

I

t’s not unusual for heavy equipment fleet managers to stumble into their roles.

Either they didn’t know these careers existed when they started out or they knew little about the path to reach a fleet management position.

“When I started here, I didn’t know there was an equipment manager,” says Dan Kunce, equipment manager at Hawkins Construction Company in Omaha, Nebraska. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

It’s hard to pursue a job or develop career aspirations for a role if you aren’t even aware it’s a possibility.

Most people who are interested in heavy equipment are familiar with operators and mechanics. We’ve created this guide to help shed light on how to become a heavy equipment fleet manager: everything you need to know from how to get started in the field to which skills you’ll need to cultivate and what salary you can expect to earn.

You’ll hear from experienced fleet managers,

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each coming from one of the four most common pathways that lead into an equipment management career, and what they’ve learned and wished they had known much sooner.

If you’re currently a heavy equipment fleet manager, this guide is still useful for you.

Most likely, there are team members in your organization that would be interested to learn more about this role and what it would take to achieve it. We’ve designed this to be a resource you can share to help get them on their way.

Are you ready to learn all about becoming a heavy equipment fleet manager? Let’s begin.

• Planning the operating budget for the equipment division, tracking expenses, and approving invoices • Acquiring equipment, parts, and fuel, and maintaining their vendor relationships • Overseeing equipment inspections and maintenance, which includes the preventive maintenance strategy as well as repairs • Monitoring equipment utilization, life-cycle costs, and rates • Implementing fleet management and maintenance technology • Providing training and education that ensures safety standards and best practices are met • Managing their teams, which can include shop supervisors, service technicians, parts managers, parts runners, dispatchers, logistics coordinators, data analysts, and others Basically, the goal of the heavy equipment fleet manager is to increase profit margins through the effective management of both the organization’s fleet and its personnel.

They work across departments with job sponsors, project managers, site supervisors, operations, purchasing, accounting/finance, IT, safety, and HR, and they travel to sites as needed.

Fleet managers typically report directly to the C-suite or may even serve on the executive team in some organizations.

What Does a Heavy Equipment Fleet Manager Do? Over the past few decades, the profession of heavy equipment management has transformed from focusing mostly on maintenance and shop oversight to one that is increasingly involved in an organization’s contracts, safety, sustainability, vendor relationships, budgeting, and use of capital.

We can see just how much the fleet manager role encompasses by taking a look at the certified equipment manager (CEM) designation, which was created in 1996 by the Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP) as a way for fleet management professionals to distinguish themselves through continuing education.

In order to earn the certification, heavy equipment managers must demonstrate thorough knowledge of five standards and 17 core competencies and have at least five years of fleet management experience.

What are a fleet manager’s responsibilities within the organization?

Though the heavy equipment fleet manager role will vary somewhat in its specific responsibilities within each organization, we’ve identified several overall themes in our review of fleet manager job descriptions.

They are responsible for:

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What influence will fleet managers have in the future?

As the importance of the heavy equipment manager continues to develop, it is increasingly touching more departments and becoming more integrated into the C-suite as an essential source for decision making.

One particular sphere where equipment managers will see their influence grow in the coming years is with an organization’s sustainability efforts. Moving forward, fleet managers will play a pivotal role in achieving sustainability goals.

“I envision that very shortly, when we bid a job or we forecast the job, we’re going to see how much equipment we need, what that’s going to cost, and how much of a carbon impact it’s going to have,” says Mason Ford, director of sustainability and equipment services at Skanska.

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What education and training are needed to become a heavy equipment fleet manager?

Education and Experience A college degree is not required across the board in order to become a fleet manager; most organizations will allow equivalent work experience in equipment maintenance, operations, engineering, construction management, or business management.

However, if pursuing higher education, many organizations say they look for candidates who have a bachelor’s degree in construction management, engineering, or business.

Associate’s degrees or technical training, such as in a diesel technician program, are also acceptable.

Anywhere from two to 10 years of equipment maintenance or management is required for an individual to move into a fleet manager role.

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Skills Beyond their equipment knowledge, heavy equipment fleet managers are also expected to have skills in the following areas: • Construction practices • Business principles • Computer skills • Organizational skills • Team management skills • Decision-making capabilities • Communication skills • Ability to multitask and work under pressure • Time management skills • Negotiating skills • Critical thinking and problem solving skills

Equipment Management Specialist What it is: The Equipment Management Specialist (EMS) certificate course is designed for those who are new to heavy equipment fleet management (less than five years of experience) or as the first step to get a CEM designation. It is also ideal for organizations that are looking to create an equipment manager role, covering 17 core competencies essential for asset management.

Format: Self-guided online program available through AEMP University.

Time commitment: Estimated 35-40 hours; course materials available for one year after enrollment.

Requirements: No requirements

Professional Growth Fleet managers can continue their professional development by joining AEMP, which was founded in 1982.

AEMP is the premier association dedicated to advancing heavy equipment fleet management professionals across a wide variety of industries, including those that work in the construction, government, utilities, energy, mining, and others.

It provides continuing education, certification, and networking benefits to its members, with a mission to build excellence in equipment management.

The association has about 800 equipment professionals as members, and it works in coordination with the Associated Equipment Distributors and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers to form the Equipment Triangle, which describes the integral relationship between the end user, distributor, and manufacturer.

Certified Equipment Manager What it is: The Certified Equipment Manager (CEM) is the industry’s premier recognition of fleet management qualifications, demonstrating a mastery of five standards and 17 core competencies.

Format: Exam offered during in-person AEMP Connect and Equipment Shift conferences or at a local certified testing center.

Time commitment: Four to five hours spent studying each chapter of the Career Equipment Fleet Manager Manual.

Requirements: Minimum five years of equipment management experience plus 25 “points” of accumulated experience and continuing education hours in order to complete the application packet for the exam.

AEMP also offers a course, called the IGNITE Learning Lab, to help individuals prepare for the CEM exam. IGNITE is offered twice a year at inperson events and twice a year online. Interested participants can learn how to register here.

It’s important to note that the CEM designation must be renewed every five years by completing 40 hours of continuing education during that time; no retesting is required.

AEMP offers about 35-40 CE hours each year that can be obtained by attending its

Certification As part of its member benefits, AEMP offers a certificate program (Equipment Management Specialist) and a certification (Certified Equipment Manager) for heavy equipment fleet managers.

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conferences or webinars, participating on committees, and serving in volunteer roles.

The association also recognizes relevant CE opportunities available from outside organizations.

What are the main pathways into heavy equipment fleet management?

AEMP has identified four main pathways of experience that most often lead into the equipment management field.

They are: 1. Maintenance 2. Operations 3. Equipment/Industry Technology 4. Business Management Heavy equipment fleet managers found that gaining experience in one or more of these areas was helpful in obtaining their current roles. We spoke with one fleet manager from each path to get their insights on how their experiences shaped them. Here are their stories.

“I’ve been around equipment since I was born pretty much,” Caldwell says. But it was the automotive industry that first attracted his interests. In high school, Caldwell bought a Volkswagen and joined a car club, and he could always be found tinkering under the hood.

He started an after-school job working as a technician at the local Jiffy Lube, doing oil changes and other undercarriage work. It was then that his dad tipped him off to a mechanic’s helper opening at Branch Civil.

The downside: The entry-level job came with a pay cut.

On the other hand, his dad said, the position was loaded with potential.

“He said it’s probably a really good opportunity with room for advancement later on,” Caldwell says.

Caldwell took the job, and in the years since, has learned his dad was right.

His origins in fleet maintenance set him off on a path that led to his current role as equipment superintendent, in charge of all day-to-day operations, including fueling and repairs, among many other responsibilities for the 900 assets in the heavy civil contractor’s fleet.

Branch Civil serves Virginia, West Virginia, and the Carolinas, with shops in both Roanoke and

MAINTENANCE PATH: CHRIS CALDWELL, BRANCH CIVIL Though most kids don’t want to admit it, listening to your parents usually does pay off. For Chris Caldwell, his trajectory into fleet management shows that in the end, his father did indeed know best.

From the beginning of his life, Caldwell grew up in a world immersed in all things construction.

His dad worked at both Cat and then Carter Machinery, one of Cat’s dealers in Virginia, before he eventually became a superintendent at Branch Civil, a site development contractor based in Roanoke, Virginia.

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Building On Experience Coupled with the management support and training he received, Caldwell says it’s his background in maintenance that gave him a personal advantage in his move to equipment management.

“Coming from the shop, you have a better understanding of timelines for repairs,” he says. “I think people that manage equipment that have never turned a wrench before, it’s a little bit different — not knowing the process of tearing something down, inspecting it, and troubleshooting it, and then making sure you’ve got the right parts and specs and tolerances and everything.”

That foundation of mechanical knowledge served as a springboard for Caldwell to dive into the various facets of heavy equipment management.

“What I didn’t know, I started asking questions, and I was eager to learn,” Caldwell says. “I think that the main thing for people is to always try to further yourself — read up on things that are most beneficial to you.”

Caldwell advises those interested in fleet management to see what training is offered by your vendors, such as your dealers, or to make the case with your supervisors about the value proposition from attending conferences, such as those put on by AEMP. For example, Caldwell took an HR course at a local community college to help develop his team management skills.

“Look for those things and present them and give them a return on their investment on how it can be beneficial,” he says. “It’s beneficial for you as a technician wanting to be an equipment manager and for the company, because they’re gaining someone with more knowledge who will better manage their equipment internally.”

Virginia Beach.

“I kind of have my hand on all of the aspects of it,” he says.

He also helps oversee what Branch Civil calls its Situational Awareness Room, or SAR, which is essentially the contractor’s command center that centralizes all fleet decisions.

“I’m kind of the quarterback for that,” Caldwell says. “So all recall requests that come into that, as far as equipment that needs repairs or anything like that, I make sure that they get the right piece of equipment at the right time for the best value.”

Finding The Role Models Deciding to get his foot in the door at Branch Civil — part of the Branch Group, an ENR Top 400 contractor — is not the only lesson Caldwell learned from his father.

His dad had earned his CEM designation, providing Caldwell some insights into the opportunities of equipment management, as he progressed from mechanic’s helper to fleet repairs to logistics and eventually, shop foreman.

In addition to the precedent set by his dad, Caldwell credits his shift from fleet maintenance to fleet management to the leadership at Branch Civil as well. Branch’s equipment operations manager, Tim Morgan, developed a training program that built on John Deere’s online courses for certified technicians. It exposed Caldwell to the broader experiences in the equipment management field, and also to Morgan, who is now his supervisor. “[Tim] has made sure that he’s put me in situations where I’m able to succeed, and he knows the things that I’m best at,” Caldwell says.

“He’s been instrumental in making sure that I have the support with that.”

With his dad’s example and Morgan’s guidance, Caldwell got involved with AEMP. That led to him earning his EMS — a requirement for all foremen at Branch Civil — and then his CEM the following year in 2017.

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raising my hands to do more things,” he says.

Now, Kunce is the equipment manager at Hawkins Construction Company, a heavy civil contractor in Omaha, Nebraska. He is responsible for overseeing the 25-person team in charge of about 1,000 fleet assets with an estimated value at $60 million.

Though his road to equipment management had twists and turns, Kunce sees experience in operations as an essential component to the role he fills today.

He thinks more operators should consider progressing into heavy equipment fleet management, and more contractors should foster growth and development of their crews in this way.

OPERATIONS PATH: DAN KUNCE, HAWKINS CONSTRUCTION As referenced in this guide’s introduction, when Dan Kunce first started in construction operations almost 15 years ago, he didn’t know that a heavy equipment fleet manager was even a thing.

“I knew a superintendent, and I knew a job sponsor — those were things, because you see those guys all the time, right?” he says. “You never saw any equipment managers. So I had assumed that my path was to just run work and run jobs.”

Truth be told, Kunce had never planned on going into construction in the first place.

He had joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school, and while there, he gained experience operating heavy equipment as a combat engineer. When he left the military and started looking for work, construction seemed like a natural fit.

He began as a laborer before moving to operations, setting his sights on a goal of becoming a superintendent or perhaps a job sponsor. So he decided to pursue a degree in construction management.

But after working under an equipment manager as a certified crane operator, a different path emerged.

“That equipment manager at the time really wanted me to be a part of his equipment fleet,” Kunce says. “He yanked me away from the jobs and put me under his wing.”

As he learned from him, his hunger for the role grew, and he saw that fleet management was an area where he could make an impact.

“I started to take on more and just kept

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Laying The Foundation Kunce’s perspective has admittedly evolved from the untraditional way that Hawkins functions. Everything there starts with time spent in the field.

“Even those kids who were getting out of college that really want to come into the office and just be a job sponsor — you’re not going to do that at Hawkins,” Kunce says. “You’re going to run a shovel for awhile. Everybody goes into the field at some point in their career, and it’s usually right at the beginning.”

This serves as an invaluable springboard into fleet management in particular, he says.

“I don’t see how anyone could come into this field without knowing equipment,” he says.

“Knowing what’s going on in the field is crucial to the operation of how we schedule.”

For example, when he worked in dispatching during one of his first forays on the fleet team, Kunce says he would often tap into that experience.

“When superintendents would call me and ask for an excavator to lay 18-in. pipe 4 ft. in the ground, they’d ask for the biggest possible excavator they could get it,” he says. “I’d be like, ‘Well, no, let’s think about this a little bit differently.’”

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Thirsting For More When coming from the operations side of the business into fleet management, Kunce there are some specific skills that may need to be strengthened. One of those is finances.

“I never really had much business,” he says.

“Although it is super easy here, because Hawkins pays cash for everything. We have no debt, we don’t finance anything, and there are no leases.

So that makes my job really easy.”

Another area that may need further development is team management.

“I come from the school of hard knocks,” Kunce says. “Talking with people and really training people and getting them to understand what we’re trying to do is maybe not on my strong side. So I’ve had to seek help in that and get help from people within the company — our owners and other top leaders in our company — to really learn how to deal with people better and treating them right.”

Preparing for the CEM exam and getting involved in AEMP can help with these skills, if you’re thirsty to learn, Kunce says. In return, you’ll develop a network of peers that can help further not only your own growth, but also that of your organization.

His biggest advice? Contractors should look for crew members that show an insatiable appetite for the jobs they do and the equipment they run — and then point them in the direction

With his operations insights, he could walk them through understanding the costs of running larger equipment for that application and offer better-suited alternatives, which would still get the job done just as quickly.

And as today’s construction equipment becomes more robust with technology, he says that without operational experience, it can make it quite challenging to navigate fleet decisions.

“With the younger-generation superintendents coming up, a lot of them come straight from college, and they might not have operated equipment,” Kunce says. “They don’t know there’s qualifying questions to ask to understand if the equipment’s the right fit for the job.”

Kunce says even the service technicians can benefit from learning how to operate equipment, which is something else that Hawkins does.

“We make sure our mechanics have the basic fundamentals of operating a piece of equipment,” he says. “I don’t need them to be in a production situation, where they have to make costs. But they’ve got to know what that thing does, how it moves, and how it operates — aside from just replacing the belt or cleaning out the radiator.”

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© 2022 Caterpillar. All Rights Reserved. CAT, CATERPILLAR, LET’S DO THE WORK, their respective logos, “Caterpillar Corporate Yellow”, the “Power Edge” and Cat “Modern Hex” trade dress, as well as corporate and product identity used herein, are trademarks of Caterpillar and may not be used without permission.

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WHAT’S THE RIGHT MOVE FOR CONTINUING YOUR EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT EDUCATION?

CRAFT A WINNING STRATEGY A NEW COURSE FROM CATERPILLAR UNIVERSITY

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Build expertise in equipment costs and lifecycle management with our new virtual, video-based course led by Mike Vorster, author of Construction Equipment Economics and President of C.E.M.P. Central Inc. The Fundamentals of Equipment Economics course will help you master essential skills and strategies that lower costs and improve business performance, all while earning continuing education credits from AEMP. It also helps you identify: Critical success factors and equipment management functions for your business Definitions and characteristics of owning/operating costs, and how to weigh associated risks How to use cost control principles to produce actionable information for your business How to make the decision to repair, rebuild or replace a machine in your fleet How to calculate your owning and operating rate An understanding of depreciation and interest charges The impact of machine utilization and job charges Organization structure and the complex flow of funds How to increase machine uptime and decrease machine downtime

The Fundamentals of Equipment Economics curriculum is endorsed by the Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP) and provides six education hours towards AEMP’s CEM/CESP certification. Those who complete the entire online coursework receive a 10% discount on the AEMP certification exam fee.

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of fleet management.

“I’ve taken a young kid in his 20s who started out on the building side,” Kunce says. “His path was never to be an equipment person. Well, now, he doesn’t want to go back.

His interest in both equipment and technology led him to shift gears and become more involved in keeping fleets up and running, first with a role at Cianbro, a construction firm based in Maine, and now as a regional equipment manager for Kiewit.

Digging Into Technology Hall developed his enthusiasm for equipment technology during his time selling and servicing welders, which he did for 20 years.

“That’s where my passion for technology came from, because they were implementing all these technology changes through the ’90s and into the 2000s,” he says. “I found that to be very interesting.”

After a decade of selling lifting equipment, Hall took a job as the maintenance supervisor at Cianbro, where he played a pivotal role in implementing telematics and diagnostic software throughout the fleet. Though the company is in the early days of the technological transformation of their fleet, which consists of about 1,500 assets, Hall says they’ve already seen productivity improvements.

“It’s getting the information into the proper hands as quickly as possible,” Hall says. “If a defect is noted on a piece of equipment, rather than go through the paper trail, it’ll automatically come to the maintenance group, where we can make a decision on its severity and how quickly to dispatch somebody to address it.”

Hall says he didn’t need to get a degree or take a course before realizing that heading in this direction was the right choice. His curiosity drove him to find out more about how technology could impact fleet operations.

“I began researching it on my own,” he says.

“I knew the basic information you needed to have, and then it was just learning on my own to find out what we need and how do we begin to integrate that into our software systems and our day-to-day business — and how we manage it.”

For those that have an interest in equipment and technology, Hall says fleet management

TECHNOLOGY PATH: MARK HALL, KIEWIT Mark Hall is passionate about equipment, not just because of how it performs, but because of how it can speak to us.

Hall spent about 30 years in equipment sales and service before getting into fleet management, and during that time, he’s seen the technology in equipment evolve tremendously, in ways that add value beyond its mere function.

He’s grown to be completely captivated by the stories that equipment can tell.

“What piques my interest the most is the amount of information you can gather out of a piece of equipment today,” Hall says.

You just need to listen closely and pay attention to what it’s saying.

“What is it telling us about the problems that we can address prior to failure, so that we can drive this organization away from being reactive?”

Hall says. “Because when a piece is down, it becomes an enormous cost burden. And if you can avoid that, then you’re much further ahead in the game.”

So after three decades on the distributor side, Hall’s career had a plot twist.

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WHAT’S IN A NAME? today blends the best of both worlds. With new developments constantly on the horizon, such as autonomous equipment and wearables, technology is changing the way fleet managers need to look at their work.

“When you really stop and look at it, the visibility you have remotely into what’s going on at the job is incredible,” Hall says. “Because not only can you see your equipment and manage your equipment, but you’re also seeing the people as well.”

Preparing For Change Hall wants to take what he has learned on his journey from equipment sales and service to help expose those in maintenance or other fields to the opportunities of fleet management, particularly if they are attracted by the innovations of technology.

He thinks more organizations need to develop training programs that move technicians along this pipeline.

“Why wouldn’t I take some of my seasoned guys that know the mechanics of equipment and start sending them in towards the management part of it,” he says.

“Even if they don’t end up in a role where they have to have that knowledge, it helps them understand the whole picture.”

Fleet manager, equipment manager, fleet director, equipment superintendent — there are many different ways to describe this role that oversees an organization’s heavy equipment.

The Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP) prefers the term “equipment manager,” because the position often is responsible for all rolling stock (both on-highway and off-highway vehicles) in addition to other assets.

However, for the purposes of this guide, we are choosing to primarily use “heavy equipment fleet manager” to distinguish it as a search term for those trying to find information on this topic.

“Heavy equipment fleet manager” differentiates it in searches from “equipment manager,” which can also refer to an athletic equipment manager, and “fleet manager,” which can refer to those who oversee on-highway or rental vehicle fleets.

That being said, we will use these terms interchangeably to reflect their synonymous nature and the fact that many organizations do as well. him more determined to find a way forward. He has an ability to visualize a goal and not much is going to get in his way of reaching it.

Case in point, he married his high school sweetheart a few days before their graduation.

“Someone said we couldn’t, so then it was like, well, I’ll show you,” Williams says.

So he and his wife had their wedding on Saturday and walked in their commencement ceremony the following Wednesday. About 25 years and two daughters later, they are still together.

Williams has framed his career in similar fashion: Once the destination is clear, he sets out to achieve it.

That’s not to say his road to fleet management hasn’t had its obstacles. In reality, it’s had more than most, taking him out of the

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT PATH: ADAM WILLIAMS, MCG CIVIL Adam Williams is the kind of guy who doesn’t back down from a challenge.

In fact, if he’s told no, that usually just makes

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IS IT TIME TO CONSIDER

ELECTRIC?

To help you better judge if electric is right for you, we’re addressing some of the top considerations for making the switch.

POWER When it comes to power and performance, most electrically powered machines are either comparable to or exceed their diesel counterparts. For example, the Volvo ECR25 electric excavator and L25 electric wheel loader boast nearly identical specs to their diesel equivalents —in some cases, they’re improvements.

MAINTENANCE With electric, there’s no engine-related maintenance. The lithium-ion batteries and electric motors are totally maintenance-free. The lifetime of the battery electric components should be equal to or better than the diesel engine on a conventional machine.

CHARGING When it comes to electric equipment, an adequate charging infrastructure is key, so you’ll want to plan on more than standard household outlets. For optimal overnight charging, it’s strongly recommended to have a 240-volt, 32-amp charging infrastructure in place to ensure the machines have plenty of power for the next day’s tasks.

With an optional fast charging device, it takes less than one hour to charge the ECR25 back to 80%, and about one and a half hours for the L25.

COMFORT Serious reductions in noise and vibration mean smooth, quiet operation and less fatigue for operators after several hours of work. It’s a difference they’ll notice immediately, and one they’ll appreciate long-term.

DISCOVER NEW JOB OPPORTUNITIES While investing in electric equipment comes with a lot of considerations, there are serious advantages to having a hybrid fleet, like putting construction equipment to work on jobs that were never possible before with only diesel-powered equipment.

Take some time now to think about the ways electric could help you reinvent the way you do business in the future — you could get a leg up in markets you may have thought were off the table.

Curious what early adopters of electric construction equipment think?

SEE HOW ELECTRIC STACKS UP TO DIESEL

heavy equipment field for awhile. But he’s always found a way around whatever was blocking him.

Though his entry into the heavy equipment world was through maintenance, it quickly became clear that he possesses the skills required for management. By 24, he was put in a leadership role at Coburn Equipment, a heavy equipment rental company in Southern California.

On the one hand, he says he felt unprepared to supervise technicians who he respected immensely, with decades more experience than himself. Then he realized you don’t necessarily need to know everything in order to manage a team — or a fleet — well.

“My job is to make people play nice together and help them understand what’s important to fix and when,” Williams says. “I don’t need to be the expert on how to fix every single technical piece.”

He recognized that what he was truly passionate about was leading people and processes.

“That’s what I love — I love fixing the system and making the system work,” he says.

That ambition eventually led him to his current position on the executive team at MCG Civil, a Denver-area construction firm that manages heavy civil and general contracting companies.

So Williams grabbed a nearby piece of welder’s soapstone, took a piece of steel from the back of the work truck, and proceeded to sketch out a plan.

“I told him that when you finish that, come back and talk to me, and that you’re not allowed to make decisions about what you’re going to fix anymore,” he says.

What Williams didn’t know was that his boss, owner Ray Coburn, was watching. The following week, he was promoted to operations manager.

Though he still had much to learn, Williams says he benefited from the owner always having his back and trusting him with the decisions he made.

Making A Change In 2009, Williams and his family moved to Colorado. He had already surpassed the number of hours required by his union in California for full retirement benefits, so he thought maybe it was time for a change.

He decided to go back to school to get a doctor of physical therapy degree, but discovered that calculus-based physics classes weren’t for him. So he did a complete pivot and earned an associate’s degree in fine art photography.

However, as he started his photography career, he felt restless, with an urge to return to the heavy equipment industry.

One day in 2015 while at a photography appointment, he noticed a shop for HEI Civil, a heavy civil contractor, across the road.

“It was like divine intervention,” Williams says.

He took a job with the contractor, and within a year, one of the founders retired, leaving Williams to basically take over his position in charge of all the equipment.

Not long after, Williams had yet another rather serendipitous moment. He was heading out of Las Vegas after the CONEXPO-CON/AGG trade show, and he found a flyer at the airport about AEMP. That introduction to the association eventually led Williams to obtain his CEM. Now,

Forming A Plan Williams’ innate ability to triage a situation was what pushed him into management in the first place.

While at Coburn, he says he was growing increasingly frustrated by late nights spent on never-ending repairs, without any real organization in place to promote equipment uptime. One day, after a coworker voiced that he was about to fix a nonessential component, Williams had had enough.

“I’m like, that’s not going to help that machine run tomorrow — you need to prioritize this,” he says.

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he oversees an annual fleet budget of about $70 million, as the executive vice president of asset management at MCG Civil, the management company that oversees HEI Civil, Peabody General Contractors, and Horsepower Site Services.

Though he admits he had a bit of a nontraditional route to his current role, Williams says he thinks fleet managers as a whole could profit from acquiring more business management skills.

“You’re running a business within a business,” he says. “You just need to be good at business and learn what are the strategies and practices that help you be a better individual to operate your business.”

What’s next for Williams? He’s considering getting his MBA, which he thinks will serve him well in the boardroom working with the C-suite.

Regardless, he wants to keep learning and growing, and he doesn’t think that’s a desire that will ever go away — nor should it, for those in fleet management.

“I perform better when I am working on me,” he says. “And I’m always passionate about my guys elevating their own careers.”

positions, from equipment/fleet managers to corporate equipment directors. Across all those that participated, the median annual salary is $125,000.

Let’s compare that to the salaries of service technicians and construction equipment operators, which are two of the main pathways into heavy equipment fleet management.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2020 median annual salary was $50,200 for diesel service technicians and mechanics and $53,370 for heavy vehicle and mobile equipment service technicians.

For construction equipment operators, it was $49,100.

That means if you hold one of these roles and decide to pursue a career in fleet management, it could result in a significant bump in pay, with the median salary of fleet managers about 2.5x more.

The actual spread for fleet management salaries is quite broad, ranging from about $75,000 on the low end to $250,000 on the upper end. To see how fleet management salaries vary depending on an organization’s size, we broke down the data further by a company’s estimated annual revenue.

Here’s the average salary for those with equipment or fleet manager titles at companies with: • <$10 million in annual revenue: $91,500 • $10-49 million in annual revenue: $111,000 • >$50 million in annual revenue: $126,000 According to survey respondents, those with corporate, director, or vice president of equipment management titles are likely to be

Benefits of Becoming a Fleet Manager How Much Do Heavy Equipment Fleet Managers Earn?

It’s the elephant in the room: What kind of earnings can you expect if you choose fleet management as a career?

We analyzed salary data anonymously submitted in December 2021 from about 70 AEMP members who hold fleet management

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paid more. Here’s the average salary for those titles at companies with: • <$100 million: $150,000 • $100-499 million in annual revenue: $167,000 • $500 million in annual revenue: $187,500 Several respondents also reported opportunities to earn bonuses on top of their annual salaries, as well as allowances or stipends that contribute to their income.

Hawkins Construction.

“I can wear about 10 different hats a day,” he says. “Sometimes I wear one hat for a day, and sometimes I wear all 10 of those hats for a day.”

For those that thrive off high energy, fleet management is a good fit.

As a self-described adrenaline junkie, Kunce rises before dawn to coach CrossFit at 4 a.m. and fills his free time with jiu jitsu and sports with his kids. He can’t stand to sit still, which he says is common among the culture at Hawkins.

“The entire company is essentially the same way,” he says.

And if there’s a moral that can be drawn from the story of Kiewit’s Hall, it’s pursue what interests you. You’re never too far into your career to head down a different path.

“It is funny, because I’m not a young man,” he says. “I embrace the technology. I do not run from it. Not everyone is like that.”

If you’re looking to become a fleet manager in today’s world, Hall says you have to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and prepare for an adventure.

“The only thing I can say is embrace what’s coming at you,” he says.

“Embrace the change.”

What Is The Demand For Heavy Equipment Fleet Managers?

According to Indeed.com, there were about 6,500 heavy equipment fleet manager job openings in February 2022 in the U.S. As we’ve previously highlighted, a role in fleet management is a great way to advance the careers of equipment operators and service technicians, which combined to make up about 950,000 jobs in 2020 in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Fleet managers work closely with upper-level management an are instrumental in shaping an organization’s budgeting, forecasting, and profitability.

With asset management and maintenance technologies continually evolving, expect to see fleet managers increasingly play critical roles in the success of their organizations.

Why Choose Heavy Equipment Fleet Management?

If you’re someone who has an interest in heavy equipment and also likes to be constantly learning, digging into the details, establishing processes, and stepping up as a leader, fleet management may be a rewarding career choice for you.

“You need to be curious and flexible,” says Branch Civil’s Caldwell. “Ask questions and be eager to learn. A lot of times, it’s just listening to what people are saying and what’s going on — and finding solutions on a day-to-day basis.” t’s definitely not a boring role, says Kunce of

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DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR COMPANY IS SPENDING TOO LITTLE OT TOO MUCH ON FLEET UPKEEP? HOW ARE YOU MONITORING FLEET PERFORMANCE AND COSTS? The Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP) and the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) have partnered to help answer these questions by developing the Heavy Equipment Comparator.

THE HEAVY EQUIPMENT COMPARATOR: • P rovides a set of 32 KPIs to help measure your heavy fleet’s performance and costs in 9 categories • P rovides performance benchmarks to measure progress • I mproves dialogue and collaboration among construction financial professionals and fleet managers • E stablished common terminology and standards to help financial and fleet managers identify issues and make adjustments for improved fleet productivity and results.

BENEFITS OF PARTICIPATING Interactive Peer Report Credit

Company Performance Report (CPR)

Heavy Equipment Comparator PDF Report

You will receive one Peer Group Comparison Report Credit which can be used toward an interactive “Peer Group Comparison Report”, a user-generated online tool that compares your results to the aggregated results of up to five different industry peer groups. Groups could include companies by total construction revenue, berst in class companies, etc.

You will receive a complimentary CPR – a confidential, individualized report fo that features your own metrics and operating statistics, shown alongside data groupings that are most comparable. These reports make it easy to utilize the results, since your metrics are calculated for you and displayed alongside the industry benchmarks

You will receive a discount (50% off the purchase) on the Heavy Equipment Comparator PDF. This report includes a detailed analysis of the results segmented by ky characteristics.

This report also features helpful tips and guidelines for understanding and applying the results.

ABOUT INDUSTRY INSIGHTS AND CONFIDENTIALITY To ensure confidentiality, the AEMP and CFMA has retained the services of the Industry Insights, an independent research and analytics firm based in Columbus, OH. Industry Insights will distribute the survey and collect and process the survey results. Industry Insights is one of the largest and most-respected survey research firms in the country. They have processed millions of survey questionnaires and are highly sensitive to the confidential and proprietary interests of survey respondents.

All responses will be returned directly to the Industry Insights, where they will be kept in strict confidence; no individual company responses will be shared with CMFA/AEMP or any other person or organization.

IT STARTS WITH YOU

5 TIPS FOR BUILDING TRUST AND CREATING A CULTURE WHERE PEOPLE WANT TO WORK (And Why You Need It In The First Place)

BY BETHANY CHAMBERS, FORCONSTRUCTIONPROS.COM

BY TUND – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

C

ompany culture is about a shared vision throughout the organization, from the receptionist to the owner. The perks of an organization can add to a great culture, but there has to be a purpose, a reason everyone gets up in the morning and comes to work. Managers, including equipment, fleet and safety managers, can instill positive culture in their organization in a way that breeds retention, growth, positivity and value—here’s how.

Kenneth Roy III owns a paving company, but the most important thing he owns is his role in making that company’s culture one that values team members whether they’re in the office or out in the field.

Corporate culture hasn’t traditionally been a top concern of construction companies large and small. In an industry with a high percentage of unskilled or transient labor and high turnover, culture wasn’t viewed as a priority because it didn’t translate into higher retention or higher profits.

THAT WAS THEN Today, the construction industry has a void of talent that only stands to increase over the coming years. According to the Associated Builders and Contractors, the construction industry needs to attract another half a million workers this year to catch up – and even then, the industry needs another 300,000 workers to be hired in 2024. Especially for the younger generations of workers who are replacing the long-time pros who are retiring en masse, culture is a selling point for both attracting and retaining talent.

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BY TSHIDZUMBA/PEOPLEIMAGES.COM – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

“I’ve learned: I take care of them. They take care of me back. It’s a two-way street, literally for every single person in the company.”

—KENNETH ROY III, PRESIDENT OF ROYAL PAVEMENT SOLUTIONS

WHY IT MATTERS Kim MacDonald is one of the experts who trains large construction companies to move toward a more progressive corporate culture. Her Canada-based company, 13 FACTORS, provides psychological health and safety training for workplaces worldwide.

“Psychological safety is an outcome of culture, and it is linked to trust,” she says.

Construction companies today are prioritizing culture because of what MacDonald defines as “The Three C’s.”

Compliance. In the last 5 years with the advent of the #metoo movement, regulatory authorities have cracked down on harassment in the workplace. Gone are the days of the team half-heartedly watching the sexual harassment video once a year as a check-the-box activity.

Today there’s training around cross-cultural communications, racial and ethnic discrimination, diversity, inclusion and more that companies take seriously.

And compliance isn’t just motivated by external sources. Internally, companies are finding that good culture correlates to good governance, and good governance translates to higher revenue, better supplier relations and more resilience in a down economy. “There’s legislation we have on the extreme ends, like violence in the workplace,” says MacDonald. “But there’s a huge

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BY NVB STOCKER | ADOBESTOCK

gray area of things that are frustrating at work, and frustration adds up.”

Competition. Businesses are fighting to get the best labor in a tight market, which means anything that can set it apart could mean the difference between growth and stagnation. Nothing does more for beating the competition than having employees who want to refer their friends and family to come work with them because they believe they’ll be compensated fairly, treated right and have opportunities for advancement to keep them on track for a career in construction.

Care. The global movement that prioritizes mental health and emotional well-being of the whole person—at work and at home— started with the pandemic and continues.

Everyone knows someone who struggled during work stoppages, stay-at-home orders and a time of unprecedented illness and death. The World Health Organization showed a massive 25% increase in diagnosed cases of anxiety and depression – and that was just the people who sought and received diagnoses. In the construction industry, that simply compounded existing issues. In a career that can have long hours, physical exhaustion, job insecurity and isolated taskoriented or job-hopping work, the suicide rate in this industry is almost twice that of other

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occupations according to the CDC. More deaths are attributed to suicide than to OSHA’s defined Fatal Four (falls, electrocution, struck-by accidents and caught-in-between accidents) combined. That needs to end.

“It’s devastating because the suicide ideation is well beyond the numbers of death by suicide, and the impact is far reaching. If you have a partner and you have children and you have friends, the impact is also on them and it’s on the whole community,” MacDonald says.

THE QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY In small to mid-size organizations, like Roy’s, all of this falls to the owner and operator to make business decisions on and to enact and enforce. But as the organization grows in size, that becomes the dedicated role of the human resources (HR) manager.

The problem as MacDonald and others in the field see it is that the HR professional, even ones who are trained and accredited not just appointed by way of availability or convenience, is that HR can’t put culture first because of more pressing tactical work and because HR is not embedded in the other functions of the organization.

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sphere, you are not going to make an impact because you’ve done exactly what we’ve always done, which is give the responsibility to someone and forget about it,” she says.

That’s where construction companies taking the lead have developed new roles— additive positions, not just trendy titles or additional duties lumped on one person—that are responsible for culture.

Total Process Reliability (TPR) These positions are responsible for equipment reliability and creating processes around asset management, but some organizations have found that people are at the heart of their TPR success and have tasked these managers with culture improvements.

Technical Program Manager (TPM) As the center of all projects and someone who is already managing the people, this front-line professional is also critical to culture and can often ascertain what incentives will lead to improved safety and happiness.

Chief Culture Officer (CCO) In a lot of organizations the HR leader has simply been renamed to the catchier CCO title, but in others this is a unique position and looks less at administrative duties, which stays with HR, wand more at the people on the other side of that paperwork.

Of course, it comes down to money.

Whether the company can afford it now and whether leadership can find the return on investment.

Like MacDonald, Wally Adamchik presented on the subject of culture at CONEXPO-CON/ AGG 2023. And, like MacDonald, Adamchik is a former construction worker who was born and raised in the business. Having seen first-hand how culture affects the workplace, Adamchik says unique positions, if additive, can be useful, but they shouldn’t make others think they’re off the hook.

“I believe every person in the organization is responsible for culture,” he says.

Roy, who has owned his own company for

Journal of Equipment Management

“I believe every person in the organization is responsible for culture.”

-WALLY ADAMCHIK, PRESIDENT AT FIRESTARTING SPEAKING AND CONSULTING

a decade now, says he doesn’t assign the goal of culture to his employees, but he believes they will pick up the banner: “I have to set the precedent first. It has to start with me at the top.”

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER For managers who are hoping to be the change in their organizations, all three of our experts have some advice that allow you to get to work today.

Tip #1: Simplify your core values.

Wally Adamchik worked with FMI Consulting before founding his own firm, FireStarter, and has seen companies of all sizes, especially in the construction industry. One thing that helps leadership convey what they want of the culture is a unique tagline or mission statement.

Be different. Adamchik says you need to think outside the box. “So many contractors still have the template from 20 years ago of ‘safety, quality, and integrity.’ I think it stands out when you look at a firm where the words are truly theirs,” Adamchik says. “C.W. Matthews Contracting Co. has a tagline of ‘Getting Georgia Home.’ Nobody else can say that.

People will see that, and know it’s something special.”

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had meaning to Roy and his leadership team.

“Our three core values are ‘Respect.

Passion. Service.’ Nothing’s written on the wall in front of everybody. We want the entire company to live it, not just read it,” he says.

“Treat others the way you would expect to be treated. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. If you’re respectful and passionate about what you do, you’ll have a real heart to heart conversation with somebody potentially and maybe learn more about what’s going on in their life and you can be of service to them.

So it all starts with respect.”

If you’re not sure where to start with your values, look to the research conducted by Adamchik and his firm.

“Trust, pride and camaraderie. Trust in my immediate supervisor, pride in my organization and camaraderie with those whom I work. Organizations that score high in all those metrics have better retention, which leads to higher quality, better safety, and those things lead to higher productivity and then higher profitability,” he says.

Be the best. Work toward the goal of becoming an award-winning “Great Place to Work” and doing whatever it takes to achieve that goal.

Tip #2: Be transparent.

With a majority of workers today saying they don’t have the tools they need to be successful, it’s no surprise that a recent Gallup poll showed 85% weren’t engaged at work.

Adamchik says if managers are off fighting other fires and aren’t stopping to take the time to lead—to show employees what success looks like and get them the tools they need— that won’t ever change.

Share information. Sharing cost and production numbers and showing the team what winning projects look like inspires confidence and also allows team members to frame their requests for the right tools around a business case, i.e. if they want estimating

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software that will help save on costs they can give concrete numbers to support their assumptions. Even though it may be uncomfortable to have those conversations, especially on projects that didn’t have stellar results, sharing the load can be good for manager and employee.

Explain decisions. If you’ve empowered your team with information, it’s also easier to explain your decisions quickly and succinctly so they know that there is a strategy at play— or at least some method to the madness that can unfold on a jobsite. Again, even the manager is served by the activity of explaining decisions, from talking through the thought process to validating their ideas.

MacDonald says this fosters “psychological flexibility.”

“When I’m doing psychological health and safety training or helping leaders become create environments that are psychologically safe and that culture,” she explains, “then it helps to go through things like understanding your own bias, understanding when you are making a decision based on a long-held belief as opposed to what’s in front of you.”

Talk about pay. Another tough conversation but one that can benefit the whole crew is to make sure that pay structures are standardized in a way that incentivizes high quality, high productivity and safety – and that the pay structure is transparent.

Businesses often assume this will encourage people to ask for more money, but it’s often the opposite. Where there is no secrecy in pay, people can focus on their jobs and stay for the culture.

“There are attraction factors and retention factors, and money is absolutely an attraction factor,” Adamchik says. “The misbelief that throwing more money at people will cause them to stay, is wrong.”

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and to make sure the newest person on the crew is treated with the same respect as the oldest, and that everyone is cross trained to help each other.

He points to a situation from a few years back where a 25-year-old hotshot had just started and didn’t want to do the drudge jobs assigned by his managers because he recognized his own skills. The dynamic created a rift in the team. Roy didn’t wait long to act.

“I went out to the job site with him as the owner and said, ‘Show me what you can do.’

And he worked next to me, and I worked next to him. I led, not by words, just by actions,” Roy recalls. “I am not afraid to get my hands dirty. I would never ask anybody to do anything I don’t know how to do myself. So I get out there, I work with the crew, and all of a sudden, you see it’s not important who is ‘best’ in the company.”

The employee is still with the company today, now imparting his own wisdom as a manager.

Tip #3: Put people first.

One thing that really bothers Adamchik is the constant refrain that the construction industry has a labor shortage. He says that’s a cop-out that allows companies to avoid addressing the bigger concerns this article has already mentioned.

Look for trainable people. “Every year, companies hire tens or hundreds of people, but they don’t retain them. If there’s a shortage, I wouldn’t be able to find them in the first place! It’s not that we can’t find people, it’s that we can’t find the people we want. We’re trying to find people who we can mold to our preferred image.”

Instead, companies need to embrace diversity, and managers need to train employees to do the jobs, not to be the same as you.

Offer real referral bonuses. The first element of that is getting in trainable people.

And for that Adamchik says the industry

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standard of a $250-500 employee referral program is outdated. Today’s rates need to reflect the value of good employees – so think 10x that old model. The money should be enough make an impact on the employee’s life and their family, so they want to bring more family and friends on board.

Bridge the field-office chasm. Having a close friend at work and work life balance are key signs of a successful business, yet only 50% of field workers have that. As MacDonald explained before, your field workers often change locations and job roles, are working in noisy, busy environments and have seasonal furloughs making it hard to make friends. That means the onus is on the managers to bring people together, especially field and office employees.

While Roy and Adamchik both agree a pizza party is not a bonus incentive and should never be used as a forced teambuilding activity, they do see a lunch together as a chance to talk about work and life.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if we had the dispatcher, the equipment manager, somebody from estimating and somebody from the plant to talk about their days? Now for the content we can teach leadership – in the field, in accounting, applicable in every role,” Adamchik says. “But more importantly, we’re intentionally bridging those gaps. There’s no substitute for spending time with someone. It’s a chance to see that we’re really all the same to a great extent and that creates empathy and respect and trust.”

Catch people doing something right.

Once people know each other, they can cheer each other on. That’s when it becomes important to keep up the momentum. And one great way to do that is for people to get recognition for their work, no matter the job, no matter how long they’ve been doing it, and for that recognition to be called out publicly so that everyone can share in the success.

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trust in business, the clergy, congress, the military. Trust in my immediate supervisor is critical. Every day you are provided numerous opportunities to give positive recognition and build relationships. Employee’s first day? Oh, you have your PPE on – that’s great!” Adamchik says. “Think: What’s going to cause somebody to take a bullet for you?”

Tip #4: Cultivate curiousity.

MacDonald says keeping people engaged at work and interested in the industry comes down to one thing: Curiosity. And the best way to instill that curiosity is to demonstrate it.

Ask questions. “Start with: ‘Why are you doing that?’ And then someone tells you why they’re doing it, and you ask ‘Why is that important to you?’” They don’t all have to be “why” questions—there can also be the 5W’s and the H (who, what, where, when, why, and how). The goal is to get people thinking about their actions at work, the impact those actions have, and if there is an opportunity for improvement. It may also help you, as the manager, and the employee address any underlying beliefs that could hold you back.

Answer questions. Of course, if you’re going to be asking them, you better be prepared to answer them too. Adamchik advises managers to take a beat and rather than tell a worker to go fix the problem each time a questions is asked to instead treat

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each questions as if it’s the first.

That requires patience, but it will encourage employees to come to you with questions or concerns. Roy says he saw this first-hand with an employee who had been a no-call, no-show for an entire week. When he returned, he asked “Why haven’t you just fired me?” Roy said it was simple: He wasn’t going to fire an employee over a mental health crisis.

“I’m a human. I’ve been there myself. I get it’s tough. I have to take the company out of the equation for a second. Take your hat as a CEO off for just a second. If this person was your friend, what would you be telling them? ‘Hey, man, everything’s going to be okay.’ Of course, I’m not a pushover, and that is super clear from working with me,” Roy says. “But when people give me a good reason, I will try to work around their weaknesses, put them in a position where their weaknesses are minimized and their strengths are emphasized to get them through the tough time.”

Train managers to say yes. As you answer questions, you as the manager are also able to be aware of knowledge gaps that exist (or persist) within your ranks and safety can be improved because you have this line of site—and so do employees. Curious employees are looking around themselves and stopping to think critically at every

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BOOKS TO HELP WITH CORPORATE CULTURE The Discover Your True North Fieldbook, by Nick Craig, Bill George, and Scott Snook https://discoveryourtruenorth.org/the-fieldbook How To Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/1982171456 Start With Why by Simon Sinek https://simonsinek.com/books/start-with-why Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box, by The Arbinger Institute https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-Out-Box/dp/1576759776

juncture. This might, however, mean they come to you with new ideas of ways to improve processes. Those ideas shouldn’t always have to go to the top to senior leaders or wait for a management meeting. An organization that cultivates curiosity will allow middle managers to find places to say “yes” and put in an testing structure to determine what improvements can be made.

Qualify your no’s. Of course, sometimes the answer has to be no. In those cases, it helps to explain the reasoning or to show it— maybe with that same testing structure you’ve put into place.

Tip #5: Work on yourself.

“Is not being a jerk a soft skill?” jokes Adamchik. For any human being who has worked with tough teams on tough jobs: the answer is a resounding yes.

The true skill behind it though has another name: self-awareness.

Practice the soft skills. Adamchik again points to studies that show that 75% of the industry is task focused, which means most people spend time looking at what’s directly in front of them rather than all around or inside.

“Knowing your personal preferences and tendencies and then doing something about it takes time,” he admits. “This is where I think a lot of leadership training and soft skills training fails because it says ‘well, be a better

Journal of Equipment Management

listener.’ Well, look, my DNA is not one of listening. So, that’s like saying ‘run faster.’ I’m not built that way. When it comes to listening skills, you need to teach them. Look people in the eye, remove the distractions, ask better questions.”

Know it’s hard. It’s normal if in the process of self-reflection and soft-skills training you revert or resist, MacDonald says.

It’s a protective mode. So give yourself some grace and “just be open to the fact that some things you used to do, you don’t do anymore.”

You have to create a safe space for yourself.

At Royal Pavement, Roy says his days are busy and he hasn’t had the time for selfreflection and self-training he’d like, but he’s giving himself the time to make one change at a time and prioritize his own mental health.

Meditate. One thing he does every day to support that is meditate. “I think meditation is important for everybody in a leadership role, because you need that time to clear your head of a lot of things. Every single day, I shut my door, turn down the lights, and think to myself and just think about everything going on around me,” he says.

All of this is to say that corporate culture comes down to one simple statement that Kenny Roy has summed up for himself and his team—and that you can do the same with.

“Be a damn good human first.”

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CASE STUDY: THE AEMP STANDARD

WHAT IS IT? HOW CAN IT BE USED? WHAT ARE ITS BENEFITS?

BY FERNANDO LISERRA, PROEMION

T

his case study seeks to present an informative overview of the AEMP API, its origins, and where it can be included in the telematics solutions for off-highway heavy machinery independently of the OEM. After a brief introduction to the background of the AEMP API, we give an example of its use and discuss how the AEMP API supports profitability in the construction industry.

Furthermore, we explore how the AEMP API is used to deliver data from different OEMs and some of the challenges associated with polling the right telematics data provided by the API. We also discuss factors influencing AEMP data quality — availability, accuracy, and frequency — and the need to standardize when interpreting data and building use cases.

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Finally, we give a small outlook into the possibilities that the implementation of AEMP API in construction businesses can offer.

TELEMATICS Telematics is the branch of information technology that deals with the long-distance transmission of computerized information. They deliver essential information on your machines and thus enable you to manage your fleet efficiently and make data-driven decisions for your business.

In order to optimize the management of an off-highway mixed fleet, a unified portal for collecting and analyzing accurate telematics data is critical. Dependable usage, condition, maintenance, and operational data are essential inputs that help build reliable use cases and deliver value to the business.

However, since most OEMs equip their machines with their own telematics systems, there can be a considerable variation in how the different systems of a mixed fleet provide and present their data. This also presents a challenge to mixed fleet managers, who need a concise overview of all data to make informed business decisions.

This is where the AEMP API delivers value by providing standardized, insightful telematics data across a mixed fleet of off-highway machines. The Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP) establishes standards for construction equipment telematics, which is called the “AEMP API”. The AEMP API normalizes machine data from different OEMs to a consistent naming convention and calculation standard.

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FERNANDO LISERRA, PRODUCT AND GROWTH MARKETING MANAGER, PROEMION

THE ORIGINS OF THE AEMP API The Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP) is an organization created for companies that manage and maintain heavy, off-highway fleets. It sets benchmarks and standards for best practices with telematics data, including a standardized format and data type.

The AEMP has strongly advocated for the consolidation of industry standards. In 2016, this advocacy resulted in establishing ISO standards for construction equipment telematics, often referred to as the “AEMP API “.

The AEMP API is an ISO standard for communicating construction equipment telematics data for select off-highway asset classes. It relates to ISO standards initially proposed by AEMP in version 1.0 in 2010 and further developed for general use in version 2.0 around 2016. The AEMP technical standard is “ISO 15143-3”.

It is important to note that many of the standards contained in AEMP are optional. Hence, strict compliance with AEMP is by no means guaranteed - levels of compliance may vary between OEMs and third-party telematics vendors.

INCREASING PROFITABILITY IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY WITH THE AEMP API The pressure on modern businesses to increase revenues and profitability while reducing costs is unrelenting, leaving them with no other option but leveraging every asset at their disposal.

Savvy construction industry professionals are already taking advantage of the valuable insights the AEMP API delivers to drive financial performance, increase efficiency, and provide tangible benefits to end-users.

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OEMs generally provide their own version of telematics solutions, which means that creating an accurate unified view of your fleet is challenging if you have a fleet from various suppliers.

Merely pulling data from disparate sources without regard for its quality is a flawed methodology many vendors employ.

Taking advantage of modern telematics solutions, including those using data polled from the AEMP API, is becoming less a matter of choice and more a necessity for businesses that want to remain competitive.

HOW COMPANIES DELIVER MIXED FLEET TELEMATICS USING THE AEMP API AND THIRD-PARTY DATA At Proemion, we collect data that conforms to AEMP standards from OEM (Original Machine Manufacturers/3rd party) cloud solutions. Then, we clean and standardize the data (our Data Check) before passing it to our own cloud platform, DataPlatform, for processing, storage, and interpretation via our web portal, the DataPortal, or any other place chosen by the data owner.

Our mixed fleet solutions help construction companies, rental companies, and machine owners take their fleet management to another level by getting rid of paper-based processes and digitalizing them. This allows them to improve efficiency and increase productivity.

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CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH POLLING THE RIGHT AEMP TELEMATICS DATA Getting the correct AEMP data from a disparate fleet of off-highway machines and equipment is not a trivial process. Certain factors influence the overall quality of data, and since different OEMs offer different telematics solutions, they often provide different data at different frequencies. These factors then also heavily influence your ability to build reliable use cases that deliver value.

Maybe we are not getting location data from a machine because it is not configured to supply it. Or perhaps we are not getting location data because the data cloud owner is not providing location data via the AEMP interface.

As data challenges are identified, it is important to communicate them and give input for the investigation backward in the data trail to find a solution. Some of the most important aspects of data that need to be validated are its availability, accuracy, and frequency.

Availability — In order to use telematics data, especially to build use cases, it must be available in the first place. Data availability challenges do not exist strictly at the individual OEM level, as you might initially suspect.

They can be as granular as specific machines from the same OEM. For example,

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one OEM might provide operating hours data for some models and not for others. This means you cannot rely on this specific OEM machine to give the same data. It could be that some machine models do not provide certain data, or even particular machines do not provide it.

Accuracy — Inaccurate telematics data delivers faulty predictions and will not support accurate use cases. In turn, relying on a use case backed by inaccurate data only wastes time, money, and resources. Conversely, use cases built on known accurate telematics data enhance decision-making, increase productivity and efficiency, and reduce cost.

The more accurate your data, the better the ROI without incurring any additional expenditure.

Inaccurate data may originate from machines that have some kind of telematics problem in their configuration.

Data values are generally accurate.

However, data supplied with anomalies can sabotage analyses and render the data useless.

Similarly, inaccurate data showing up in some counter metrics, such as operating hours, causes a problem. For example, an

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operating hours counter should only increment, but we have seen cases where operating hours went up and down. Again, this inaccurate data can be “cleaned” but it breaks reports and analytics until it is.

Frequency — The frequency of data refers machines is sufficiently low, the effort required to drill down into their individual shortcomings may not even be justified.

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APPLYING COMMON SENSE TO USE CASES You do not need all data delivered with super high frequency to build valuable use cases. In fact, for some machines, that is something that will never happen.

As a rule of thumb, if a simple report shows that 90% of your fleet delivers the right data with the right frequency, it is already valuable and can provide significant business value.

So, whether you can build a successful use case depends on whether problematic machines constitute a large percentage of your fleet. If it is only 1 or 2 machines in a large fleet, common sense dictates it may not be a problem, and you can still build a valuable use case.

In fact, if the number of problematic machines is sufficiently low, the effort required to drill down into their individual shortcomings may not even be justified.

Typical use cases where the AEMP API can be integrated to good effect: • Maintenance planning — Up-to-date total operating hours are crucial, even if this is done fairly infrequently. For example, for a machine that needs maintenance every 500 hours, you would typically create a maintenance ticket 40 or 50 operating hours ahead of time and open the ticket at, say, 450 hours. But, of course, this is more than a week of work ahead of time, so even if operating hours do not update every day, it is not that important.

• Fuel management — Frequency is only equally critical for some use cases. But, if we consider a fuel management use case, including monitoring machine fuel levels, refueling needs, supplier provision, ordering, and billing, the need for more frequent data updates becomes apparent. Now you need to track fuel level and fuel consumed at least every couple of hours.

• Machine location and dispatching — Construction and rental companies need to relocate machines regularly. To do so, they need to know the up-to-date GPS location of their machines so they can send their transporter to the correct location to pick up the machine scheduled for relocation.

Getting this wrong can be costly - time wasted locating a machine, plus the knockon effect of the new site not getting the right machine at the right time means lost productivity and the costs associated with it.

Therefore, an AEMP data frequency of once every 1-2 hours is generally acceptable for this use case.

Other use cases include CO2 reporting, monitoring machine idling time, machine use optimization, and more.

AN OUTLOOK ON THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE AEMP API Collecting and analyzing accurate AEMP data (via the AEMP API) from disparate OEMs through a unified portal optimizes managing off-highway mixed fleet machines. In addition, implementing an AEMP API can take fleet management to another level, unlocking business opportunities and increasing efficiency and productivity.

Some benefits to construction companies of implementing a unified telematics solution for the mixed fleet: • Data Harmonization • Reduced operational cost (through proper maintenance) • Optimal productivity • Improved cash flow • Competitive edge

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AEMP Technolgy Support Telematics Standard TELEMATICS STANDARD FAQ

Q: I am an end user; how do I access an API? A: Start with your preferred software provider to see if they provide a list of preferred APIs. Q: I am a developer; how do I access OEM’s API? A: Contact your local vendor. Some vendor contacts are listed on page 5.

Q: Does the ISO standard define a standard set of diagnostic codes?

A: No, the ISO standard provides a data field for transmitting diagnostic code sets. Refer to manual(s) provided by OEM and/or specific engine manufacturer for diagnostic code sets.

Q: What are time series end points?

A: The time series endpoints offer a historical view of the data, organized by telematics field type. The standard fleet view shows only the last known telematics field value. The time series endpoints allow access to data from a start date to an end date. The amount of data available is set by each implementor.

Q: What is a snapshot input?

A: The snapshot input is a picture of the current moment in time for your fleet and the latest known telematics readings. It is a subset of data points. Refer to ISO 15143-3 section 8.2.2. Data points will vary based on implementing OEM’s.

Q: What is the frequency of the data pulled from the API? A: The frequency of the data coming off the equipment is independent of the frequency of data coming from the API. Refer to Illustration 2 below, the frequency of the data from the equipment to the server (circled in green) is not defined in ISO 15143-3. The scope of the ISO is shown in the center of Illustration 2 as defined in section 4.1 of the standard.

Illustration 2: ISO Standard scope graphic courtesy of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) https://www.aem.org/

https://www.aemp.org/manuals-publications

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