Positive signs, but still a long way to go!

A recent trip to the East of England bought us back via the A46, which has to surely be one of the biggest road building projects in the UK. Nothing exciting about siting in traffic next to a road building project but what was very interesting for those in our industry was the number of machine control systems on excavators on the project – all of the 3D variety. Now lets be clear when I say “the number of machines” I actually mean about 5 out of a total of about 50 machines. All the excavators with machine control installed were also pretty large, maybe 30 tonnes up. So whilst we should take heart from these positive signs there is still an awful long way to go before the construction industry is really get the most of of the technology. You might think that only the 5 machines with systems installed on them were doing the type of work that required machine control but thats not the case plenty of those small machines where pulling down batters etc and yes there were men wondering around with grade rods. Still a postive sign though….