Grunnarbeid, a Norwegian building, construction and highways contractor, is testing a solution that employs RFID and GPS to identify the location and status of tools on construction sites. The system—provided by Norwegian RFID software company TraceTracker, telecommunications company Telenor Objects and RFID integrator HRAFN—consists of a customized computer wired to an RFID reader, GPS unit and cellular device, installed in containers or vehicles that transport and store equipment. With RFID tags applied to the equipment, TraceTracker software can identify which tools are within read range of the reader, and thereby know whether they are still in storage in that container or vehicle, or have been removed, presumably by construction staff.
Grunnarbeid provides large-scale construction and civil engineering services in central Norway, with multiple projects going on at any given time. The company was seeking a way to use technology to improve asset management on work sites, says John Peter Alstad, Grunnarbeid’s CEO. The challenge was to improve visibility into which tools were in use at what job site, and which ones were idle. In some cases, tools in a trailer at one place may be unused, while the same tool is in great demand on another site.
The company owns about 70 percent of the equipment it uses, and rents the additional 30 percent to meet the varying needs based on construction projects underway. The rental equipment is typically needed when the necessary equipment can’t be provided for a specific project. “If we could live in a world where you start a project immediately when another finished, this wouldn’t be a problem,” says Alstad, but multiple projects at once make it difficult to manage which equipment is in use, and where.
Alstad says he was introduced to RFID when he read The World is Flat, a book written by New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman. Later, he approached telecom company Telenor, which referred him to its Telenor Objects division, which focuses on services and products that support RFID and GPS data. As a result, Alstad adopted the company’s Shepherd software system—a data-collection platform that can communicate with multiple types of sensors, as well as various types of RFID readers, GPS transmitters, wireless and telephony networks. Telenor Objects issued a request for proposal (RFP) for RFID software, and TraceTracker won the bid, says Geir Vevle, HRAFN’s CTO.
In April 2011, HRAFN installed the system’s hardware—a CAEN RFID reader, a GPS unit and a cellular communication device linked to a small Owasys computer that stores software to capture and manage the data—in five cars that Grunnarbeid uses to deliver equipment to construction sites and in five of its 10- or 20-foot steel containers that Grunnarbeid uses for storing tools. The system also includes TraceTracker Asset, a Web-based software system to track equipment movements in real time.
Passive UHF EPC Gen 2 tags from Omni-ID and TheTagFactory were screwed, glued, welded or taped to a variety of objects from pumps to power generators, laser measurement tools or heavy equipment, all of which are stored in containers at the work site or transported to the site by car. In total about 1,000 items are being tagged. Each tag stores a unique ID number, and Nordic ID handheld readers are used to read the tag as it is applied to a piece of equipment, and link the ID to that item and its description in the TraceTracker Asset server. HRAFN ensured 100 percent read rate of tags of tools stored inside the containers by installing several antennas, says Vevle, and the high quantity of metal in the environment acts to reflect the reader’s RF transmissions, thereby even further ensuring that all tags are read.
Whenever the Shepherd software detects a change in the tags being read, it routes that data via the cellular connection to TraceTracker Asset software indicating the ID number and GPS coordinates of the container or vehicle and which items left or entered. For example, when a tool is removed from the container, the reader stops reading its tag ID number. The status change is sent to TraceTracker, which waits several minutes to ensure there is not just a missed read, then changes the item’s status from idle to “in use.”
If a specific tool is needed on a construction site but not available, a central dispatcher can log onto the TraceTracker Asset server and input the item he is seeking, such as a water pump. He then sees a display with Google Maps that points to the location of all tools that match that definition and their status—idle or in use. If an item is found that is idle, a worker or a courier can be contacted to move the piece of equipment to the location where it is needed.
As equipment is being transported from one site to another, the car equipped with the TraceTracker Asset system transmits its GPS coordinates at regular intervals. Since these locations does not fall within the boundaries of a project, both the car and the equipment is tagged with a state called “in transit”. When the vehicle enters the premises of the destination project, the equipment’s association with the new project is automatically established.
Without such a system, finding a tool required many phone calls to various sites, or even driving from one site to another, seeking the right tool. In some cases, a tool might have been rented when other versions of the same tool remain idle at a different site.
Grunnarbeid has equipped five cars with the same technology. The cars are used to transport tools to construction sites, for example supplemental tools that are not available in the container. As they drive to a site, the tagged items in the vehicle are read by the CAEN RFID reader and the their ID numbers and location is transmitted via cellular connection to the TraceTracker software, which shows their status as idle. If an item is removed from the car, as with the container version of the system, after several minutes the system updates the item’s status to “in use” with the location at which the item was removed from the vehicle.
If the system proves to work as planned, Alstad says, he hopes to equip a total of 40 containers and 120 cars with the technology. The solution was developed specifically for Grunnarbeid, says Vevle, but is commercially available to other companies including not just construction firms but also any other company with multiple project sites.