Bigger, better, faster, more – this has always been the promise of technology, whether in business or personal life. We’ve all noticed those long, white wires hanging down from people’s ears to their iPods. And who could miss the phenomenon of rapid thumb movements on tiny keyboards as people text away to friends and colleagues?
But the real interest in business is how technology is moving the industry forward, helping contractors to do their jobs more effectively. Here are some perspectives on innovations that people in the business have adapted to their everyday operations.
“We are a technology company,” says Justin Mizell of Sleuth Plumbing Technologies in Sarasota, Fla. The firm does line location and televising, pipe bursting and relining on Florida’s central west coast.
Every service it performs involves the latest technology. “We consider ourselves troubleshooters and problem solvers,” says Mizell. “Camera work is the primary tool we use, and that leads to employment of trenchless technologies.” Sleuth also uses GPS technology to track its trucks and create dispatch efficiencies in its fleet.
“We do a lot of line locating using our cameras and locators,” says Chris Zabawa, owner of American Hydra-Jetting Service in Alvin, Texas.
“Just having those tools has made a big difference in our business. Before, you just kind of dug where you thought something was, and now we can locate something to within 2 inches. We don’t do plumbing, but we work for a lot of plumbers, and it has made a big difference for them.”
It’s also been a big benefit for customers, who are happy not to have a bunch of useless holes dug in their lawns. Zabawa also leans heavily on his Bluetooth cell phone earpiece. “It’s for a wireless phone with Internet access,” he says. “So now when I get an e-mail at the office, I can get it wherever I am. I don’t have to be at the office.
“It’s a shortened version of it, but at least I know I got it. Instead of just checking e-mail in the morning and the evening, I get it right now. Then I know if I need to contact the sender or not. Before, I’d have to tell people, ‘Don’t email me, I won’t be there to check it.’ Now I know.” Though Zabawa’s phone also has GPS capabilities, that’s still one of the bells and whistles he hasn’t used.
It’s not so much new technology, but new ways of using existing tools that has made major inroads for the Gantt Sewer District’s root intrusion program, according to director Mike Stansell.
“When I first came into the district, all they had was a standard mechanical root cutter,” he says. “We were running nearly 50 stoppages per year on a 107-mile system.” There were so many root problems that crews felt if they could get the camera through, the line was clean enough, and they’d just keep going.
Stansell looked at more modern ways to treat root intrusion and chose chemical foaming agents at first. However, the city wastewater treatment plant began to exhibit bacteria kills, and operators blamed the root treatment.
So it was back to the chain flails, but Stansell also researched and purchased improved versions of that older technology. He also instituted a firm procedure of first televising each line for every job, no matter how small.
“When you use flails, you have to know what’s in that line ahead of time,” so the televising rule is critical, he says. Gas mains could be punctured and cause explosions, and high-voltage electric lines, if cut into, could kill the flail operators.
Aside from the safety considerations, this move ended up actually saving money. “The incremental investment of extra time to TV up front so increased our ability to continue standard maintenance that there have been three-month time spans with no calls after hours,” Stansell says. “Our overtime rating is now running from 1.2 to 1.7 percent. It had been 5 percent.”
Karl Pile, owner of Karl Pile Septic Service in Hagerstown, Md., is a veteran of more than a half-century in the business. He’s been open to innovation from the start.
“Even from the get-go, we started out with a built-up unit that used a surge milking pump for the vacuum,” he recalls. “Then we came to find out that DeLaval pumps, with their 5-horsepower Briggs & Stratton engines, could create more vacuum, so we switched to that. The last truck we bought was a 2006 Sterling with a 2,500-gallon tank and 367 Jurop pump, the maximum. We’ve come a long way!”
The Pile fleet has benefited from most of the technological upgrades, including a few with GPS units. The business operations have remained fairly low-tech. “We still use manual billing and dispatching,” Pile says.
Pile sees an encouraging trend in the industry that he believes is aided strongly by new technology. “Certainly, they’re always talking about the environment, and you can see that people in the industry are environmentally inclined,” he says. “That’s why they’re willing to pay the kind of money they are for the equipment they use to perform the service. It makes a mark, I think, on the general public to see that the industry can be very professional.”
