Benefits of Vehicle Tracking for Construction Contractors

The challenges of running a construction-contracting company come at you from every angle. You need to juggle jobs across distant locations, properly allocate your staff and equipment, and keep your sites and employees safe. To stay competitive, you must do it all on time and within budget.

Luckily, technologies such as real-time vehicle tracking can help. At its core, vehicle tracking pinpoints vehicles on online maps in real-time or over a defined period, freeing employees to focus on their work without distraction from office staff inquiring where they are and how long they’ve been there. Some solutions also offer functionality such as online timesheets, route reports, driving-safety analysis, and maintenance-tracking tools, leading to a safer and more efficient work environment.

Improved Site and Staff Management

Your equipment and staff are your livelihood. By knowing where they are, at any given moment, you can keep your business running smoothly. Vehicle-tracking can help with:

• Staff allocation – when employees call in sick or a job needs extra hands on board, see exactly where your staff are and reallocate as needed
• Maintenance reminders – avoid downtime due to unexpected repairs by tracking vehicle usage and ensuring maintenance is performed according to warranty and rental agreements
• Vehicle recovery – quickly locate lost or stolen vehicles using GPS-tracking

More Accurate Accounting

With several jobs running at the same time, accounting can be a challenge. You want to ensure your employees are paid fairly and your customers are billed accurately. Some vehicle-tracking solutions can help you do this by automatically collecting data such as shift time, driving time, time at a work site, mileage, and fuel usage (see Figure 1).

Automatic data collection frees your employees to focus on the job, not on filling out paperwork; it helps you ensure:

• Fair fuel and overtime pay – data can confirm whether claims align with miles travelled and time at job sites, reducing false claims while also reassuring employees that they will receive the pay due to them without having to fight for it
• More accurate billing – data on how long your employees have been at various job sites can help ensure accurate billing and help resolve billing disputes

Smarter Bidding

Over time, tracking data provides a better picture of how long certain types of jobs typically take and cost. Not only can this help you optimise staff and equipment allocation, but it can also help you bid smarter on new projects, keeping your business competitive without underquoting.

Safer Job Sites and Travel

Many vehicle-tracking solutions also offer tools for digging down into the details of a vehicle’s routes travelled and driving metrics (speed, acceleration, braking, idling)—key factors influencing both safety and costs.

If your employees travel long distances to work sites, tracking data can help confirm they are getting proper rest before resuming work. If they are meant to stay within a defined work zone or onsite overnight, geofencing functionality can help ensure the proper guidelines are followed.

Using vehicle data, driving can be scored and training programs can be established to track, or even incentivise, better driving. Safer driving will not only reflect well on your brand within the local community, but it can also help reduce costs. For example, insurance costs may be reduced due to fewer violations and accidents, while fuel costs may be reduced through improved driving habits, such as less speeding or unnecessary idling.

Route and speed data can even be used to exonerate employees who may be subject to false claims. Imagine an employee is accused of speeding down a narrow lane or clipping a parked car’s mirror, when in fact the vehicle wasn’t even on the road at that time.

Location pinpointing can also provide peace of mind to employees as they venture into new, and sometimes dangerous, locations. For example, if an employee doesn’t turn up when expected, the vehicle can be located and assistance sent in case of accident or illness.

Finding the Solution for Your Needs

Despite its benefits, adopting vehicle-tracking technology may still seem daunting to an overworked business owner. Luckily, solutions are available that are both easy-to-use and reasonably priced.

One provider—Quartix—has delivered real-time vehicle-tracking and telematics solutions for over 16 years. Nearly 10,000 small to mid-size businesses have chosen Quartix because it offers:

• tiered pricing options that let them select the level of functionality they need
• shorter contracts that don’t require multi-year commitment
• contracts that do not auto-renew
• customer service by experts invested in their success

To learn how Quartix can help you better serve your business, your employees, and your customers, visit www.quartix.net or email enquiries@quartix.net.

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