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At last, the sharing economy comes to the construction industry


At last, the sharing economy comes to the construction industry

The transformative rise of machine-to-machine communication

A robot welding an automotive part. Factory_Easy/Shutterstock
A robot welding an automotive part. Factory_Easy/Shutterstock

After cars and houses, it’s the construction industry’s turn to get the sharing economy treatment.
Powered by advances in telematics, Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud technology, equipment rentals stand to make construction an even more cost-effective endeavour for property developers everywhere.

“Data is the backhoe that helps constructors unearth operational insights that would otherwise have stayed buried,” said John Rampton, founder of mobile payment app Due, in a blog for The Huffington Post.

Rampton cites the increasing popularity of EquipmentShare, a sharing platform which enables equipment owners to monetise their assets and contractor-users to increase savings on maintenance.

More: Where in Asia is the most expensive for construction?

Construction equipment tends to remain unused 70 percent of the time, with maintenance expenses for projects topping anywhere between 5 and 25 percent of an equipment’s value, Rampton pointed out.

EquipmentShare’s utility banks on the meteoric rise in recent years of telematics. A system called ES Track allows equipment rented through EquipmentShare to constantly exchange information, such as fluid levels and pressures, through the cloud. This helps preempt costly repairs and reduces on-site maintenance.

“With data insights from the IoT, contractors can use data to realize, for example, they should be tapping into the shared economy to increase asset utilization and boost their ROI and bottom line,” Rampton said.

Read next: Age of the ultimate builder: can this robot take on construction jobs?

Source: Property Report