Introduction:
HQS Construction is a general contractor that specializes in engineering projects and design-build services in the Dallas Fort Worth area. The company started as a residential irrigation landscaping business by two brothers and expanded its scope over time.
The company faced several challenges in managing its operations due to the lack of visibility into its vehicles and equipment. Employees were not reporting their hours accurately, claiming more time than they actually worked. Equipment utilization and location were also hard to track, resulting in inefficiencies and losses. The company realized the need for a solution when three large pieces of equipment were stolen from a job site.
Challenge:
The lack of visibility into day-to-day operations made operations very difficult to manage. Workers were not accurately logging their hours on the job, claiming to work longer than they actually did. Additionally, there was no easy way to determine if the equipment was being utilized effectively or if it was in the correct location.
In fact, the company had three large pieces of equipment stolen from a job site before realizing the need for a solution.
“We had a skid-steer and two rollers stolen –all of which are specialty equipment. They’re very expensive to replace, and they’re also hard to find right now. The market is competitive for this kind of equipment, especially if they are in good working condition,” explained Trenton Rath, Safety Manager & Field Accountant at HQS Construction.
Solution:
Rath was in charge of finding a solution that worked for HQS –one that allowed them to track all of their vehicles and equipment. After researching different solutions to help fulfill their GPS tracking needs, they landed on Hapn, a GPS tracking solution that allowed them to monitor all of their assets remotely. Hapn was chosen for its affordability, ease of installation, and accuracy. The company was able to test the product without committing to a contract and found that it met their needs perfectly.
With Hapn, HQS Construction was able to track the location, speed, mileage, fuel consumption, idle time, maintenance status, and driver behavior of all of their vehicles and equipment. They were also able to set up alerts for unauthorized movement or usage of their assets. This enabled them to optimize their routes, schedules, costs, productivity, safety, and customer satisfaction. “Hapn was one of the more affordable solutions I looked at. I also compared the ease of installation of the units and the accuracy of the GPS units themselves as well,” said Rath. “The effortless test trial that Hapn allows was one of the things that ultimately led us to choose this solution in the end. We were easily able to try out the product without being tied up in a contract, and it ended up working perfectly for what we needed.”
Prior to implementing a tracking system, HQS had no way to recover their stolen equipment.
“Now that’s not something I feel we necessarily have to worry about with Hapn. We can quickly and easily see where our equipment is,” said Rath. “And if it does get stolen, I’m confident we’ll be able to recover it with the GPS trackers.”
It’s not only the equipment HQS worries about –it’s also the employees. “After a foreman was caught sleeping in his work truck during the day, and another was caught logging longer hours than he worked on his timesheet, we really needed an efficient way to hold employees accountable while they’re out on the job,” explained Rath. Now, HQS is using a mixture of GPS trackers and security cameras to tell them what’s going on.
“We’ve set up smart boundaries so we know exactly when a vehicle or equipment enters and leaves the job site,” said Rath. “The trackers don’t lie.”
“We’ve really just gained a ton of peace of mind, just knowing where the equipment is. Even if it doesn’t move –we know it’s there,” explained Rath. “We’re also able to know which equipment is being used, so we can transfer it to another job site if we need to, which is extremely helpful.”
“With Hapn, I can easily find where the drivers are at or send them to another site. Or, if I’m doing kind of a spot check on the equipment, I can easily find the equipment rather than trying to hunt down which foreman came and picked it up from the equipment yard and took it out to use it on a site that day. It saves a lot of time.”
Results:
Using Hapn’s GPS tracking solution, HQS Construction optimized their operations in the following ways:
- Reduced labor costs by eliminating over-reporting of hours and improving employee accountability.
- Increased equipment utilization by ensuring optimal deployment and preventing theft or misuse.
- Improved customer service by providing accurate arrival times and updates on project progress.
- Enhanced safety by monitoring and enforcing compliance with speed limits and traffic rules.
