Equipment is a tremendous investment for a construction firm and finding new and optimized ways to improve efficiency even the slightest can go a long way in cutting costs and saving on precious time. With the number of software platforms available today for a variety of purposes, improving efficiency for equipment management is easier than ever before. Here are a few ways that technology can enhance your equipment management processes:
REDUCE EQUIPMENT COSTS FOR IMPROVED ROI
There are two significant costs associated with equipment: owning costs and operating costs. These two are wildly different and serve different functions while remaining equally crucial to the company’s bottom line. With an automated equipment management platform, you can easily and quickly manage all of the separate financial aspects of your machinery investments.
As you deploy each piece of equipment to their dedicated job sites, you can easily assign the costs for each equipment to the job which makes tracking and managing job costs simple. This improves reporting accuracy and ensures that equipment costs are correctly included in job estimates.
OPTIMIZE USAGE
As a construction company, you likely have a vast selection of equipment that serves different purposes. It can be challenging to determine the individual lifespan for each piece without some system in place to accurately track and manage the various pieces. Some equipment is only needed for a couple of specific jobs while other pieces will be used on a regular basis, thus bringing up the decision of whether to rent the equipment or buy it.
If you rent equipment that you end up using significantly, you could be overspending. Vice versa, if you buy equipment that you rarely use except for specialized tasks, you could be misusing funds that would have been better allocated elsewhere.
An equipment management platform will optimize the usage decisions that your manager makes by combing the owning and operating costs of the equipment along with identifying when a machine is past its optimal working life. Having an automated solution saves countless hours and allows for maximum ROI.
TRACK AND SCHEDULE MAINTENANCE
Preventative maintenance is important to ensure that every piece of equipment is functional for a long time. When dealing with hundreds if not thousands of pieces of equipment, it can become tough to manage and schedule preventative maintenance for each piece. By implementing an automated solution that tracks and manages the planned maintenance for your equipment and machinery, you’ll be able to streamline the entire process with accurate scheduling of maintenance that cuts down on the costs of emergency repairs and downtime down the road.
IMPROVED SCHEDULING
With hundreds of employees and even more pieces of equipment, scheduling everything to make sure that everyone and every piece of machinery is at the right job site and the right time can become chaotic for larger companies. Many companies have dedicated schedulers, but with a software platform in place, you can optimize the scheduling process.
Many dedicated platforms will allow you to simplify the process by automatically assigning machinery to specific employees. Once the equipment has been assigned, employees can be notified via email or text of the equipment they will use and the specific job and day they will need it.
