Managing Movement

MANAGING ON SITE MOVEMENTS

VEHICLE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS CAN BE USED ON BUSY CONSTRUCTION SITES TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY WHILE HELPING TO PREVENT ANY ACCIDENTS TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF ALL WORKERS ON SITE.

Between 2002/3 and 2013/14, a Safe Work Australia report found there were 68 construction fatalities from vehicle incidents and 49 fatalities from moving objects.

A 2018 research paper by the National Transport Commission showed fatigue and drowsiness detection devices could prevent between four and 10 per cent of fatal crashes.

The report also found these solutions could reduce the severity of injuries and achieve cost savings of up to $28 million.

As data capture works to reduce injury, Ctrack by Inseego is an organisation providing a range of vehicle management solutions.

Roads & Infrastructure speaks to Jim McKinlay, Managing Director of Ctrack in Australia and New Zealand, about the company’s solutions software and detection devices for vehicles to increase safety and productivity.

Ctrack provides a number of products to capture data from across a fleet of vehicles for companies to use as actionable analytics to compare safety and driver metrics.

The solutions can be deployed across all types of vehicles including trailers, plant machinery and equipment, from five to up 45,000 objects.

“Our fleet solutions drive safety

by ensuring data is captured to explain how a driver was performing if an accident occurred. This helps companies to identify and rectify any issues,” Mr. McKinlay says.

All of Ctrack’s solutions can be accessed through its customer portal Ctrack Online. Companies can purchase these and can access the solutions on Ctrack Mobi, an app used for mobile supervisory management.

“Anyone who is given access, such as a mobile manager or worker, can use Ctrack Online and Ctrack Mobi to follow their vehicles remotely in real time and access data about the use of the vehicles,” Mr. McKinlay says.

Both services work in tandem to provide customers with upto-date information on fleets and vehicle movements.

One of Ctrack’s camera systems, Iris, provides live video recording from inside the cabin of a vehicle, as well as road-facing and additional external cameras.

The camera system can be used in combination with Ctrack Online to acknowledge when the vehicle moves onto a site with geo-fencing, which can trigger an alert as it is driven to the edge of the site.

The system can also identify if there is a speeding offence and send a notification back to the office and the driver.

Ctrack’s new camera capabilities and telematics solutions enable a company to keep track of its drivers and establish if the person is, for example, using a phone or suffering from fatigue.

“These solutions provide a major advantage for accident reconstruction. A manager can look at all the data captured from the machines on site at the time of an accident. This will determine when and how it happened and if there were any preventable methods that need to be taken in future,” Mr. McKinlay says.

To ensure Ctrack’s solutions are easy to use for any customer, it is introducing new applications for nonpowered asset tracking.

“The infrastructure construction industry is now looking at a mix of nonpowered and powered assets so Ctrack provide a full compliance system for machinery or ‘yellow goods’ which can track data right down to small tools,” Mr. McKinlay says.

The new non-powered asset tracking solutions mean the machine or object doesn’t have to have power, the customer can use a battery-powered device instead.

“The new battery-powered assets can last from two weeks being rechargeable to seven years,” Mr. McKinlay says.

Another advantage of Ctrack’s

All of Ctrack’s solutions can be accessed through its customer portal Ctrack Online.

solutions software for construction companies is the ability to keep track of fuel usage.

“If a company is building a road, it means the vehicles are not using public roads so road user taxes do not apply. For any diesel used while in construction, the company can claim back fuel tax credits,” Mr. McKinlay says.

Ctrack’s vehicle tracking system eliminates the need for keeping a log book to track fuel usage as it tracks this and automatically records it.

“It makes the entire process of claiming more productive as we have the software to allow a company to make any claims simply using the data our systems recorded,’ Mr. McKinlay says.

Ctrack’s customer support system aims to ensure users have all of the information needed to successfully use the software to increase productivity.

“We have a customer success team, which introduces the customer to the software as they acquire the product. We also have installation teams all over Australia and New Zealand to ensure

the systems are installed correctly,” Mr. McKinlay says.

The company then has a call centre based in Sydney and Auckland and a third line support centre in South Africa.

“If a customer wants to move the device from one truck to another, or make other changes, they simply put through a request and Ctrack will come out and set up the new configuration,” Mr. McKinlay says.

It is Inseego, Ctrack’s parent company, that enables the Ctrack team to continue developing future-ready products. Inseego is a United States provider of Internet of Things, SaaS and Mobile solutions, currently focusing on 5G networks.

“Inseego allows us to expand our capabilities, particularly into 5G, and the partnership gives us great research and development opportunities,’ Mr. McKinlay says.

The National Broadband Network runs at roughly 27 megabytes per second and Mr. McKinlay says 5G will run at 2.7 gigabytes per second, around 10 times faster.

“The 5G network will give Ctrack the capability to put lower cost assets onto vehicles such as beacons and tokens to allow us to track objects. It will also enable the data to be recorded and uploaded faster,” Mr. McKinlay says.

Ctrack has also been able to adapt from Inseego’s learning to create solutions for vehicles.

One of Inseego’s major products is a management software for all of the assets in airports.

“If you have a trailer that is pulling baggage around at an airport, the learnings from this could be applied to a truck towing another machine on site. This is where Inseego helps us to develop products that fit other categories,” Mr. McKinlay says.

“All of our solutions are about giving data to our customers that will enable them to make better business decisions. Whether it’s figures from a roller and how it was utilised or tracking driver fatigue, we produce the analytics to help improve the overall productivity and safety of businesses.”

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