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If you’re involved in earthmoving, then you probably need at least some understanding of Ground Engaging Tools – or GET. It’s something we take very seriously because we have firsthand experience on projects where getting it right made the difference between just breaking even and exceeding forecast cost rates. The role of GET in your production rates While many projects get their GET right, there are just as many that don’t. Too often, we see plant hire agreements where th

We’ve recently been out in the Tanami Desert helping manage a road upgrade. While it would be tempting to think that 280km north west of Alice Springs you can get away with building a sub-standard road…that’s not the case. Every day, it is a lifeline for the communities and local mine that haul in bulk fuel and other supplies. One of the most critical aspects of any road is the pavement. For this project, the team had to use a natural gravel as the cost of importing a quarry

I know your mum always told you to do your best, but she was wrong. Sometimes you have to do just enough for it to be ‘a better job’. Let me explain. When it comes to earthmoving, there are some fundamental rules: you can’t make money with a dozer in reverse, low fuel burns are a reason to worry and, most importantly, the key to making money is to minimise the energy you use. What’s the easiest way to minimise energy use when constructing earthworks? Do less work. Seems simp

For a while, it looked like we were seeing the end of scrapers on civil projects. The availability of 50T mine trucks, and the lower running cost of articulated units, combined with a shrinking pool of experienced operators, were making scrapers something of a secondary consideration. Nevertheless, good things tend to last and, in recent years, there has been renewed interest in using scrapers on civil projects. This is because people have realised their natural predator – t

Inspection and test plans (ITPs) are a ubiquitous part of nearly all civil projects these days. The question is, are they useful? One of our observations, drawn from many sites and clients, is that ITPs have morphed into something more like a work instruction or process flow. People have tried to make ITPs the ‘everything’ document and, when that happens, they rapidly become a ‘nothing’ document. In many cases, they’ve become so large, convoluted and all-encompassing they are

Back when GPS kits were first being bolted on to diggers, we were all told how great it was going to be for trimming batters. This new technology was going to do away with manual methods like batter rails and, as a result, cut the cost of batter trimming (which had always been relatively high). The system was also meant to be so effective that we’d hardly even notice work was going on. Maybe it was meant to be so fast it would become one of those things that ‘just happened’ –