3 Ways A Real Time GPS Tracker Helps With Construction Safety

construction engineers checking real time gps tracker
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According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 21% of private industry worker fatalities in 2016 were in the construction industry. There’s no doubt about it – this is a dangerous field.

With the right technology, though, construction companies can reduce the risk of accidents and fatalities.  In this post, we’ll show you how using a daily routine planner with a real time GPS tracker improves safety significantly.

#1 Prevent Reckless Driving Behavior with Real-time GPS Tracker

When you think of speeding, you probably think of a car barrelling down a highway at 80+ mph.

But speeding can happen in other places and at much lower speeds. It’s not safe for your bulldozers, loaders, backhoes, and other pieces of heavy equipment to zip around your construction sites as fast as they can go, even if those speeds are relatively slow compared to a car.

One of the biggest challenges to managing a construction site is that there’s no way to see what each worker is doing at all times. There’s just too much going on to witness it all with your own eyes.

That’s why you need a delivery route planner with a GPS tracking system. Asset tracking records the location and speed of your heavy equipment throughout each work day, and you can review this information whenever you find a convenient time. That way, you can see if one of your workers has a habit of driving too fast. You’ll be able to tell them to cut it out right away.

Ideally, the fleet management software you choose to invest in will have a mobile app that your construction workers can download on their personal mobile devices. Such an app effectively turns each of your worker’s smartphones into a real time GPS tracker, so you won’t need to purchase standalone telematics devices to track your team.

Of course, speeding isn’t the only thing you want to stop your construction workers from doing. There are other reckless maneuvers you should try to prevent as well, such as sudden acceleration, sudden braking, and taking turns too fast.

Heavy equipment GPS tracking can detect all of these things, too. Again, you won’t need to actually see what your construction workers are doing to know what they did while they were on the job. You’ll have the ability to stop them from driving recklessly.

The beauty of tracking data is that you don’t even need to look at it for it to have an effect on your team. When they know they’re being watched, they’ll be on their best behavior. They’ll stop driving equipment recklessly without you even needing to tell them to do so.

Imagine how much it would cost you if one of your pieces of heavy equipment was totaled due to negligence. Reckless operation of heavy equipment could also result in serious injury. That would cost you a fortune in medical bills, workers’ comp, and possible legal fees, and you have a responsibility to protect the health of the people who work for you.

Using a GPS tracker app allows you to prevent these disasters and avoid those consequences.

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#2 Find The “Sweet Spot” For Maintaining Your Equipment

It can be difficult to keep track of when your equipment needs tune-ups. If you bring them in too often, you’ll end up wasting money. But if you wait too long, you risk your equipment breaking down on you – that’s dangerous and expensive.

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A real time GPS tracker will show you exactly when you need to send each piece of equipment to the shop for repairs. It keeps track of information for you, including the number of miles driven and the average amount of weight carried. With this data, you’ll be able to determine when a trip to the repair shop makes the most sense.

#3 Recover Stolen Equipment

In addition to helping you improve safety, a real time GPS tracker also has economic benefits.

A stolen piece of heavy equipment would be very expensive to replace. Without live tracking, there’s pretty much no way to assist with the recovery of your stolen equipment. You just have to hope that the criminal makes a mistake and gets caught.

Image credit: Maria Jeffs/Shutterstock.com

But if you have a real time GPS tracker, you can provide the authorities with once-a-minute location updates that they can use to quickly track down and recover your equipment.

So, what are some other techniques you use to improve safety on construction sites? Do you have any questions about this article? Please let us know in the comments section below.

Finally, answering these three questions correctly will confirm that you understand how a real time GPS tracker helps improve construction safety:

  1. What kinds of reckless behavior can you prevent by tracking vehicles?
  2. What is the “sweet spot” for maintaining your equipment?
  3. How does GPS tracking work to help you recover stolen equipment?
Route4Me

Want To See For Yourself How Route4Me Can Boost Your Profits?

Whether you want to slash the time it takes you to plan routes for your drivers, increase the number of stops they can make, or keep your customers satisfied knowing that your drivers show up on time… Route4Me helps you achieve that!

Start Free 7 Day Trial

About author: Rahul Dasgupta

Rahul Dasgupta is a content writer with over 20 years of work experience. He holds a master’s degree in computer science and has written thousands of blog posts on route planning and scheduling, making it easy for readers to learn about these complex topics. Rahul enjoys playing tennis in his spare time and loves cuddling with his pet labrador Shinu. Rahul is a big fan of Roger Federer, Messi, and Bill Gates - he admires their drive to be the best at what they do and their philanthropic efforts.

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About Route4Me

Route4Me has over 40,000 customers globally. Route4Me's Android and iPhone mobile apps have been downloaded over 2 million times since 2009. Extremely easy-to-use, Route4Me's apps create optimized routes, synchronize routes to mobile devices, enable communication with drivers and customers, offer turn-by-turn directions, delivery confirmation, and more. Behind the scenes, Route4Me's operational optimization platform combines high-performance algorithms with data science, machine learning, and big data to plan, optimize, and analyze routes of almost any size in real-time.