I was invited to attend the 2024 BOMAG Innovation Days in Boppard, Germany, where the headquarters for BOMAG are located along with their international training center, and one of their largest manufacturing centers in the world. I was embedded in a group of about fifty, made up of dealers and contractors from all over North America, as we toured the entire facility and spent time together.
The tour was excellent, and we got to see how some of the most iconic pieces of BOMAG equipment are made, including their ninety different roller offerings, and their intricately designed milling machines. As someone who worked in a factory for more than a decade, I was personally impressed with simply how clean and quiet things were.
Despite all the hardware we saw getting assembled by workers and welded together by cutting edge robots, one of the biggest things that was repeatedly highlighted was all the technology that BOMAG is bringing to bear alongside its big iron. The question that compelled me over the course of the four day experience was, what kinds of technology are these contractors using, if any, what were their thoughts about those presented to them during Innovation Days, and, what kinds of problems are they really looking for help in solving?
Brandon Noel
That was definitely on BOMAG’s mind too. I asked their vice president of marketing and sales, Jonathan Stringham, how they are approaching the development and introduction of new tech platforms to its customers.
“It’s important to have people on our team that [our customers] feel know what their challenges really are,” said Stringham. “So, in all of our markets, we always have former operators and technicians, you know, that have been there, right? People who’ve actually done the job, and they can talk shop. That’s important in communicating with our customers and educating them in how to use the technology.”
During an opening address by Jean-Claude Fayat, CEO of BOMAG’s parent company the FAYAT Group, he echoed those sentiments by concluding that they had brought all these hundred of customers, contractors, and dealers from around the globe to see, but for BOMAG and FAYAT to, also, listen to what they had to say.Â
The general attitude that I picked up on from talking to contractors over the four days in Germany, was that the technology is definitely impressive, but that it is a careful balancing act. There is a lot for them to consider between the benefits it can realistically offer, the costs associated with using it, and the complexity of implementation. One particular point that was brought up to me stood out the most when talking about what makes someone pull the trigger on a new piece of asphalt software.
Contractors will require from manufacturers what their customers are demanding from them. In the simplest terms, pavers and producers aren’t likely to upgrade their efficiency, precision, data capture practices, etc. unless those things are being asked of them from their client base.Â
BOMAG’s Technology
During the presentation that kicked off the event, there were a few key pieces of technology and software that the company seemed keen to make attendees more aware of:
- BOMAP (and BOMAP: PAVE which was revealed briefly during the live demos)
- Asphalt Manager
- Joblink
- Asphalt Pro
The company used different tactics to demonstrate these technologies to the approximately four hundred guests on the day I was there, including the use of BOMAP to track the location of all different tour groups, their locations, and how efficiently they were passing through each section of the tour. This kept each group moving without the next group bumping into it.Â
At one stop, we were shown a monitor displaying the map of the entire grounds and the locations and paths of all the groups simultaneously. What was interesting was how this was created using just the downloadable app itself and the internal GPS of the smart device each tour guide had with them. No additional hardware was needed, which is how it can work right on the jobsite. of course, to get the maximum benefit from its tracking ability, in conjunction with a given roller (whether a BOMAG machine or not) it requires some additional telematic data gathered by the machine. In those scenarios it doesn’t just track paths and passes, it can measure temperature, density, and other key data points.
Going Pro
By far, the piece of software BOMAG was most keen on showing off was Asphalt Pro. BOMAG referred to it as, “The digital control center for road construction.” It offers step-by-step site planning, real-time controls, and, perhaps most significantly, complete documentation and analysis. Additionally, it can generate various types of reports and analyses, through the use of an integrated interface that allows you to export the data for use on other systems.
Starting with the smart site planning, where pre-measured 3D survey data can be taken or imported into the program, and it delivers back required volumes, masses, layers, as well as, mix requirements and construction scheduling for mixing plants, trucks and project sites. It can do this while juggling multiple projects all at once, and allow you to adjust, reschedule, or make other changes on the fly due to weather or other unforeseen circumstances. It can track your truck locations, paver data, temperatures, tonnage, and all of this is in service of ever refining the quality and process. Minimize wait times, keep the flow of material steady, and maintain consistency. And when things don’t go fully to plans or projections, the analysis can help you track what and where things didn’t go as intended.
Four Biggest Challenges To New Tech Adoption
As I spoke to contractors during the Innovation Days event, it was immediately clear that they are all using something for their office-end business, and sometimes a couple of different things for their jobsite work. In every case, it wasn’t just one, but multiple things working in conjunction with each other.
“We use HCSS for all of our time cards,” said Leland Freeman, a foreman at Gradeline Construction Company (Middleriver, MD). He explained that they use it for more than just tracking working hours. “On the time cards there are line items, in your line items you have the materials and the quantities. I can break out my crew’s time between those different line items. All the truck drivers in-house have apps to clock into a job number with the foreman. At the end of the day, when they clock out, I just pull in the clocked-in hours, and it has all of the trucking already in there.”
Gradeline made the switch to using the HCSS program because state highway projects involved multiple line items, which were a hassle to keep track of manually, however, despite this seemingly helpful simplification of the process, not everyone was enthusiastic about the change. This uncovered our first big hurdle in new tech adoption: Contractor buy-in.
“Everybody over the age of thirty,” Freeman laughed as he described the resistant group. However, it wasn’t just the old-timers that found kinks in the system. Leland’s younger brother Ethan, not yet in his thirties, works as a jack-of-all-trades operator, and sometimes jumps from jobsite-to-jobsite in a single working day. He felt it still isn’t perfect.Â
“I struggle with the apps because I noticed they glitch a lot,” Ethan said. “If I’m breaking my time up amongst many different things, I can only do that [take a break] in theory, once through the app. And so then I get screwed over on hours.”
Leland was there when they made the switch from just paper and pencil tracking, and it was a significant improvement over the old way of doing things. This made me wonder if he saw anything during the Innovation Days technology presentation that might offer a similar step up.
“They all did. It’s just the technology they’re trying to introduce [specifically Asphalt Pro] requires everybody to use all aspects of it. The asphalt industry is very resistant to change. The contractor has to get the software. Your trucks that might be a third party rental have to get the software, and then your plant has to get the software for it all to work.”
This revealed the second biggest hurdle to new technology adoption: Contingent ecosystems. An example of a contingent system is one where it only works, or you only get the maximum ROI if everyone in your production cycle is using the ecosystem.Â
To Brian Russel, who works on the plant and production side of the industry, Asphalt Pro also seemed to be the most eye catching technology product. However, he partly echoed some of Freeman’s concerns about how everyone involved gets on the same page.
“The Asphalt Pro stuff could definitely be helpful, and useful to what we do,” said Brian Russel, VP of plant operations at P. Flanigan & Sons. For him, the barrier has more to do with their trucking situation. “We don’t have a lot of trucks ourselves, so we subcontract all of our trucking out. We would have to be buying from the truckers that we use.”
Mark Schinzler is the COO at Larry Young Paving (Bryan, TX), and says they employ several different pieces of technology managing everything from schedules, to grade control, and tracking their fleet of heavy equipment. He is a big believer in the potential of technology platforms in the industry.
“The Asphalt Pro stuff is interesting, and I think that it’s it’s going to be something that’s going to be very good for the future of the industry,” Schinzler said. “I think tracking of rolling patterns [BOMAP] can be beneficial for QC/QA purposes. In reality, though, you’ve got to convince the industry that it’s necessary, and then sometimes convincing the [contractor’s] customers that it’s necessary too. Because unless a customer is going to require you to take that step, it doesn’t right now make a lot of sense.”
Thus, the third challenge to new tech adoption is revealed to be: End-customer demand.
This process of communicating the potential benefits or the technology, not just to contractors but, also, to the end clients is on the mind’s of BOMAG’s team, as well. Prior to the live demonstrations at the Innovation Days event, we spoke to their VP of marketing and sales, Jonathan Stringham, and he outlined what their current strategy looks like.
“It’s important to have people that they feel know what their challenges are,” said Stringham. “So, in all of our markets, we have people that used to be operators or technicians that have been there, they’ve done the job and they can talk shop. That’s important in convincing people and educating them on how to use the technology. It’s not just about marketing. It’s actually about bringing it to the fields, having people that can do it, that can explain how it’s used. It’s a very hands on, person-to-person process that you need to implement some of these technologies.”
According to Schinzler, there are some clients that are already more demanding when it comes to jobsite and project data. The contractors looking to go after the biggest jobs and the biggest customers could really see a benefit using software like BOMAG’s as part of their overall project bids.
“Typically, in the industry, things start with the guys who are usually the most restrictive when it comes to control and then it gradually trickles down to everyone else,” explained Schinzler. “That’s usually the upper levels of the US government, like the US Army Corps of Engineers, or the FAA. Then that will trickle down to the states, the counties, and the municipalities. So, you’ve got to convince those guys, which, if you do a good job of it, I think that they’ll bite, because they’re really concerned about QC/QA stuff.”
Convincing high-demand clientele of the value that advanced technologies can bring might be an easier task than selling it to your own crews. As we heard from the Freeman brothers, even indisputable upgrades to efficiency can be met with some resistance. Once you overcome that initial hesitancy, you’re faced with the fourth hurdle in the path to new technology adoption: Training.
Getting The Most Out Of Your Tech
BOMAG knows that last hurdle is, perhaps, the most important of all. So much so, that, the Innovation Days event is held on-site at their training facility where people come from far-and-wide to learn how to use the tools they’ve invested in. This doesn’t eliminate altogether the challenge of bringing training to everyone, but it shows a huge step in the right direction.
“The challenges are different depending on where you are,” said Stringham. “[Because] you might be convincing the production manager, the job site manager, or the owner of the company that a [new technology] product is good, but they will only generate the value from it if you can actually train the operators. So, that’s one of the things we do, not just here, but training the operators on the use of the technology, making them more familiar with it on job sites. That’s actually, I think, how you get into that, you know, you’ve got to make sure that people are comfortable with using it.”
Contractors echoed this sentiment in two different ways. For some, it was about maximizing the usability of such platforms across all their staff and crews. In some cases, while a company might have multiple crews working on different projects on a given day, they may only have one of those crews doing the type of work that could really benefit from large interconnected platform with all the tracking and telematics. The rest of the time, those crews might be doing smaller patches and other low tonnage type jobs.Â
This is a question about flexibility as much as it is about training, and it’s also about finding the right fit. Many of these platforms aren’t always “one size fits all” which means it’s even more important to assess how much time you have to give to training, as well as, how much of your team will benefit overall.
“Training is honestly the biggest thing for us. We want the guys to understand how to actually utilize the software to its utmost,” said Schinzler. “We have limited amounts of time to devote to tech training. It’s critical that it be easy for them to kind of work their way into it, and that there is good support available.”