Why the Construction Sector is Key to Economic Growth

The world is quickly transforming and developing, and with that, heavy machinery and equipment need to keep up with the changes. With all these advancements in electromobility, machinery, and telematics, there’s no denying that this will change the game in the construction industry, providing many benefits to companies and clients worldwide.

Many are aware of the technological advancements in the digital space, but our physical infrastructure and construction developments deserve the spotlight, too, and for a good reason.

Since the machinery hire industry will continue to grow along with tech progress, it’s only right to explore the different technology trends pushing innovation in the heavy plant machinery space. Let’s take a look!

Trend #1: The Rise of Autonomous Machinery

By the end of 2025, the self-driving vehicle market is expected to be worth about USD1.6 billion. With this growth, you’ll find an overwhelming change in the industry’s productivity and efficiency, making autonomous machinery an unbeatable trend.

When a company integrates autonomous vehicles, workflows will improve, allowing these technologies to complete mundane tasks. This will allow employees to focus on value-added jobs instead of day-to-day issues that could take up too much of their time.

With that said, autonomous vehicles can also help improve the well-being of employees, since it promotes stress relief and safety in the work area.

Trend #2: Pushing Electromobility to Benefit the Environment

Another innovation to note is that, since autonomous vehicles are on the rise, the advanced equipment will be powered by electric motors, which provides sustainability for businesses.

With electromobility, equipment manufacturers have addressed years of sustainability efforts, finally realising lower-emission solutions, such as reduced fuel consumption and the development of telematics systems, which decrease fuel usage and idle time.

Continued research and development allow manufacturers to produce electric motors with batteries and computers integrated into machinery to help them work efficiently. Since this knowledge is shared across industries, electric motors have become more accessible, cheaper, and easier to make without compromising their powerful benefits.

But besides sustainability, electromobility also requires less maintenance than traditional motors, allowing companies to cut down expenses. Not to mention, with fast-charging options, these vehicles can reach peak charge within a small window.

Trend #3: Digitally Connected Machines, Telematics, and Virtual Change

We all know that we’re living in the digital age where almost everything is digitised. With that said, there’s no denying that the heavy plant machinery space has also found unexpected growth in this landscape.

Hundreds of multiple construction companies are beginning to embrace connected construction equipment and telematics. Because of this, it’s starting to become the norm at job sites, which encourages more innovation in this field.

By connecting equipment through telematics systems, you can merge GPS technology and onboard diagnostics, monitoring sensors, reports, and logs to help streamline and improve the performance and operations of construction equipment.

With all of this, telematics systems serve as a singular hub where data and information can be accessed, bringing in improvements in productivity and service.

The Bottom Line: There are No Stopping Technological Innovations in the Heavy Plant Machinery Industry

While it may take some time for most machinery tech innovations to become a norm, it’s quite encouraging to see that many industries are slowly adapting to the change and incorporating the different technological advancements we mentioned above.

Once advanced equipment becomes the norm, the construction industry will continue to rise, boosting economic growth, and ultimately benefiting society.

How Can We Help You?

If you’re looking to integrate advanced equipment into your projects, it’s best to call KEE Group.

KEE Group is Australia’s most effective and unique civil and mining support service, providing hires, surfacing, transport, and fuel services for any development project. Looking for machinery hire in Albany? Get in touch with us today!

IMAGE © Forbes

While scrap heaps containing millions of wasted tyres might not seem like a hazard to anyone, they actually can cause severe damage to the environment. Such was the case in 1999 when a lightning storm ignited tyres in a Californian tyre recycling facility. The “Westly Tyre Fire” created an enormous fire and brought to attention the dangers of rubber scrap heaps, and as such, efforts were placed to find a use for scrap tyres.

Today, many companies have focused on putting old rubber tyres to use, one of the most prominent being recycling them for road surfacing. whereby rubber is combined with pavement materials to create the roads we know today. While not all roads do this, a significant proportion does.

That being said, let’s talk more about surface trends of 2021 and beyond to see what we can expect from the use of surfaces and rubber:

Surface Trends Beyond 2021

Many roads today are made of what is known as asphalt concrete. This type of material is made up of rocky aggregates and a black binder that acts as the glue to keep the road together. It is in these binders that utilizes a blend of complex hydrocarbons from petroleum that has a significant impact on the environment despite how little it is used. This doesn’t include the process of acquiring, transporting, and refining the binder, all of which emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. Even during the paving process, more greenhouse gases are produced as the binders need to be heated with a mix of aggregate. Unfortunately, such a binder doesn’t last too long, either. Over time, the binder stiffens, leading to cracks.

With that in mind, how does one go about fixing the problem of an environmentally harmful binder that quickly oxidizes and causes the road to crack? This is where tyres come in.

Tyres are made out of synthetic and natural rubbers which are heated up with various auxiliary compounds to create a cross-linked structure. This composition is what makes the tyres so hardy, and that’s why they last so long in landfills. Fortunately, though, they do not have to stay there. Upon discovering ways to turn tyres into crumb rubber, the addition of such rubber into asphalt binders has improved the surface’s performance significantly. However, there is one drawback here. The drawback of mixing rubber with asphalt is that the temperatures needed to make the mixture viscous enough to work with, need to be much higher. Fortunately, warm mix technologies that utilize foam water have allowed such temperatures to drop by a whopping 40 Celcius, leading to less energy spent and, as a result, much less greenhouse gas produced. That said, further research is progressing to create cold mixtures, but they’re still used as patching material rather than all-out road solutions because their performance isn’t up there.

Conclusion

Apart from mixing crumb rubber with binders to improve the performance and environmental-friendliness of roads, many other experimental trends are being generated to take it much further. One idea is to use Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP), using old roads to build new ones. However, while many of these implementations are still in their infancy, it is good to see companies looking for new materials.

Seeing how manufacturers are working hard to find more environmentally-friendly solutions that do not sacrifice performance, one can assume that the world is only thanking us in our attempt to live greener. With that in mind, we believe that the future trends will revolve around being environmentally friendly, and these apply to roads and more. KEE Surfacing has been using both crumb rubber and RAP over many years and is proud to lead the way for WA’s roads to be built using more environmentally friendly materials. With KEE Asphalt, KEE Profiling, KEE Spray Seal and KEE Basecourse Paving divisions, KEE Surfacing has you covered!

KEE Group is Australia’s civil and mining support service, offering services covering hire, surfacing, transport, and fuel. If you are looking for a construction hire that offers surfacing services that you can rely on, contact us today!

IMAGE © Katharyn Quinn 2021

Several developments are poised to reshape the oil sector. Within the next 20 years, demand is anticipated to peak and fall, resulting in industry convergence and a weakening of existing companies’ competitive advantage. The future oil sector will also see both energy and non-energy players, implying that oil firms are attempting to adjust their business methods to the new era.

The primary question is how the future ecosystem will look and if existing companies will use their core competencies to survive and even gain from these new challenges. What will the future oil corporations look like?

The Need To Reinvent the Industry

Despite average oil prices of more than $70 per barrel over the previous decade, free cash flow from core activities has been inadequate to keep shareholder returns above the cost of capital. Since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, the leverage ratio of total debt to total liquidity has more than quadrupled, and the industry’s share of the S&P 500 has been slashed in half over the previous decade.

Despite these warning indications, oil and gas corporations continue to play a critical role in the energy future, notably in providing safe, cheap and sustainable energy to over a billion people. However, oil and gas will no longer be the uncontested energy leader, as alternative sources will soon be taking the lead.

Where the Industry Is Headed

The World Economic Forum’s Oil and Gas community is joining forces to investigate projects that encourage collaboration between oil and gas industry businesses and their ecosystem.

Among the key initiatives are:

1. Establishment of Global Networks and Hubs

The O&G industry will seek to establish a global hub network to allow offshore logistics, warehousing and surplus inventory pooling, resulting in $14 billion yearly savings from increased infrastructure usage and inventory reduction.

2. Standardisation of Equipment Specifications

Standardisation of equipment specifications for bulk material and packaging procurement is expected to result in a 10 per cent to 20 per cent reduction in capital expenditure on equipment and a 40 per cent reduction in schedule compression, among other significant benefits.

3. Diversification of Energy Sources

Some oil and gas firms will extend their focus to include hydrocarbons and electrons, emphasising end-user demands.

4. Streamlining of Data Sets and Digital Collaboration Platforms

This initiative aims to develop common standards for data architecture and APIs throughout the oil and gas sector, allowing data sharing and establishing the groundwork for digitalisation and data-driven decision making, which will accelerate the timelines of ground projects.

Conclusion

The oil and gas sector must confront several difficulties and prepare for an increasingly complicated and uncertain future. The capacity of the industry’s executives to detect essential signals and respond decisively is vital to the industry’s success.

One critical option is to explore collaborative projects on a local, regional and global scale. Working with peers in the industry and suppliers, as well as encouraging suppliers to join forces and collaborate in strict accordance with competition law and antitrust standards, the industry may eliminate waste, increase efficiency, cut breakeven costs and minimise its carbon footprint.

KEE Group is Australia’s most effective and unique civil and mining support service. We provide top-grade machinery for your projects at an affordable cost. If you’re looking to hire equipment in Perth, Albany and Port Hedland, don’t hesitate to contact us today.

IMAGE © Katharyn Quinn 2021