Grading and Excavation Contractor

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Understanding what should be done is essential for everybody involved in a project.

By Paul Hull

Let’s go back about 50 years and see what American writer James Thurber said about communication. “Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act,” wrote Thurber in 1961. What would he think today with all the technologies developed since then to make communication easier and more efficient? Study the people around you for a few minutes, in traffic, at the mall, on the sidewalk. How many of them have a little box attached to their ear? How many of them are talking, talking, talking? My own observation is that most of the people using cell phones are talking … so who is listening?

However amazing new technologies for communication are, there are a few basic rules that will never change. They sound obvious, but they are often ignored. The person giving instruction or information must know what he or she is talking about. The person receiving must be capable of understanding the message. In its most simple form, the basic rule would tell us that it’s no good giving instructions in English if the person receiving them doesn’t know English. Some of the best construction workers have Spanish as their first language; it should be crucial they understand any instructions given in English. Likewise, they should be sure that any comments they make are understood—especially about safety at the site—because, in our business, safety is the best reason for good communications. Many recorded accidents have occurred because somebody didn’t know where somebody else on the same job was standing or didn’t know exactly where to dump the heavy load.

The content of a message is as important as its language, or why would there be a need for the message? If the message is something like “Go to our site on Washington Street after lunch this afternoon,” “Let us know how the excavation at the hospital went as soon as you’ve finished,” or “How is the new dozer operator doing today?” its meaning is clear enough. But there are messages between office and job site where the content may be more technical than that. Does the receiver know the terms used? I remember an excavator operator who dug in the wrong corner at a hospital project in our community because the instructions sent by his supervisor were neither accurate nor clear; the supervisor didn’t know the site well enough. The operator did what he thought he had been told to do (even though it seemed wrong to him) because he did not want to question the sender of the message and seem to challenge his authority. The sender was the operator’s boss; he was also his dad. Several months after the wrong hole in the parking lot, they agreed finally to laugh about the misunderstanding, and such an error has never happened since.

Correct communications can help productivity. If we are talking about machine operators who turn up at a new site with their excavators, dozers, and loaders, it’s obvious that the job will start (and continue) most productively and profitably if those operators and machines do the work that has been planned, specified, and explained. It is annoying and embarrassing for an operator not to know the required path of his dozing or the depth of his excavation; it’s annoying for the operator and an unnecessary loss of time and money for the contractor. The image of your company may be seriously marred if it is obvious to your customers or even interested bystanders (potential customers, that is) that your employees have no clear instructions about what to do. How do all those stories start about workers standing around doing nothing? It is not necessarily true that those workers are lazy; it may be their supervisors have not communicated the right instructions. Remember those messages that went from person to person in a quiet, confidential line at school? How often they ended up with a message totally different from the original one. One of the most (in)famous comes from World War I, where the troops were stuck in flooded trenches for months and sending messages was often a matter of “pass it on.” The British infantry were ready to go over the top again into No Man’s Land. The message from the captain started as “Send reinforcements; we’re going to advance. Pass it on.” It ended as “Send three-and-fourpence; we’re going to a dance.”

[SUBHEAD]Who Should Communicate?
It is not the intention of this article to endorse one communications tool rather than another, because there are so many excellent tools available. Check the advertisements in Grading & Excavation Contractor for good information in that respect. The contractor’s decision about which technology and tool to purchase will depend on his or her own specific needs. We spoke with several contractors who say they always use the same brand of cell phone, because it has always served them well. (We’ve heard similar comments about loaders, dump trucks, and pickups. Brand loyalty is easy when the brand works well.) For example, “Users should clarify before any purchase what they can and cannot do with a particular cell phone” was a common piece of advice. Find out, too, if there are places in your territory where the phones won’t work and how that would affect your business. How can you solve that problem? Some contractors and public authorities have replaced cell phones with radios if they have found blank areas. They weren’t blaming the phone makers, but rather the service available to them.

Cell phones are, by far, the most popular means of communication between office and job site, between job site and equipment source, and between one job site and another. In some regions there have been problems with cell phones, and some regions seem to be inappropriate for two-way radios. Two interesting comments we heard (on consecutive phone calls) were, “We use two-way radios instead of cell phones because the cell phones are too expensive,” and, “We use cell phones now because the two-way radios were too expensive.” It seems to be a matter of perception.

With everybody understanding and asserting that good communication is essential to good business, it was hardly surprising to hear just how good people think their communications are. Aaron operates equipment in Mount Nebo, WV, and says that either a pager or a cell phone has been fine for job-site communication. At Brown’s Excavating, also in West Virginia at Sistersville, cell phones have served well and reliably. At Dean Blum Excavating in Baraboo, WI, the company has used both cell phones and two-way radios.

Who uses two-way radios, and why? There are still locations in the United States where cell phone service is not always acceptable, often in mountain areas but also in congested urban places like San Francisco. At L&H Grading Inc., in Corvallis, OR, “You use a two-way radio when you find you’re in a dead spot, in a hole, or in the mountains,” says L&H President James Beck.

Everybody does agree, however, that service is steadily improving for cell phone usage nationwide. At H.B. Fleming in New Gloucester, ME, cell phones are more practical because some of their distances from home base to job site are too far for two-way radios. For Lone Star Excavation in Flower Mound, TX, cell phones are the best, and that’s true for Agnew Excavating in Saginaw, MI; Commonwealth Excavating in Verona, VA; and Wilder Construction in Bellingham, WA. In Provo, UT, at Cox & Cox Excavation and Construction, Allen Cox sticks to two-way radios. He has found they are less expensive than cell phones.

From many conversations it is clear that cell phones are the most popular, with two-way radios good alternatives or companions, and the decision may be a local one, depending on terrain and available service. If your grading and excavation projects tend to be “local” within, say, a 50-mile radius, cell phones should be efficient and practical for everybody. That’s what Steve Cutting at Guilford Excavating in Guilford, VT, says. A useful piece of advice came from Mrs. Bishop at Bishop’s Grading Inc., in Mukwonago, WI. Realizing that communication by phone is useless if both parties can’t hear each other, she recommends the use of vibrating cell phones for those many times when the ringing tone will not be heard above the site noises. You miss fewer calls that way.

[SUBHEAD]There’s More to Communication
The technology may be excellent, but there’s more to communication than that.

Not all successful communication is by voice, and not all communication needs to be instant or immediate. Many projects require changes in specifications or equipment, and e-mail has been praised for nonemergency communications if the person who receives it will read and respond in a timely and helpful manner. Voice mail is similar. Person A feels he has done his duty if he has left an adequate message for Person B in the right voice mail box. Person B, on the other hand, does not listen to messages until Thursday afternoon, 24 hours after the event in Person A’s message he was supposed to complete. We need to know not only that we can send messages but also that they are received and understood in a timely fashion. I had a response to a voice mail message seven weeks after I’d sent it, and the caller (who had received it on the same day it was sent) was miffed that he had missed a deadline. You may see “subscriber benefits” listed in some new methods of messaging, but their cost may cancel their benefits in productivity. Additional benefits have a price, and we should evaluate their practical usefulness for our particular businesses. As one contractor put it: “Just owning the latest technology does not mean we are successful.” With the current speed of product updates and new technologies appearing, it is essential to establish that all proposed communications equipment is compatible. You wouldn’t buy the wrong size tires for your loader; it’s the same principle.

In many communications we must understand if the message is a request, an order, or simply information to make the job go more smoothly. In both oral and written communications, we should be sure that we have the entire message and know what we are supposed to do as a result. “Who does he think he is, sending instructions?” is rarely a good response. And any reaction that starts with “Don’t they know that we …” is an omen for miscommunication and accident.

Perhaps one of the most sensitive areas in communication is the right to make the communications. At its worst, it means that the person with highest perceived authority makes the call or issues the order. Just over five years ago, September 11, in New York, some nearby communities found that vital emergency communications were disrupted because some managers insisted on access to the communications vehicle, on the basis that they were important people in the community and not because they had any emergency procedure expertise or even knowledge of the situation in New York City. At all levels, the people who communicate should know what they are talking about. The person who gives instructions about excavating and dozing should be familiar with the site, its terrain, and potential obstacles.

Some of the daily communications between site workers and offsite managers are not questions of company or institutional authority. If an employee needs a part for a machine on downtime, it’s vital that the person taking the request knows what the part is, where it can be found, and how fast it can be taken or sent to the employee requesting it. It was noted regularly by correspondents that those (in the office) who have spent time in the field understand the urgency of requests for parts and the perception of emergency in some job-site situations better than people who have never worked in the field.

All communications between office and job site are not emergencies. Some people (never our good selves, of course!) can turn any simple incident into a crisis, any requirement into a crucial need, and the smallest change of procedure into a traumatic reversal of priorities. Such attitudes are normal part and parcel of communication—in the family, at the office, on the job site. For workers at the job site, the most annoying communication can be the one that does not relate to a job site problem but is rather the result of somebody back at the office having nothing to do and wondering how those guys on the machines are doing this morning. A side effect of this kind of time-wasting communication is that the workers at the site start to wonder if the office is simply checking on them regularly for no specific reason. There may be information in the call, but it is information that could wait or be sent via a less urgent method. Real-time voice communications are now. They disturb the recipient now. They want an answer now. They stop the work now. … And they’d better be important now.

A couple of years ago I spoke with Chris Barth from Carmel, CA, part owner of CDSI there, with good experience in both field and office work related to copper, fiber, and coaxial applications. He made a few comments that were clear and wise enough for me to write down and keep. First, he had an interesting definition of an organization. “An organization is two or more people, under management, working together to achieve a common goal,” says Barth. If that idea is observed in communications, we should be on the right track, or on the same wavelength. “Comprehension is the key to good communication,” adds Barth. “If both parties in communication comprehend the issues, the results are usually good. Comprehension in this case means that a person understands not only the role of his or her particular field of expertise in the organization (such as engineering, purchasing, or accounting), but also the importance of all others involved. In a typical project that could include the bidding, the field completion of the task, ordering the necessary hardware, paperwork of all kinds, and even the receptionist whose prime role is to take telephone calls and give the callers to the right person.”

[SUBHEAD]Communication From Human to Machine
If there’s one fact that has surprised me in talking with many contractors nationwide, it’s the number of them who do not use advances in technology for excavating, grading, and dozing. I may, of course, have the wrong impression, but I believe that plenty of holes are dug and building sites graded without the use of instruments. “I set a hundred stakes in an hour,” commented Fran Cunningham, owner of Landmark Development in Auburn, NY. He was talking about his use of Field General, a product from InSite Software. “Then I can go to the next job and set 100 more stakes. I don’t have any operators and equipment standing around waiting for layout stakes. The benefits are obvious.” This software allows you to do offset staking of buildings, roads, and curbs, and it can measure work in progress. Field General exports surface models to Leica 3D Systems, Topcon’s 3DMC, and Trimble’s SiteVision 3D. Those systems will let the triangulated surface from InSite SiteWork be loaded into an onboard machine control as for a grader and dozer. The GPS unit provides the X- and Y-coordinates, and the onboard readout shows the operator how high to raise or lower the blade. It’s stakeless grading and saves a significant amount of labor and time. There are other instruments (technologies, if you will) that can give a contractor a similar advantage. The most common, and sometimes justifiable, reason given for not using such technologies is that it is too expensive for “my size company.” There is evidence, however, that those contractors who do their excavating, grading, and dozing with the help of instruments like lasers and related software are moving ahead of competitors who don’t.

These technologies are telling us that our communication with our machines can be extremely accurate without relying on the eyesight or gut feeling of a person on the site. With something like Trimble’s BladePro 3D machine control system, the instrument calculates the design elevation and cross-slope for the current position, automatically moving the blade to the correct cut or fill position elevation and slope. It’s perfect communication! Topcon’s System Five 3D-GPS has been especially appreciated where sky views were obstructed by trees or buildings—where GPS-only systems might not operate. Leica Geosystems, another leader in these technologies, has developed guidance systems for pavers, too.

Accuracy is one of the obvious advantages of these human-machine communication technologies, and it is most welcome that some of them work together rather than as opposing technologies. SOLO Field includes a series of programs from Tripod Data Systems (TDS). It is held in your hand and you can gather position or attribute data from the site, mapping lines, points, and areas, as well as navigating and calculating areas and distances. You can view and edit the data collected in the field. Remember how difficult it can be to do that? With SOLO Field, you can gather the data with a laser rangefinder or GPS, or by selecting a position on your basemap. You can work with tried-and-true formats like AutoCAD DXF, MapInfo MIF, TDS UDF basemap, ESRI SHP, or MicroStation DGN. You can use image file formats like JPG, TIF, and DOQQ, exporting your data directly from your data collector to a good range of common formats.

The technologies that have advanced productivity for dozing, grading, and excavating may be compared to those that enabled us to start using calculators, fax machines, cell phones, and computers. They embrace instruments and machines that could do tasks more quickly, more accurately, and, in the end, more economically than people. Some of the new machines and their technologies may have surprisingly short lives. How often do you use the fax machine when you have e-mail? When was the last time you used an electric typewriter? But that progress is just a sign of the continuing development of the technologies. There will always be those who think they must have the newest technology, even if it is not appropriate to their business, but the technologies that have helped contractors are not in that class. Technologies that improve our communications, increase our productivity, help us profit from our efforts, and grow the security of our businesses are worth serious consideration. Some may be intimidating at first, but the technologies are becoming easier and easier to use. The idea that you had to be a video nut, a geek, or a nerd to run them died years ago, and we would be ignoring good prospects for a better business and personal life if we ignored them.

[SUBHEAD]Office to Field, and Field to Office
Well-designed technologies can help both office and field. Accurate, easy-to-read earthwork quantity take-offs and models for GPS are what DirtLogic provides to grading and excavation contractors, civil engineers, developers, and architects. The company assists contractors in the estimating phase by turning a 2D site plane into a 3D dirtwork take-off used to submit project bids. The take-off compares existing site conditions with the proposed site plan and gives precise calculations of where and how much earth needs to be cut or filled. “Our services help those in the office and those in the field speak the same language,” explains Jenny Tallis for DirtLogic. “We provide accuracy and clear communication in challenging situations such as station verification and deciphering AutoCad plans.”

The GPS technicians at DirtLogic interpret the engineer’s plans and, using proprietary software with comprehensive checks and balances, translate them into an easy-to-use and simple-to-understand alignment file for the contractor. “We create our Digital Terrain Models by incorporating profile data,” adds Tallis. “This includes every curb point, all high/low points, and centerline alignments, using centerline profiles in addition to contours. The linework files we deliver are easy to read, and they are easily downloaded to handheld GPS equipment. Our combination of contours and alignment data guarantees an accuracy that a model built from only contours will not.” Prior to this advance in technology, a field person communicating with the office regarding a particular station on the paper plans was typically making an educated guess as to the station from which he was offsetting. Often the field worker would have to pull tape or call in the surveyor to verify the exact station location. Now, all it takes is a quick look at DirtLogic’s alignment file on his handheld as a foolproof way to verify his position in real time. “Not only do our services help the office and the field communicate effectively regarding exact location, but our easily read linework files prevent many of those back-and-forth questions from your field personnel who are trying to interpret the engineer’s AutoCad files,” says Tallis. “Some AutoCad files may be confusing and complicated because they include a lot of information not required by the field personnel, while file sizes can be so large that a handheld GPS instrument won’t handle it. On DirtLogic’s linework files, everything is custom color-coded according to the client’s wishes and broken down into small [easy-to-download] files.”

Many of the problems between office and field have been blamed on inaccurate or unusable information. This approach to solving that problem seems to be working well, for small and large contracting companies. The heart of communication is that, if it is good, everybody knows what should be done, and when, and how. If your communication between employees is not understood by all or not paid the attention that is its due, the projects will falter and profits will fizzle. Let me know what you want, then, and I’ll respond with equal care and success.

Paul Hull writes on construction topics for several magazines.

GEC - July/August 2007

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