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There are many challenges and risks associated with the management of a company, such as construction, oil, and gas. The most common issues that a construction company has explicitly to deal with include low driver satisfaction, minimal vehicle visibility, delayed cash flow, poor communication, and unrealistic or inaccurate forecasting. The success of any viable company is at risk when these issues remain unresolved or persist for a long time. Construction companies must practice efficient and reliable fleet management for continued growth.

What Is Construction Fleet Management?

Construction fleet management is a process that gives a company control over its fleets operations to understand better and improve its key business functions. This includes planning, directing, and overseeing construction operators, dispatchers, fleet vehicles, and other assets. It also involves the entire process from acquisition to resale, as well as vehicle tracking, fuel, maintenance, accident management, and more.

Companies and organizations that buy more than ten vehicles in a single year and operate, or operate more than 15 are considered fleet owners.

Benefits Of Construction Fleet Management

Optimize Fleet Vehicle & Operator Performance

Having effective management over a construction company’s fleet assets means collecting, storing, and examining operator and vehicle data. Having complete and reliable data allows fleet managers to get a deeper understanding of fleet operator and vehicle history and performance. This historical data includes purchase and accident history, mileage, maintenance and repair records, mechanical diagnostics, routes, and previous driver records of your construction company.

All this information enables your fleet managers to make well-informed decisions, which serve to increase productivity and growth, and improve daily business operations. Regular fleet maintenance ensures higher safety levels for operators as well, which translates to increased job satisfaction and a decrease in the turnover rates of your workers.

Increase Workflow & Productivity

A fleet management system is truly effective when it minimizes delays, issues, and errors that might disrupt the workflow of your company. It allows your construction business to have a comprehensive understanding of all its assets and project requirements. For example, fleet managers can use past projects to plan more effective routes, requiring less fuel and mileage. Knowledge about more efficient routes is beneficial to the finances of your construction company and for the environment.

This historical data can help your construction fleet manager assign a particular job to the right person, meaning that each task is completed efficiently and on time. Effective and efficient management enables your business to boost its productivity and workflow. An accurately planned and assigned project ensures that everyone involved has all required resources available to them without delay or error, and the job is completed with maximum efficiency.

Improve Invoicing

One main advantage of construction fleet management is that it improves the invoicing system of your business. It ensures that all statements and bills are organized and handled accurately. These include billing, ticketing, payments, signatures, logging routes, and time tracking that were done manually in the past. However, new regulations require all companies to digitally manage their invoicing and transactions, including e-ticketing and digital record keeping. It is an effective way to safeguard your data, minimize payment errors and misses, and improve security.

This system makes it easier for your drivers and sub-contractors to access tickets when signed, saved, and processed electronically.

Better Budgeting & Forecasting

Fleet management systems minimize the operational expenses of your company through historical data collected over time. Metrics collected by fleet manners allow you to have valuable insights and a deeper understanding of the financial gains and losses of any part of a project. It can also help you to minimize the operational expenses of your fleet, such as fuel, maintenance, and tire wear. These occurrences can be reduced significantly by proper monitoring and insights into the vehicles and operators performance.

You can also use the construction fleet management data to improve the scheduling of your employees. Your project flow and operational efficiency can be increased if you know who are your best performing drivers and which routes can minimize their drive time.

If you use construction management forms to estimate and bid on projects, the overall processes accuracy increases by 15%. Reporting also allows for maximum transparency so your business can forecast and predict expenses and revenue effectively, thus generating more accurate budgeting and projections overall.

About Taurus Projects

Taurus Projects is an industrial and commercial site services provider in Alberta and Western Canada. We provide exceptional site services such as construction fleet management to ensure smooth business operations for our clients.

For more information, visit our website or contact us today for personalized care.

Construction management includes using specialized project management techniques to manage different project phases, including planning, design, and construction. Its primary purpose is to control various elements of a given project, like time/delivery, cost, and quality. It also fits well with different project delivery systems, such as public-private partnerships, design-build, construction management at-risk, and more.

Here, we provide answers to some frequently asked questions regarding construction management to help you understand better:

Why Is Construction Management So Important?

Construction management is a process in which project managers plan strategies, manage unexpected issues and delays, and solve complex problems that arise throughout the project. Many construction managers use cost-appraising and planning applications to determine expenses, time, and the materials required to complete a task.

Construction management is essential to large-scale building projects with increased potential for problems, delaying the plan, and costing money. A construction manager measures each design decision with careful analysis, measuring the budget and schedule’s impact.

What Are The Primary Objectives Of Construction Management?

The following are the primary goals of construction management:

1. Planning For Each Task: Planning a construction project helps identify and include every activity of the project from start to finish. Every action is scheduled in a timeline for efficient tracking of the construction project.
2. Choosing Construction Methods: This includes choosing appropriate construction methods for various construction activities. The plan also encompasses selecting the right tools and equipment and making them available whenever required during a project.
3. Construction Equipment & Machinery Planning: Due to increased equipment rental costs, it’s crucial to plan when you will need certain construction machinery to ensure smooth project completion. The project plan should include using these pieces of machinery to maximize potential during the given period to make it cost-effective.
4. Procuring Quality Materials: A construction project plan must include material procurement planning to complete the project within budget. It’s also not advisable to keep these materials unused on a site for a long time to avoid degradation.
5. Employee Skill Development: Some construction activities require the availability of skilled labor to execute the work. It might also not be required to employ such professionals throughout the project; that’s why proper planning can help reduce that activity’s operational costs.
6. Documentation And Drawings: Construction drawings and specifications play a vital role in keeping the project on schedule and avoiding costly construction delays. Therefore, it’s essential to make the schedules of drawings, specifications, and other documentation available at the job site for review and project execution.
7. Financial Planning: The financial planning of a construction project requires knowing that various amounts are needed at different stages of the construction project. It’s not wise to invest all your budget on construction during the project; instead, it can be done in phases whenever required.

What Are The Essential Skills Required For Effective Construction Management?

Some of the vital skills needed for effective construction management include vast construction industry knowledge, comprehensive planning, communication and organizational skills, negotiation, financial and risk management, technological expertise, feedback, and more.

What Are The Major Stages Of Construction Management?

Some of the most significant phases of construction management include infrastructure design (feasibility analysis followed by bidding), pre-construction (contractor and their team conduct site examination), procurement (materials, labor, and equipment), construction, commissioning (all system installation and final testing), owner occupancy, and project closeout.

Can I Hire My General Contractor As A Construction Manager?

Yes, most experienced general contractors also offer their services as construction management experts. A reliable construction manager can eliminate all the checks and balances involved in your project and act as an independent advocate for all construction, budget, and scheduling issues. A quality construction manager will ensure adherence to the plans, specifications, and budget to complete the project following your cost, time, and quality objectives.

About Taurus Projects

Taurus Projects is a professional construction management company based in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. We offer efficient commercial and industrial construction services to different enterprises across Alberta. Visit our website to learn more about our services, or contact us for personalized service.

Construction is undoubtedly one of the most valuable and impactful industries on general lives worldwide. 2020 has been a year full of surprises due to COVID-19 and has impacted the construction industry everywhere. However, 2021 is going to be a year of revival and growth regarding the building sector. Factors like increasing production costs and labor shortages, the need for innovating new ideas, and more stringent regulations all require a decreased margin for error and waste.

Here are the top construction industry trends you should look out for in 2021:

Using Personal Protective Equipment PPE For Employee Safety

Safety has always been a significant concern in the construction industry. However, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become essential. Improved protocols will include wearing masks and using hand sanitizer frequently, and using other PPE specific to commercial and industrial construction work.

Using Efficient Technologies For Increased Innovation

The most significant differentiator for most builders this year is likely to be construction-related technology – innovations that can enhance efficiency. Some of the efficient techs the construction industry can benefit from in 2021 include smart contracts, drones, augmented reality AR, and more.

Smart Contracts

Blockchain technology is an increasingly valuable component that offers a more secure and fast-moving workflow, allowing all parties involved in the process to gain access to enhanced productivity. Smart contracts provide all project organizations a shared system to conduct business, enabling them to order, track, and pay for services efficiently.

Construction Drones

Drones in the construction industry offer far more benefits than rendering aerial photography for different purposes, like real estate and other commercial efforts. They can rapidly map large areas over long distances, offering valuable aerial heat maps and thermal images. The state-of-the-art drone software provides real-time, actionable data that help make rapid decision-making and streamline the entire construction process.

Augmented Reality

Using augmented reality AR in the construction industry means effective project-staging and making pre-construction projects more viable for both buyers and tenants. As far as builders and developers are concerned, AR can provide 3D visualization, automated measuring of various buildings, quick and affordable simulation of structural changes, and safety training and hazard simulations.

Modular Construction For Increased Social Distancing

Modular construction and pre-fab buildings are expected to have a considerable boost in interest this year. Prefabricated buildings are increasingly affordable and potentially temporary solutions to help you get through uncertain times like pandemics. This building construction mode promotes low worker density, as the process is done in large, airy buildings, with enough room for social distancing.

All the tools used, including ceiling cranes, conveyors, and lifts, are specifically designed to allow workers in small numbers to shift more significant components, resulting in decreased worker proximity and labor costs.

Increased Focus On Safety And Quality

Safety and quality have always been of the most significant concern in the construction industry. In 2021, this focus will increase as project managers align their safety and quality procedures directly to planning. Doing so will help them detect critical problems quickly and resolve non-conformities on time. Some of the benefits of this exercise include improving the build’s quality, making handovers smoother, and lessening waste and delays.

About Taurus Projects

Taurus Projects is a leading commercial construction contractor in Fort Saskatchewan. We provide top-quality commercial and industrial construction services throughout Alberta. Visit our website to learn more about our superior construction services, or contact us for personalized service.

The quality of any construction project will heavily depend on its material and inventory. Only by having efficient material management can you stay on top of your game and begin and end your project on time. However, in the construction industry, one of the most common challenges people face is managing their supplies and equipment properly. Poor material management can lead to many problems, including messing up the projects timeline and budget.

Below, we discuss some of the most common issues with material management in the construction industry and ways to deal with them. First, Let’s discuss what material management means in the construction industry.

What Is Material Management?

Material management is best described as the planning, managing, and controlling of materials and equipment for a construction project. For example, a material’s timely procurement, obtaining it at reasonable rates, and handling and coordinating it on site all comes under material management.

It is a continuous process that extends from the initiation of requirements in the office to day-to-day operations in the construction field. A material manager must oversee inventory levels, appropriately select and purchase material, negotiate contracts with suppliers to attain the best deals, and handle material on site.

The most common challenges of this field include:

Bid Procurement

The material management process begins with a bidding plan. Decisions regarding material bid procurement made in the early stage are critical to the project’s overall success. There is also a significant opportunity for cost savings if material managers properly handle the bidding process.

However, one challenge that arises at this stage is that a project’s scope may change while coming together. This can affect the bidding process and may hamper the contracts of all other parties involved. For example, if the property owner decides to change the quality of the material without changing the budget. The general contractor may agree to this but later ask other contractors, such as electrical contractors, brought in last, to lower their bid to accommodate the situation.

General contractors can avoid such situations by maintaining open communication between the owner and all the contractors involved. If all the contractors provide realistic costs and timelines, the general contractor will be better able to determine what accommodations can be made to the project to make the necessary changes the owner wants.

Material Purchasing

The material purchasing process involves negotiating with manufacturers over the price and quantity of the product. This can be a long process, and therefore the person in charge of this stage must set aside some waiting time between when the material is ordered and when it is required. Without setting aside this time, things can get tricky, and if the material arrives later than when it is required, it can hold up your project and delay your schedule.

Material purchasing may experience delays for two reasons:

• The manufacturer is short on supplies.
• The manufacturer requires more time to finish fabricating everything and get it ready for delivery.

A simple solution to this is to order everything in advance and schedule everything to arrive at least two days before required. You can also break up your project into scheduled shipments based on what is needed when.

Material Procurement

After determining your delivery date, time, and location with your supplier, things can still get complicated. Your order may become delayed due to unforeseen circumstances, or you may incur some unexpected costs. Some of the most common problems you may face at this stage can include:

• The material you ordered is delivered to the wrong location.
• A miscommunication between you and the supplier has caused a delay in the time of delivery.
• You have received the wrong quantity of the material. Too little quantity can halt your project. On the other hand, a large amount can lead to storage problems.

You can avoid problems at this stage by ensuring that every deal you make with your supplier is properly written down. Make sure you have effectively communicated with your supplier your projects requirements.

Storage And Inventory Management

After the material has arrived, you may face trouble storing it at an appropriate place or face difficulty keeping track of everything. Moreover, when too many people are involved in the process, miscommunication and material mismanagement are bound to happen.

Construction projects require materials and equipment to be moved continuously between different areas and places. During this process, some of the material either gets lost, or managers lose track of it. This inconsistency can cause problems in the project deadline and disturb the estimated project budget.

To avoid this problem, ensure that you hire a third-party contractor or a general contractor that provides high-quality material management services.

Taurus Projects has a team of material management professionals that can manage and control your inventory across Alberta. Our warehousing assets are located along a major transportation corridor to easily and efficiently ship your materials in all directions. Visit our website for more information.

Trusting an inexperienced electrical worker to carry out maintenance and repairs on your industrial machinery and electrical systems is a gamble that will surely result in the loss of either your business or life or both. Hence, it is only logical to hire a well-qualified industrial electrical contractor to perform routine checkups and repairs on your site’s equipment.

The various industrial needs and complexities of their electrical equipment differ greatly from that of a residential one. A specialized industry like this one demands well-qualified personnel to handle all its electrical systems. Therefore, it is a common practice for industries and large firms to hire professional electrical contractors because they perform all tasks based on their experience and skills.

In this blog, we will run through the five major benefits of hiring an industrial electrical contractor.

Safety

Your number one priority should always be your safety and that of your workers. To avoid any electrical emergency, you should not take any shortcuts, even in minor electrical issues. Without specialized equipment, the right training, and the right expertise, handling electrical machinery can be extremely dangerous.

An unqualified electrical worker can compromise the safety of everyone in the building. This can result in dangerous situations such as fire and electrical shock that can cause extensive and permanent property damage. Many electrical mishaps are often a direct result of lack of experience and careless handling.

Having an expert electrician in the industry that can pinpoint the exact location of the issue and solve it without compromising your safety is vital.

Experience

A professional industrial electrician that has gained a lot of experience in how to solve new electrical problems can carry out maintenance and repair work for different machinery and expand their understanding. Although anyone can learn how to fix an electrical wiring issue, it can still be difficult to solve complex problems without the right know-how.

Hiring an industrial electrical contractor can ensure the safety for your business. They have the experience in dealing with all sorts of challenges regarding electric connections and appliances.

Time And Money

Much like a self-diagnosis for human disease, resolving any electrical problem can go wrong in so many ways. It will take you a long time to get to the root of the problem without the required skill and understanding.

Even if you manage to pinpoint the location of where the problem is, you still won’t be able to treat or fix it properly without having the proper knowledge. Thus, you might have to free up some of your time in your busy schedule to sort out the issue.

It’s not easy to diagnose and resolve electrical problems if not done correctly. Without any information about the specifics of the electrical system, you can end up buying the wrong or poor-quality replacement parts if the previous ones are ineffective.

You can avoid all these expenses by hiring a professional industrial electrician for your business. They have the right skills for the job and information about the quality of various replacement parts and where to buy them at an affordable cost. They make sure that you invest in high-quality electrical products that will work efficiently for the long-term.

Certification & Licensing

Industrial electricians undergo long and thorough training about how to handle different electrical problems before they earn their license. The process involves practical training and certification, which ensures that they can provide a certain standard of work.

Certification and licensing make industrial electricians experts in their field, providing top-quality service that cannot be achieved without hours of rigorous training. Licensing and certification will determine whether you meet the needs and standards of industrial electrical equipment.

Insurance Coverage

The majority of professional industrial electricians are insured, which means that you will not be held responsible for any of the injuries they might suffer while working for you. The same cannot be said about any independent electrical worker that you hire to work for you.

Whether the accident occurred because of the negligence of a worker or were involuntary, the responsibility will fall on you to cover the expenses of their medical bills. Thus hiring industrial electrical contractors can save you money as they already have insurance coverage which will provide them coverage in case of any injuries while working with you.

About Taurus Projects

Taurus Projects is an industrial and commercial site services provider in Alberta and Western Canada. We provide exceptional site services like temporary electrical and mechanical supply to our clients so they can work on their construction sites comfortably.

For more information, visit our website or contact us today for personalized care.