John Holland is an Australian engineering and construction company operating in Australia and New Zealand. Using battery-powered trackers equipped with tilt sensors and geofences, John Holland tracks where excavated soil is loaded and unloaded and receives an alert in the event of illegal dumping. John Holland is not a client of AllConnects: this is an international use case from our technology partner to demonstrate what is possible with FLEET.connect.
"Real-time confirmation of the type of spoil, the quantity, and the disposal location means we no longer have to wait 1 to 4 months for information from our subcontractors to determine whether we have managed our spoil properly."
About John Holland
John Holland, founded in 1949, is an engineering, construction, and services company in Australia and New Zealand. The company works on infrastructure, rail, and construction projects, from remote areas to busy city centers.
Each project involves the movement of tens of thousands of metric tons of soil. Soil that is contaminated or cannot be reused (“spoil”) must be transported from the construction site to an authorized landfill. This transportation is strictly regulated to prevent (sometimes contaminated) soil from being dumped illegally.
The challenge: thousands of registrations entered by hand
"Conventional methods for tracking spoil are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and carry significant risks in terms of delays, excessive costs, illegal dumping of spoil, and missed opportunities for reuse."
The old process required thousands of manual entries: the type of soil, transportation from the construction site to an authorized landfill, monitoring of the hauliers and landfill sites, and reporting to the government.
The solution: battery-powered trackers with a tilt sensor
John Holland opted for rugged, battery-powered GPS trackers that are easy to mount on subcontractors’ equipment and also easy to relocate. These trackers are of the same type as the AC.FLEX-Y and AC.FLEX-R in our line of battery-free trackers. They consume little power, use LTE-M and NB-IoT, and send alerts when the battery is running low.
A tilt sensor in the tracker detects when a truck tips its bed, and thus where it is unloading. That location is compared with geofences around construction sites and authorized dumping sites, with the soil type specified for each zone. If a truck unloads outside an authorized zone, a warning is triggered.
Loading
Identified based on the GPS locations of the truck and the excavator.
Unloading
Recorded as soon as the tilt sensor detects that the bucket is tilting.
Illegal dumping
A warning when a truck is unloading in a prohibited area.
Type of land
Each geofence is assigned the appropriate soil classification: clean, contaminated, or other.
The result
Any incorrect disposal is reported immediately, which can result in significant savings per shipment. In addition, John Holland uses the data to verify subcontractors' invoices, reuse soil between projects, and deploy equipment and personnel more efficiently.
Source: case study from our international technology partner. The statements were made during a conversation with that partner.
You can do what John Holland does with trackers, too
With battery-powered trackers and geofences, you can track where your equipment is loaded and unloaded. We’d be happy to work with you to see what that means for your job sites.
