5 Ways AI Is Transforming the Construction Industry

The construction industry has been relatively slow to adopt technology compared to other industries. Yet one cutting edge technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI), holds tremendous promise. But are AI tools out of reach for material producers, contractors, and dump truck operators?

To the contrary, they are already being used to overcome some of our toughest challenges, including safety concerns, hauling supply shortages, equipment utilization, and cost and schedule overruns.

In this blog, we'll dig into the specific ways AI is transforming the construction and dump trucking industry.

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What is Artificial Intelligence?

5 Ways AI is Impacting Construction and Dump Trucking

Optimizing Truck Scheduling and Assignment

Reducing Cycle Times and Bottlenecks

Ensuring On-Time Deliveries and Customer Satisfaction

Improving Equipment Efficiency and Job Site Safety

Improving Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

Artificial Intelligence is a somewhat ambiguous term with many possible definitions. It often refers to a variety of technical tools and techniques that use computation and algorithms to aid in or perform tasks such as predictions, decisions, or recommendations. Generally speaking, it describes when a machine mimics human cognitive functions, like problem-solving, pattern recognition, and learning.

Services like Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify use AI algorithms to analyze user behavior and preferences to offer personalized recommendations for movies, TV shows, and music. Similarly, Google Maps and Waze analyze large sets of data like traffic flows and road conditions to optimize driving routes, predict traffic conditions, and suggest the fastest routes in real-time to save time, reduce fuel consumption, and avoid traffic jams.

5 Ways AI is impacting construction and dump trucking

When applied in construction, the questions and algorithms can get significantly more complex than the consumer product examples above. For instance, AI may track and evaluate progress in a grading plan to identify schedule risks early. The algorithms can help construction companies to optimize the use of resources, manage timelines, and achieve greater overall efficiency. Following are five examples of AI that are being put to use to improve dump trucking and construction projects today.

Optimizing TRUCK SCHEDULING AND ASSIGNMENT

Load/Resource Planning

Your customer has placed an order for 1,000 tons of crushed stone base. What combination of trucks and loads are required to deliver that order in the most efficient way possible - and on schedule? You could assume a certain number of loads per truck and multiply that by the maximum capacity for the type of trucks being dispatched to come up with an approximate number of trucks needed to complete the delivery. But what about travel time? And what about turnaround/cycle time at the plant or at the job site? All of these variables play a role in determining the optimal number of trucks and loads required to fulfill a customer’s order in the most efficient way possible. Trux takes these factors and other data into consideration when creating dispatch orders to ensure you aren’t wasting scarce hauling resources by assigning too many trucks while also preventing you from not assigning enough trucks to complete the order on schedule.

Monitoring Unassigned Loads

Assigning or requesting haulers isn’t the only step involved in scheduling a full order delivery. If you are requesting an independent owner operator, you have to decide how many loads they are getting. If you are requesting trucks from a fleet owner or broker, you have to decide how many trucks you are requesting as well. You can see how it’s possible to quickly lose track of how many loads are left to assign, and in some cases you may even over-assign trucks to a given order by mistake. Both scenarios are bad. That’s why Trux keeps a running count of how many unassigned loads remain as you assign each truck to the order. And it alerts you when you’ve gone too far and assigned too many trucks, preventing you from wasting everyone’s time and your money.

REDUCING CYCLE TIMES AND BOTTLENECKS

Truck Stagger Interval Calculation

Whether you are managing a plant/quarry or a job site, you likely have trucks of all different types coming and going throughout the day. The last thing you need is a traffic jam or a bottleneck to throw your project off schedule, or worse, create safety issues. Trux automatically calculates the appropriate stagger interval (minutes between assigned truck start time) based on the order delivery end time, number of trucks to be assigned, number of trucks you want to appear at a time, and quantity to be delivered. This way you can reduce the chance of creating traffic jams and putting your trucks behind schedule while keeping everyone at the job site safer.

Planned and Adjusted Load Time

The work has only just begun once you’ve scheduled all the trucks for all of your loads. Now comes the hard part - monitoring and managing traffic at the plant/quarry to make sure trucks get loaded and on their way as quickly and safely as possible. Trux calculates the Planned Load Time of all loads based on a dispatch order's configuration/plan and cycle time. The Adjusted Load Time is the time when the load is expected to be filled. It’s based on either the scheduled assignment start time (for future start times), the current location and travel time for the hauler (present time), or the travel time and turnaround time (cycle time) for haulers who have subsequent, future loads. With these views, Trux is equipping your operational staff with tools and information to keep things running smoothly.

Job Site ETA and KPIs

Keeping the plant/quarry on track is critical to maintaining the flow of trucks and keeping deliveries on schedule. But if things break down on the job site, there’s not much hope of sustaining success as the delivery day wears on. That’s where job site efficiency comes into play. The problem is, most job sites don’t know when trucks will arrive unless they call Dispatch, or worse, when they see the trucks actually arrive on-site. This gives them no time to prepare the delivery location or keep other trucks moving once they’ve made their delivery. With the Trux Delivery Tracker, anyone on the job site has access to the ETA and current location of every truck and every delivery throughout the day. And job site KPIs keep everyone informed of hourly delivery velocity and turnaround times to make sure the job site doesn’t become the bottleneck.

ENSURING ON-TIME DELIVERIES AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Delivery Progress Monitoring

Once trucks are loaded and on their way to the destination/job site, dispatchers need a way to monitor progress and determine which orders are on-track, which are behind schedule, and which are ahead of schedule and could be assigned to other deliveries once they are complete. But this is really tough to do when you have so many trucks and so many loads in progress to and from the plant throughout the day. Trux makes it easy to keep tabs on all open deliveries with easy-to-read, color coded progress bars that refresh in real-time. Your dispatchers can see, at a glance, where potential problems are emerging before they happen and divert or assign additional resources to keep them on track.

IMPROVING EQUIPMENT EFFICIENCY AND JOB SITE SAFETY

Load Auto-Complete

Geofence entry and exit points and load delivery completion are key events to measure when monitoring equipment use, cycle times, and even when maintaining job site safety. Requiring dump truck operators to manually mark each of these events is not as efficient or accurate as having them complete automatically. This is particularly true when mobile/moving geofences are in use, such as on a paving job. Trux improves accuracy, equipment efficiency, and job site safety by automating each of these triggers. So you know where your equipment is in real-time, and you can accurately measure performance at the paver without the need for manual operator intervention - they can stay focused on delivering material throughout the day.

IMPROVING ACCOUNTS PAYABLE AND ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

Automated Ticket Matching

For most jobs, customer invoices don’t get sent and haulers don’t get paid unless and until a load ticket is available and matched to a completed load. Without it, your finance/accounting office gets delayed, and your haulers get frustrated. Trux matches all completed loads with a valid load ticket, ensuring your customers are invoiced and your haulers are paid in a timely manner.

AI IS HERE TO STAY

Artificial Intelligence has become an important tool to increase efficiency, productivity, and safety in many industries. This includes the construction industry where the use cases for applying AI are increasingly being put to use at the plant, at the job site, and everywhere in between.