Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/426956
December 2014 | EquipmentWorld.com 12 reporter | continued Multi-family housing In the residential market, single-family construc- tion is growing modestly, while multi-family is still strong, Simonson said. This trend is likely to contin- ue because young people and recent college grads are having a hard time saving for down payments or qualifying for mortgages on single-family homes. There is also a trend among young, potential home- buyers to stay closer to urban centers, especially in areas where crime rates have fallen and schools have improved, he said. Labor shortages One of the main challenges to further growth, Simonson warned, was worker availability. More than 262,000 workers have left the industry since the peak and have not returned to work in construc- tion. The skills in shortest supply are equipment operators, carpenters, laborers, project managers and supervisors and estimators. Simonson forecasts construction materials cost in- creases will remain modest, up 1 to 3 percent. And labor cost increases will stay in the rage of 2.5 to 5 percent. T he Association of Equipment Management Profes- sionals' 2014 Asset Management Symposium kicked off November 4, in Nashville, Tennessee, packed into a standing-room-only ballroom at the Sheraton Music City Hotel. This year's symposium was dedicated to a single sub- ject – off-road telematics – and began with a panel discus- sion from three of the industry's leading practitioners. In a presentation titled "Evolution of Equipment Manag- ers: Past, Present, Future," Dave Gorski, CEM, and shop administrator for K-Five Construction, shared how main- tenance records were kept early in his career. In the past, handwritten records stored in fi le cabinets were often inaccurate, incomplete and diffi cult to retrieve, Gorski said. Although typewritten and computer entered data made re- cords easier to read, the problems didn't go away because the information was still recorded on paper and physically stored in fi le cabinets and fi eld service personnel didn't have access to the computers. John Meese, senior director of heavy equipment at Waste Management followed with a look at the future of main- tenance information management, a future that in many ways his company has already adopted. "Today, with telematics, our equipment speaks to us," Meese said. "If something is wrong, it sends us an email." One of the most obvious benefi ts that telematics pro- vides said Meese was the ability to monitor idle time. As a typical example, he cited a Caterpillar 966 wheel loader that his telematics system told him idled half the time it was running. Over the lifecycle of that machine, the exces- sive idle time would result in $17,000 of unnecessary fuel burned and a warranty period that was cut in half. By – Tom Jackson AEMP telematics symposium examines the industry's most important technology Dave Gorski John Meese Barth Burgett