Asset Panda: The One Tool to Manage All Your Construction Tools

According to Ed Zarenski, author of the Construction Analytics blog, growth in the construction industry has dipped over the course of 2020. Through September 2020, total construction starts were down 14% in the U.S. More specifically:

• Residential project starts are down 1%.
• Non-residential project starts are down 26%.
• Non-building infrastructure project starts are down 18%.

Despite the growth in the engineering and construction industry through 2019, the COVID-19 virus forced the industry to slow momentum during mandatory stay-at-home orders.

If you want your business to be more profitable, you need to find more efficient ways to manage your capital. The first place you should look? Your equipment and tool inventory.

Construction organizations invest a lot of money in their tools and rightly so. With the exception of the labor force that wields them, tools are the most important assets a construction company has. That’s why it’s so vitally important for you to keep track of your tools.

Do You Know What’s In Your Toolbox?

Without an asset tracking system in place for your tools, your business could be hurting. Consider the following questions:

• Do you know everything you have in your inventory at any given time?
• Do you know which tools are with which people, on what trucks or at what job sites?
• Have you had to repurchase an expensive piece of equipment because you couldn’t track the original down?
• Do you know the maintenance history of your expensive or dangerous tools?
• Are you tracking which equipment is breaking down more frequently than others?

Answering yes to any one of these questions means you’re probably not tracking your assets as well as you could.

When you are scheduling projects and assigning necessary equipment from your inventory to job sites, you need to know where your critical tools are and when they’ll be available. If there’s no communication or management of your assets, this leads to delays as equipment has to be tracked down and moved to the new site.

You also need to make sure that your equipment isn’t going to break down or cause damage or injuries due to neglect. The easiest way to do that is by tracking the equipment’s service maintenance history with its repairs, preventative maintenance or calibration. If you don’t, you can face fines from the local safety organizations or worse - lawsuits for damages due to negligence.

Failure to track your assets and maintain them in a safe manner can result in:

• Delayed project dates
• Stalled productivity
• Inefficient operations
• Frustrated customers
• Damaged reputation
• Increased insurance premiums
• Lost revenue

If only there was an easy way to track and manage your equipment inventory. Oh, wait. There is.

It’s Time to Get a Tool to Track Your Construction Tools

An asset tracking solution should give you the features and functionality to track your equipment inventory so you know everything about every tool in your toolbox. In order to manage the tools you need to do your job, you need to track the following for each asset:

• Ownership
• Status
• Critical dates
• Location
• Service history
• Lifecycle

Just tracking the basics of your assets won’t extend the life of your assets though, you will want an asset tracking solution that provides you with

• An easy to use barcode scanning system
• Full maintenance and repair history on each asset
• Flexibility when it comes to configurability

With easy-to-use barcode scanning technology, you can log any tool through a mobile app downloaded onto your phone. You can scan and tag your assets from anywhere in the field providing real-time updates with critical data. Plus, you can assign tools to a job site, whether that’s a truck or a new build, so you can mark their last known whereabouts.

With a cohesive picture of the full life of your assets, you are also able to keep every necessary maintenance update logged in one place. This means you can document any repairs done, plus set up reminders and confirmations for all routine maintenance, calibration, cleaning or preventative maintenance. Doing so helps you track the lifecycle of the equipment while tracking the dependability of that particular brand or model.

One of the features that allows an asset tracking system to truly work for you is open configuration. With a completely customizable system, you can adjust the parameters and log whatever data you need so you can see exactly what you need to get the job done. That configurability helps you create customized reports on anything you need:

• Equipment return dates.
• Upcoming maintenance requirements.
• Site-specific or truck-specific inventory lists.
• Equipment end-of-life notifications.

According to a report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 70% of contractors believe that technology solutions like Asset Panda would increase productivity, improve scheduling and enhance safety. Isn’t it time you found out for yourself?

Reach out to Asset Panda to learn how our asset management solution can help your construction organization improve productivity, assign assets more efficiently and increase your revenue potential.