BOOSTING EFFICIENCY

Contractors Connop & Son from Herefordshire in England began utilising Trimble technology about 10 years ago and have been upgrading and expanding it ever since; today, they tell us they wouldn’t operate without it, not least because of the many benefits Trimble’s systems and solutions have brought to the family run company.

Supplied by SITECH® UK & Ireland, Connop & Son’s suite of Trimble products include Trimble® Business Center Software, Trimble WorksManager Software, Trimble Earthworks Grade Control Platform and Trimble Siteworks Positioning Systems, all working in unison to improve and enhance the company’s efficiency and productivity across a number of projects.

Connop and Son was established in the 1970's initially as agricultural contractors, ploughing, planting and harvesting arable crops to boost the output of a small farming unit. Gradually excavators and other plant were added to the business which diversified more into construction; one of the company’s early projects was building a poultry unit, and it has been growing its business ever since.

Working within the poultry industry, the company’s services includes bulk earthworks / groundwork, foundations, mass concrete walls, and laser screed flooring, while in the agricultural sector it provides silage pits, biomass buildings, potato and grain stores, livestock sheds and dairy units. It is also active in the commercial and industrial sectors and more recently branched out into soil stabilisation.

Introducing Trimble technology has been hugely instrumental in the company’s steady growth over the years, with concrete pours and concrete laying remaining a core activity. “Currently, we are pouring between 500 and 1,000m³ of concrete per week,” says company director Chris Connop, “much of it within the poultry sector.”

With a 60 plus strong workforce, the company operates a large fleet of plant and machinery, including dumpers, dozers and excavators. “One of our first pieces of technology was a 3 D Trimble laser system used to take levels and mark out sites and we have been upgrading the technology ever since,” adds Chris.

Awesome Earthmovers recently visited one of the company’s work sites in Ledbury in Herefordshire where a skidsteer grader was working on a project along with Collins Design & Build involving soil stabilisation and prepping for concrete and tarmac internal and external slabs. The skidsteer grader was utilising a Trimble Universal Total Station control designed to provide a high degree of accuracy for site positioning, stakeout, grade checking and measurement.

We also travelled to nearby Malvern to see an excavator and dozer, fitted with a Trimble Earthworks grade control system, being used on a new farmyard project, again involving soil stabilisation, as well as site stoning, drainage, footing and foundations. The machines have since moved on to other similar projects in Northampton, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Evesham.

The Trimble Earthworks machine control system combines positioning sensors with computer displays to give operators better insight into and control over their work, enabling them to accurately position buckets, blades and other implements while eliminating the need for surveying, staking, and constantly checking work in progress.

Connop & Son also employ Trimble’s Business Center software, Siteworks and WorksManager, enabling operators and site engineers to work not only more accurately on the ground but also in a faster, more productive and more efficient way, as it brings everything including data, machines and workflows together into a cloud-enabled common environment that can be accessed in real-time.

Trimble Siteworks positioning systems are designed to eliminate downtime by making every minute more productive. Being able to handle complex files and 3D data sets quickly, means you can spot issues and solve problems before they slow you down.

The Trimble technology today is a lot more user friendly, a lot more visual and a real improvement which gives our team more flexibility on site…

With Trimble Business Center, the company can efficiently calculate earthwork and material quantities for bids, prepare data for construction stakeout, build 3D models to optimize machine operation, track productivity and deliver really first class as-build documentation.

The company invested in its first Trimble GCS900 Grade Control System a decade ago, which proved ideal for bulk earthworks, compaction and finished grading and allowed even lesser skilled operators to work faster, more consistently, and with less rework.

“We upgraded to Trimble Earthworks when it was first launched a few years back. The Trimble technology today is a lot more user friendly, a lot more visual and a real improvement which gives our team more flexibility and we spend a lot less time marking out the site.

Everything can be uploaded onto a screen which helps with the design process and smooths out the transition between design and integration on site,” comments Chris.

A Trimble Earthworks system has been fitted to two Cat dozers, a Komatsu dozer and a newly acquired Liebherr dozer, as well as to two Volvo excavators. One of the 20 tonne Volvos has also been fitted with a Steelwrist tiltrotator. “The integration of the Steelwrist with the Trimble Earthworks system transforms the excavator into a much more flexible machine. We can access areas on site where we wouldn’t have been otherwise able to do so.”

He adds: “The Trimble technology is not something we could do without. Our investment in it is paying dividends. It has been a real asset on our various projects and our operators have found it easy to work with, given a little training on the products, while the support and back up we get from SITECH is much appreciated.”

Our investment in it is paying dividends. It has been a real asset on our various projects...