For: ProNovos, Atlanta, Ga.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ProNovos Webinar Highlights Construction Contractor’s Analytical Approach to Efficient Equipment-Management
Operations manager from McClone Construction Co. shares insights on how to ramp up equipment-program efficiency from the yard to the job site.
ATLANTA (07/10/20)–Smarter approaches to equipment-management can be the first step to a more efficient construction company, said Mikeal Kanouff, Washington Area Operations Manager for McClone Construction Co., in a July 8 webinar sponsored by ProNovos.
The key, Kanouff said, is to take full advantage of the data you collect with equipment-management software. “Business intelligence is all about using your information to gauge what’s happening right now,” he explained. “Don’t look at the state of things afterward and say, ‘Oh, we should have done this or that.’ You want to make those strategic adjustments in real time.”
Bruce Orr, Chief Data Scientist for Atlanta-based ProNovos, moderated the 45-minute discussion (“Follow the Data: Saving Money & Time with Equipment Analytics”).
Specializing in structural concrete and concrete-formwork projects, McClone stores millions of dollars in equipment at yards in Hawaii, Colorado, Texas and Washington. A decade ago, the contractor used carbon copies to track this inventory—a labor-intensive process that required costly, time-consuming monthly audits. “Our crew members were not always filling out the equipment transfers,” Kanouff noted. “You’d get people coming in and out of the yards and grabbing equipment. The quantities were not very accurate.”
Shifting to Microsoft Excel led to better inventory-tracking at jobsites but fell short of providing insights into companywide performance. “We could have 40 or 50 jobs going on across our organization,” Kanouff said. “If you’re trying to track, manage and analyze equipment at that level, Excel doesn’t quite get you there. Too much is lost.”
Starting in 2017, McClone ramped up the efficiency of its equipment program by rolling out Operations Manager, ProNovos’ data-driven project-management tool. The software made it easy to register individual pieces of equipment in the system, with ID numbers, weights, pics, specs, current and scheduled locations and more, Kanouff explained. Yard managers could now approve new transfers at the touch of a button.
“And with every piece of equipment that you enter or move in the system,” Orr asked Kanouff, “that’s creating more data, right?” The operations manager agreed, noting that McClone now has a rich trove of equipment data that can be analyzed from every angle. “We can access it all,” he said.
Kanouff cited several ways in which McClone is driving equipment efficiency. Previously, he noted, crews were shipping back equipment as soon as it became damaged, even if the trucks were largely empty on their way back to the yards. “Those trucks cost anywhere from $500 to $750 per trip.”
Now the company is saving thousands of dollars by better tracking and managing that damaged equipment. “We’ll wait until we have one truckload’s worth,” Kanouff explained. “We send one truck on one day to pick up all of the damaged equipment at those projects.”
Sharing his screen to show specific Operations Manager reports, Kanouff took the audience through McClone’s processes for determining:
- when to buy equipment as opposed to renting it;
- how to cut back on disruptions caused by “last-minute” equipment pickups;
- how to bolster accuracy by reducing the need for manual data entries; and
- how to more accurately estimate equipment costs and quantities.
Orr was enthusiastic about McClone’s creative use of Operations Manager. “I love it,” he said. “There’s a saying in the industry: ‘We have too much data and not enough insight.’ At ProNovos, what we’re finding is that what you do with your data is every bit as important as the data you capture.”
A recording of the event is available at:
Password: 4s*!%@O*