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Information Technology: HCSS Dispatcher
Jobsite software helps keep track of employees and equipment
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In addition to its GPS equipment locator, Dispatcher can schedule employee tasks and trips days or even months ahead. |
A construction jobsite is a collection of many moving parts, and the project superintendent has to know where each of them is located.
Until now, most of the technology available to accomplish this task has been a dry-erase or magnet board located in the jobsite trailer. HCSS Dispatcher application software with its new GPS unit changes that.
Dispatcher replaces the familiar hand-drawn grids with an easy-to-use, graphic-oriented program laid out in boxes just like the way it looks on the dry-erase board, says Steve McGough, HCSS’s chief operating officer. “We also have the view in a bar chart, and we integrate the software with Microsoft Mappoint,” he adds. “This means we can show the equipment and employees in a map format.”
In addition to a GPS locator for the equipment, Dispatcher shows where employees are scheduled to go the next day, week or even month, McGough says.
Having this information in a flexible format makes operations more efficient, McGough says. For example, “if you have a fleet of 10 bulldozers, and one is broken down, the normal course of action would be for the operations person to rent one,” he says. “Using Dispatcher with GPS, he can go to the map view and run an equipment utilization calculation to determine which other dozers are running at low utilization. He can then call the foreman to get that dozer offsite and onto the other site, saving on rental costs.”
The GPS unit allows the user to put a “geofence” around a jobsite and calculates cycle times automatically. If there is traffic or a backup in the loading time of a dump truck going from a quarry to a processing site, the foreman can decide to send the trucks back to the yard or onto other sites where they can be best utilized.
The geofence also aids in theft prevention because the GPS turns itself on when the equipment is activated. Unless the contractor is doing a night job, equipment would not normally be running from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. The system can be set up to call and e-mail four or five key people if the equipment is started outside the normal work hours. The e-mail also has a link that can be sent to the police. After two weeks, the link goes dead, so no one else can track the equipment.
A traditional magnet board has no memory, so “once you move something, you have no history,” McGough says. “With Dispatcher, you have unlimited history. We have the ability to see where an employee and a piece of equipment have been from months before.”
Gene Guarnere, operations manager at Terra Technical Services LLC, Downingtown, Pa., has been using Dispatcher since November 2006. He says his company is finding value using it to track equipment at multiple jobsites as well as routine maintenance for its trucks.
The tool also is great for upper management. “My supervisor can see the same board I am looking at,” Guarnere says. “He can see what operator, what equipment and what labor are assigned to a certain job. Then he can decide if he wants to move someone. It’s a great tool for me to pull together data.”
Dispatcher costs $4,000 per user, but discounts are available for additional users. The GPS unit costs $490, and there’s a $36-a-month fee to receive updates every four minutes during a normal workday.
Training is done on-site or at HCSS’s training center in Houston. HCSS can have data imported and up and running in three days. Some services may cost extra.
“You are really tracking the assets of your company and your personnel,” Guarnere
says.
HCSS
6200 Savoy, Suite 1100
Houston, Texas 77036
Toll free: 1-800-683-3196
www.hcss.com
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