Monthly Archives: November 2016

Operators need specialized trainings to work on different machines

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For special jobs, you need men who have full-fledged knowledge about the work and also experience to handle that kind of work without hassles. Now this knowledge and experience are secondary. What is primary is the training that is given to the person to do that kind of job. In the construction sector, every person is trained to do his part of the job well but it is the operators/mechanics who require specialized training to work on different kinds of heavy equipment. Though the primary function of every machine may be the same but in order to work them out like a professional, the operator has to get himself trained for some weeks and then try his hand doing the actual job. He may find it difficult in the beginning but as he prepares himself for the task on the machine, he will find his comfort zone in the new heavy equipment.

Need to be slow in the beginning:-

When the operator first starts to get trained on the new heavy equipment, he should be slow with maneuvering the machine. He may have worked earlier on years on a particular type of heavy equipment but the new one is different and it may act differently in different situations. So he needs to first know the various functions that are available in the machine and how it impacts the overall movement of the equipment. Once he gets his hands on it, it will be a piece of cake for him. Also, when situation changes he need to again go slow and check how the machine reacts.

For instance, if the operator is given to work on an updated version of a CAT excavator which is huge in size and is used for operations in the forest/construction area. The forest land in every location is different so will the machine act differently. The operator needs to be extra careful when he moves out of one forest location and enters the new one. The land out there may be full of ditches or quite muddy to not have a stable ground for the machine. This will give a hard time for the operator to work on the new excavator.

Should remember the different functions:-

Normally when you are accustomed to working with a set of a machine, you tend to know the in and out of it. If someone closes your eyes and instruct you on what you should be doing, you may perhaps have little problem but will reach your hands to the right buttons inside the machine. This is because you know everything about it that you can work being blindfolded. Well, the case changes completely when you are handed over a new heavy equipment which does have its switches and buttons in the same place as it was in the old machine. So you need to get your hands trained on them as well. By no means can you press the wrong button or else you will end up in a big blunder.

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5 ways to acquire a strong construction team

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The success of any organization is highly dependent on the kind of sync the team member have amongst each other. If the members of the team are cordial and understands each other well then they make the ambience lively and full of energy. This quality is required in every important industry and especially in companies that are aggressive and are looking at every opportunity to grow. If the team performs well, it shows in the progress matrix of the company and the company should also make it a point to reward such teams by giving them gift cards or taking the entire team for a party or on outing all at the expense of the company. Now this definitely boosts the morale of the team and they have more reasons to perform splendidly that before. A strong team can define the future of the company and plays an important role to achieve the goals set by the company.

A construction company has to go through a number to challenges that it gets from the outside. All it needs in such a situation is some support from its team so that they can face the challenges as a team and can get over it with minimum effort. However, a strong team is not formed overnight. There are lots of efforts taken by the management of the construction company and to a larger extent by the owner himself to ensure that he has a strong team that he can rely on during difficult times.

Leadership quality:-

A strong team is formed when you have a strong leader at the center and the team respects him and follows his command out of reverence and not out of fear. The boss should not act like a grumpy old man who can get angry on any silly thing. People usually do not like men who lose their cool in no time. One of the important characteristic of a leader is he/she give more of his time to listen to people and speaks less but when he/she speaks, he/she makes sense and talks to get rid of the core issue.

Have faith in your team:-

If you want to have a strong team then you should first learn to have complete faith on your team. You should have the confidence that the team has the capability to pursue and complete an assignment given to them. This faith of yours will help them to do better in their work.

Problem solver:-

If you are a person who can solve the problems in your team the chances are more that the team will develop strong with every passing day. They may have few hiccups during the course of their project and it becomes your responsibility to ensure that those hurdles are put away.

Offer more support to weak members:-

We are often of the opinion that a weak member in a team can bring down the overall performance of the team and therefore he/she should be chucked out. However, that is a wrong practice and will never lead to a strong team. One should offer more support to a weak member and try to bring him at par.

Monetary incentive:-

Giving monetary incentive can improve the overall performance of a team. They will work harder to meet the targets and ensure that they sit for extra hours to earn the incentive.

Make sure that the raw materials are there in the jobsite on time

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For any industry to survive, receiving raw materials on time is a must. They are probably the second most important resource after human resource because as long as the raw materials are not there, the labor force may not move an inch forward and the work will remain pending. Due to this reason, it is quite imperative for the person in-charge of the stocks to ensure that the raw materials are always available and when he finds that they are running out of stock, order them in advance so that the labors do not have to wait for it come and leave their work pending. The importance of raw materials is felt mostly in the construction industry. This sector in particular will be unable to work if they do not have the stock of raw materials with them. They perhaps understand the importance of raw materials better than any other industry.

Simultaneously, they do not just have to depend upon on type of raw materials. In a construction jobsite, they require different types of raw materials to get the desired result. So the person who is in- charge of keeping a stock of the raw materials need to absolutely sure that he has all in place and in case if there is a deficiency of any stuff that needs to be ordered well before time. In the construction sector, the stock of raw materials is kept by the site engineer. Though they participate in many other things, this becomes major part of their portfolio. Their annual appraisal is also determined on how carefully they have managed their part of job and the kind of onus they have shown. Their promotions are also based on this work. Mostly, this one carries a major point as far as their growth is concerned in this industry.

Must keep the stock of raw materials on weekly basis:-

You may never know when the raw materials are out of stock. When the construction in the jobsite is in full swing, they just use everything they have and there is a higher chance that you may run out of stock. This is why it is recommended that you keep monitoring the stock on a weekly basis. If you can manage to check it more frequently it will be better but anything more than a week can be risky.

Liaise with several vendors:-

When it comes to ordering raw materials the site engineer have to get in touch with many vendors to procure different types of raw materials. It is never that one particular vendor will deal with all kinds of raw materials and this is why developing rapport with several vendors is a crucial one. Also, many a time, some vendors may themselves run out of stock. In this situation, he needs to get in touch with some other vendor. This means that the person who is in-charge of keeping stock of raw materials need to know all possible vendors in the city so that if one runs out of stock, he can get the materials supplied from some other vendor. Liaison with several vendors forms part of his work and he needs to be the best in it.

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Cat CB10 Asphalt Roller

Caterpillar CB10 Asphalt Compactor Roller

Construction companies that are into building roads see a good profit margin in that particular genre of work. They believe that with limited heavy equipment they can complete the work in the stipulated time frame. All they have to do is ensure that the materials used for road construction are of ace quality and the rest can be easily managed. The one heavy equipment that plays a crucial role when it comes to road construction is a compactor roller. You just can’t get a smooth road without a compactor roller and you got to make sure that you have the best rollers to get the desired results. Not any roller can be used to smoothen the road. Different rollers are used for different types of roads but the compactor roller is being largely used in construction of roads.

Talking about the Caterpillar CB10 Asphalt Compactor Roller, it is known for its versatile vibratory systems, phenomenal visibility and control and for its smooth operating powertrain. The CB10 compactor roller is fitted with Auto Adjustable Compaction, Oscillation, 5 amplitude and VERSA-Vibe systems. There are a lot of options available to match the varying paving speeds. The hand-wheel steering technology gives it an edge over all other similar types of compactor rollers. In addition, it has touch-pad functions that make things simpler for the operator. We live in the age where we are used to devices with touch-pads and therefore it becomes a must to have one inside the machine.

Paving requirements can be different and the operator has to decide the kind of drums it needs to put in place. The CB10 roller has both split and solid drum designs which will give the operator the liberty to choose the design as per the paving requirements and also ensures that it delivers superior math quality while making turns. The Cat Compaction Control is a device that updates the operator for higher efficiency and performance. It is very important for the operator to understand when the optimal temperature has been attained. The infrared temperature sensors are just meant for that purpose. It will inform the operator about the existence of the optimal temperature and at the same time when compaction has taken place. The temperature mapping helps to record vital data for future scrutiny and the Pass-Count Mapping simply informs the operator of mat coverage and the number of passes made.

Moving to the specification of the machine, the total operating weight of the split and solid drum on a standard machine is 10670kg and 9710 kg respectively. While the weight of the drum increases slightly on a maximum machine with the split drum weighing 12070kg and the solid drum weighing 10510 kg. The weight of the drums changes with ROPS/FOPS or with a canopy. The capacity of the fuel tank is 208 liters while the capacity of the cooling system, engine oil, hydraulic tank and water tank is 22L, 9L, 36L and 837L respectively. It has been installed with one of the best engines which is a CAT C4.4 with ACERT technology. The total number of cylinders it has is 4 with a rated speed of 2200 rpm. The gross power of the machine is 131 hp with a high speed of 7.5 miles per hour.

Use social media as a tool to augment your heavy equipment business

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The construction and the heavy equipment industry are largely dependent upon new technology. The construction industry is always in the hunt of heavy equipment that can get the work done quickly and with utter precision. Now this is only possible if you upgrade your heavy equipment by adding new technology in it. This will bring in a new life to the machine and it will work with more vitality under tremendously rough situations. Now that was all about how technology can help get the work done at a faster pace. However, if we want to make use of technology to advertise our products and services so that it can reach to thousands of people at a given time, there is no better option than talking about your business in social networking websites. There you can reach to a large number of population without having to pay a penny for it.

There are many companies who are involved in the process of creating their business profiles in social networking websites like LinkedIn, Periscope, and Facebook etc. There find this to be an excellent tool to reach out to a sizable amount of people at one go. They have seen their business growing in this fashion and acquiring more clients from such networking websites.

There are few do’s and don’ts that one needs to follow while they set up their business profile in a social networking website.

Keep your personal and professional profiles separate:-

It is very crucial that you keep 2 accounts in one social networking website, one for your personal use and the other for your professional. If you are into selling of heavy equipment of all the brands, you can make use of your professional account to mention that there. Talk everything about your business in that account but pay special attention that you do not talk much about your business in your personal profile. If you share a couple of your business stories to any of your friend on the personal profile, it won’t be an issue but if you only keep on bragging about your success stories all the time on your personal account, your friends might get turned off by that. They definitely do not check your profile to know about the success in your life. They just simply want to know if things are ok with you.

Maintain strict professionalism on your business account:-

You should keep your business profile very professional. Social networking websites like LinkedIn are meant for professionals and businessmen who are looking to acquire clients and get businesses from them or to reach to the skilled masses and absorb them in their business. If you are an authorized dealer, you should be very stringent when it comes to professionalism.

Post a photo of your company:-

It makes ample of sense to post a picture of your company’s logo on your business profile. It help your prospective client to understand the kind of account you are holding and they will move into your business account to know more about your business and will not stray down to your personal account.

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Pay your heavy equipment loan on time to keep up to good credit score

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Ideally construction companies and contractors buy heavy equipment by borrowing money from banks and other financial institutions. They do not want to use their financial reserves as that is needed to take care of other miscellaneous expenses and moreover the money you need to buy heavy equipment is often more than what people have in their reserves. So they have to eventually turn up to banks for borrowing funds. Now if you already have taken a loan to buy heavy equipment, you should make sure that you pay all the monthly installments to the bank on time or else it can have a negative impact on your credit score. Any default will affect your credit rating and this is something which you will not want to happen with you. If your credit rating falls, it gives a direct indication to the lenders that you do not pay your installments on time and they might reject any further loan application put by you in future.

Loans’ getting rejected is definitely not a good sign for a business owner. He is always in need of money and if any of his loan application is rejected at a crucial juncture, he may find himself into deep trouble. Though there are some financial institutions that are ready to lend money to people having poor credit rating but they do it with heavy rate of interest. So your financial need will be fulfilled for the time being but you will end up paying lot more than you would have to any other banks in normal circumstances. This can also have a negative impact on your business as you will not be able to save money to build up any reserves. Whatever you earn, you might end up paying that to the bank and it is absolutely pointless to engage yourself in something like that.

One thing leads to other. If you do not pay your monthly dues for buying heavy equipment on time and messes up your credit rating, you will also not be able to find lenders to buy other construction materials. It takes time to improve your rating and unfortunately in an industry like construction, you can’t afford to lose time. Therefore maintaining the credit score by paying your monthly dues on time is one of the best ways to avoid lowering of your credit rating.

The only way you can manage to pay the monthly installments is through proper planning and not to spend on things that are of least importance to the business. When we talk about proper planning, it means that you got to do your budgeting well and also take into consideration any unforeseen instances that are likely to happen and can affect the payment of your monthly dues. Take help of experts or of experienced people in your company. Their advices may really work for you. Consider what they all have to say and do not be too aggressive while taking business decisions.

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Small construction companies should be cautious to make big investments

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The focus of business changes in every stage. While you are a small business, the focus point of the business is something else and while it begins to grow the focus changes again. In a nutshell you can’t have the same strategy throughout the lifetime of the business. You have to keep on changing your focus, goals and strategies with the development of the business and also keeping into consideration the circumstances your business is in. In business you are supposed to take challenges and risks and it pays you off in terms of profits but at what stage are you taking what amount of risk is crucial to understand. You just can’t take any amount of risk during the budding stage of your business. Risks should always be calculated and not taken with an unsound mind. It actually defines the future potential of your business. Taking uncalculated risk will often lead you to a situation where you will see no point of return and may have to probably shut your dream of having a business of your own for once and for all.

Construction business is one such business where taking a wrong call can have serious implications on the future growth of the business. There are many big companies who had to shut down their business for taking incorrect investment decisions which has obviously proved them to be costly. Small construction companies have to ultra-careful when they think of making any big investments in their business. They usually experience the problem of scarcity of finance and on top of that if they contemplate of making any big investments for which they will obviously have to look for borrowing money from banks, they got to be very sure of the outcome. This is where their calculation can’t go wrong because they have huge stakes involved here. Unable to repay the debts will definitely have a negative impact on the credit rating of the company which will result in not getting any further loans.

Big investments do not only get restricted to buying abundance of raw materials or heavy equipment. It means much more than that. It also means investing on workforce, setting up a new office and stuff. Being a small construction company, when you are hiring a lot of people and buying different kinds of heavy equipment, you got to doubly sure that the investments will pay you. The construction project for which you have been hiring so many men should not have any lien on it and certainly no litigation on the property. The bottom-line is you got to ensure that the piece of land on which the construction project will begin is absolutely problem free and once you are assured of that, making this big investment makes sense.

Small construction companies are more at risk because if they try to play solo, the big companies may create problems for them. It is a competitive world and no one wants to let the other grow easily.

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Veteran salesman should be supportive to the newbie

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No wonder doing a sales job is one of the most difficult jobs one can do and it becomes harder when you do not get much support from the people who have been doing this job for years. It is pretty obvious that the young guns will definitely look for some sort of support from the older guys and this will what help them to climb up the ladder in life. Selling heavy equipment is considered to be a tough man’s job and not everybody can take the agony of persuading clients to purchase a thousand dollar stuff which the sales guy himself does not know much about.

The new ones will certainly not have much idea with what they dealing with but the tenured guys know how to crack the deal and which machine is used for what purpose. They kind of try to know the requirement of their client and then pitch their product. But the newbie will not be able to do that effectively. He may possibly speak everything about the heavy equipment that he has learnt from various sources but when it comes to comparing it with the client’s requirements, there are high chances that he might get completely bowled.

Give veterans a team to mentor:-

Every newcomer to any business needs a mentor to guide them. Here the veterans can play the role of a mentor and guide the new sales guys to glory. There are lots of tricks to a successful sale that a veteran sales person learns during his years of selling heavy equipment. He can share a bit of them and check how the guys are incorporating those tricks in their sales activity. Right from cold calling to fixing an appointment to making a successful sale, he needs to check that the guys are doing well in their job. In case, if someone is having a hard time and is dealing with some issue, he can jump in there and try to fix the problem. If required he can accompany the person for few appointments with different contractors or construction companies and show him the right way to sell heavy equipment.

Talk one to one with the new guy:-

Talking one to one with the new guys is a crucial point that the veteran should take into consideration. Not all are brilliant salesperson and some needs that extra nurture to develop into an excellent sales guy. More to this, not everybody understands heavy equipment the way it is and therefore there is a need of someone who can explain them about machines in simple terms. There will be no better person than a veteran who can help the young guns with their problems. Not everybody will speak up in front of everyone and they might feel more confident to speak on a one to one basis.

The beginners are full of energy and they can find ways to deal with things but what they need the most is some support from the experienced lots and once they get that, they can very well take care of their profession.

Do not stop learning when you see yourself in profits

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In the beginning people are quite enthusiastic in learning new tricks of business. The motive behind them learning new techniques is that they can make money in less time with probably putting minimum efforts. However, once they see their company making enough profits, they somehow lose their interest to learn more about the business and keep doing what they have already learned. Well, in this way they are really harming their prospect of making big in the industry because not everybody stops learning when they make good money. They keep the learning process on till they grow old and want to hand over the business to the next eligible person.

As no industry gives you the leverage of stop learning and still continues to be in profits, the construction industry can go a step further and can punish you severely. There have been numerous such instances where construction companies got shut as they felt that they have learned everything and do not need any further lesson from this industry. They somehow forgot how dynamic this industry is and in order to survive here, one needs to be always on his toes. They can’t ever skip learning and if they do so they should be ready to see the downturn.

Learning anything in the construction domain can be fun if you are curious about it. Though it is known for its complex nature yet things can become simple if you show some level of interest to study the subject.

Learn while you work:-

In other words, experience teaches you many things while you stay connected to this profession. Day in and day out, you will come across many things that you will find new and you would be learning how to do things. These lessons are very important ones as they will help you to become a good employee and if you want to start your construction company, your experience in this sector will definitely take you to great heights.

So pay attention in everything that you do or you notice. If your colleague has come across something that you couldn’t figure out, take help of your seniors or your supervisors and check what they do to sort it out. Make note of the solution and you can try that later in your own way. You need not copy exactly what you senior did but can apply your thoughts and work things out.

Take charge of the administrative work:-

The administrative work in a construction company is immense. If the company is handling big projects, it also means that they have a lot of administrative work to take care of. Try to sneak your way into that field as you will get a lot to know how a construction company actually works off-field. There you will understand how the employees are paid and how much they are paid; how the company decides to procure heavy equipments and what mechanism they use to pay.

That is perhaps an ocean of learning and you will cherish if you enjoy learning new thin

Caterpillar 982M Wheel Loader

It has always been a big problem for the construction laborers to move huge pile of dirt from one place to another especially when you do not have a wheel loader to get the work done. Other than that, moving the dirt manually is also time consuming and quite stressful. Therefore one can certainly understand the importance of a wheel loader when he gets the task to clear pile of dirt. So there is no second thought of whether to possess a wheel loader or not when you are in the business where you have to deal with dirt and got to move it from the construction site to the dump yard. The real question for you is which brand and model of wheel loader to go for. Heavy equipment companies of high repute produces wheel loader however, it is CAT 982M that seems to be stealing the show.

Cat 982M wheel loader is fitted with CAT C13 ACERT engine which is considered to be one of the best in the industry. It has a maximum operating net power of 404 hp with a weight of 35563 kg. Pertaining to fuel consumption it is believed that the 982M wheel loader is 10% more fuel efficient as compared to other leading K series machines and is 25% more fuel efficient to the H series machines. This saves a lot for companies that have to use the machine almost 8-10 hours in a day. One can imagine how much fuel it can save as compared to machines of other series. With the size of bucket that can be installed on the machine, it simply increases its capacity to carry a lot of load at a given point of time.

CAT 982M Wheel Loader provides great degree of comfort to the operator who has to work staying inside the machine for hours. It just becomes tougher for the guy to be inside for hours at a stretch. Cat understands this and has therefore considered every minute details of the comfort of the operator. They also understand that if they are able to maintain the comfort level of the operator, it will automatically lead to higher productivity and will enhance the profit margin for the construction company. The hydraulic systems of the machine have gone through a lot of changes to increase its efficiency. The weight of the mono-block design has been considerably reduced and has less than 40% leak points. The auxiliary third function can be installed at the factory or at the jobsite by just adding up a second remote valve.

In order to monitor the real time health of the machine, they have an online “Visionlink” application that will enable you to check the data of the machine and will thereby help you to know its actual health. Other than that you can always have expert advice of the CAT technical team who will help you to understand the features by which you can increase the efficiency of the machine.