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How Plant Equipment Can Improve the Construction Process

Can you imagine picking up and transporting tonnes of aggregates with your bare hands? How about lifting a steel girder to a great height? If you think about it, we have a lot to thank the various inventors of plant machinery for.

If you are running a construction business, the chances are that you want to be able to provide the best service possible without incurring astronomical costs or having to employ a workforce of 100 people to complete a single project. After all, if you have to pay all these people and make some profit too, can you imagine your client being happy with the cost? We think not.

With such a variety of plant machinery available to businesses like yours, there’s no project which wouldn’t benefit from the addition of some plant equipment. Machinery is essential to the efficient completion of every job as it enables businesses to decrease costs and time spent whilst mobilising the workforce.

Before most construction projects can begin, there is a plot of land which needs to be cleared. You would be very lucky to find a site which has already been demolished, cleared and perfectly flattened. In such a situation, you would profit from using a bulldozer, a piece of machinery which is widely recognised for its ability to shift very heavy loads and clear site debris by pushing sand, soil and other materials to one side, ready to be collected by an excavator and lifted into a dumper truck.

Remember that steel girder? Well, lifting it up to 50 feet in height would be pretty simple if you were in possession of a telehandler. This particular piece of lifting machinery is versatile and highly productive as it is equipped with a steel boom which can be fitted with a range of attachments, such as a pallet fork, grab, or a bucket. The engine power of a telehandler, its ability to make quick directional changes and its front-mounted stabilisers also enables the operator to tackle all types of terrain and lift heavy loads safely. 

An excavator can also play many different roles in a number of projects, including digging holes, foundations, and trenches, demolishing buildings and handling materials. Imagine how long it would take a team of people to do all of these jobs as efficiently as an excavator. One thing is for certain; your client would start checking their watch pretty quickly.

What about the movement of aggregates? Well, you don’t have to use your van or flatbed truck to shift building materials. There is a range of dumpers available for all manner of requirements so you can choose the dump truck which closely matches your needs. Dumpers have a front or
rear-mounted skip which makes it easier to transport materials around a site, the only thing you should be mindful of is the required payload capacity and the terrain the machine will be used on, as different types of dumpers vary in performance depending on the landscape.

If you’ve resisted looking into plant hire in favour of a more manual approach, maybe it’s about time that you introduced your (probably very tired) workforce to some plant machinery? You will certainly find yourself in favour with both your employees and your clients as the accuracy and efficiency of your work drastically improves and the cost of your services starts to fall – without compromising your bottom line of course.

If you would like to save yourself some time, money and maintain a happy, motivated workforce, maybe it’s time you became a plant machinery convert.