For decades, businesses have been striving to achieve the goal of working smarter rather than harder. Before the advent of today’s technology, that wasn’t always possible. Now, the current business environment and the increased adoption of technology have made working smarter much more of a reality than in previous years.
Working smarter requires we have the knowledge, visibility, tools and data to make decisions in real time. Good planning can help, of course, and reviewing past setbacks can sometimes prevent them from occurring in the future, but real-time decision making requires up-to-date knowledge of where crews, equipment and tools are — and how they’re being utilized.
Armed with that knowledge, project managers can deal with problems before they become problems. United Rentals’ customized tool solutions enable companies to work smarter as well as more cost effectively.
By utilizing tool solutions from United Rentals, project managers not only can realize substantial cost savings but also increase their crews’ level of productivity. Since the most productive jobsites make the required tools and expertise available whenever and wherever needed, these solutions offer a significant advantage when it comes to providing crews with exactly the tools and equipment they need.
Along with cost savings and productivity, one of the greatest benefits of a United Rentals tool solution is the ability to track activity and data in real time. Complete visibility of each tool on each shift at each site is at the project manager’s fingertips.
Productivity
It’s very rare crew members will have every tool and every size available on their person. As a result, studies have indicated a large portion of workers’ time is spent finding and waiting for the tools and equipment they need to perform their job.
Making the right tools available at the right time and place is highly effective in increasing the productivity of any workforce. United Rentals Tool Solutions provide the kind of close-to-the-job access that drives efficiency as well as productivity for both large and small projects.
When a Mobile Tool Room is custom stocked with the tools and supplies needed for the job at hand, crews are able to continue working on-site instead of searching through warehouses, hardware stores or coworkers’ areas for the equipment they need to complete their tasks. United Rentals’ Mobile Tool Rooms are stocked with exactly those items, which the company decides are necessary for a project.
Anything a project manager might find necessary, from power tools and hoists to sockets and consumables, can be stocked in the Mobile Tool Room and tracked. Tracking all items provides real-time feedback so adjustments can be made instantly, without any need to wait for weekly reports. This real-time data helps project managers stay more productive, since they no longer need to spend time investigating purchase orders when attempting to find what items are needed and how much they can request.
Remote or smaller projects
For projects of a lesser size or those located in distant areas, renting a ProBox from United Rentals is often the right answer. The ProBox is a customizable solution for crews on a smaller scale. In today’s construction environment, it is not always viable to carry around gang boxes filled with tools, especially when many sites are located out of state or very far from the crew performing the job.
A customized gang box delivered to the site can ensure those crews are able to spend their time on the project rather than driving hours to the nearest outlet for tools and equipment they might not have brought with them.
Utilization
Special projects often require special tools and equipment that are not normally warehoused within a project or plant. Being able to rent a piece of specialty equipment instead of purchasing it outright can significantly benefit the bottom line.
After all, why purchase a specialty tool that will be used for barely a week or a month when the expense of renting costs only a fraction as much? In addition, renting means there’s no need to pay for servicing or warehousing the item — which will increase the expense of the asset — once the project is finished.
When small tools are required, a mobile tool room or other tool solution becomes increasingly valuable. Small tools such as wrenches and even sockets can have a big effect on expenses if such tools are purchased to supply an entire section during a special project. Chances are good that wrenches and sockets are being warehoused at the site, but there may not be enough to go around when the size of a crew is doubled or tripled to complete a project. There’s no reason to purchase additional supplies for maintaining efficient productivity when a short-term rental solution will do the job at a much smaller cost.
Another challenge of warehousing low-utilization tools comes in the area of safety. A warehoused item that hasn’t been used since a previous project some time ago needs to be thoroughly inspected and declared safe for use before it goes out in the field again, but sometimes such inspections may be overlooked when teams get busy. A tool solution from United Rentals will greatly reduce the chances an unsafe tool will wind up causing possible injury on-site.
Tool loss
On larger projects, tool loss and theft can add up to excessive expenditures if there are no systems in place to track owned and rented items. Particularly during a turnaround or shutdown, there is significant benefit to knowing who currently has what tool and where that tool was being used. Complete visibility of any asset boosts accountability when it comes to ensuring the asset remains where it should be.
Mobile Tool Rooms from United Rentals are equipped with tracking/scanning systems and management software, in addition to on-site tool technicians. This combination allows tool usage to authorized users only, along with tracking which employees have what tools and where they have them.
Since each tool is checked out to an authorized user, using radio-frequency identification technology, it can be scanned to the location of that project and that employee. Project managers are able to see instantly, 24/7, who has what tools and where those tools are.
A recent example shows what happened when a major power facility approached United Rentals about cost savings. The customer wanted a program that would result in reduced tool loss and improved visibility at their facility during a routine outage. The Tool Solutions team put together a proposal that significantly decreased expenses as well as tooling loss, while providing 100-percent visibility of all activities during the course of the outage.
Service and repair
An on-site tool solution for larger construction projects — and for specialty projects including outages, turnarounds and shutdowns — can have a large impact on the bottom line.
To maintain OSHA, ANSI and Mine Safety and Health Administration standards, all equipment and tools should be checked and maintained regularly. Safe tools improve crew productivity and reduce downtime caused as a result of tool breakage or injury. This means having a team of certified tool experts, who maintain and certify the tools being used on a project, can be an invaluable asset to crews as well as to the project itself.
United Rentals provides on-site tool technicians to ensure each tool is inspected and safe for use on the jobsite, not just at the beginning of a project but every time the tool is returned. Having technicians available throughout the course of the entire project, available both to perform inspections and to repair tools and equipment as needed, is extremely beneficial on any jobsite where productivity and expense are key factors.
When replacement tools are right there on the jobsite, essential tools never need to be sent off-site for repairs or in last-minute attempts to find a replacement. This enhances productivity and — even more important when safety is a top priority — reduces the chances of reportable injuries on a jobsite because certified technicians are always on hand to repair tools and equipment.
Customization and packages
United Rentals Tool Solutions are customizable on many levels. The size or location of the jobsite doesn’t matter. There is a solution for every project, whether that’s a Mobile Tool Room, a custom stocked ProBox or pallets of tools.
Mobile Tool Rooms are customized tool trailers equipped with the tools needed for a specific jobsite, selected by the project and/or plant managers to best utilize the resources needed for completing a job on time and on budget. With tracking software tied to fleet software, they offer full visibility at all times. In addition, Mobile Tool Rooms can be customized to stock consumable products such as grinding wheels and earplugs, which are scanned and assigned to the job cost center as they’re used.
The United Rentals ProBox is a customized gang box for smaller projects or remote locations where productivity is essential. Each gang box can be customized not only in size but also in its contents to be used at the jobsite. These gang boxes are delivered and picked up by United Rentals, which reduces the hassle of finding and returning tools.
Pallets of tools are also available through the United Rentals Tool Solutions teams, who are well experienced in providing exactly what a customer requires and in coming up with innovative recommendations that make a project more efficient, productive and cost effective.
A success story
Since every site, every outage and every project is different, they all have their own unique challenges. The United Rentals Tool Solutions group is set to meet those challenges and find customized solutions for each of them.
The following case study shows how this benefited a power plant contractor who saw their work schedule expanded. They realized their in-house tool trailer couldn’t support the needs of the project and turned to United Rentals for a solution.
Once the project was complete, they analyzed the data and discovered significant savings between United Rentals’ solution and what the costs would have been if the contractor handled the job themselves. Not only did the bottom line reveal lower expenses, but it also reflected the higher level of crew productivity for greater savings overall.
A look at the figures reveals the difference of using United Rentals for customized solutions that result in significant productivity savings.
To see what the Tool Solutions team can create for your next project, visit www.UnitedRentals.com/tools or call (800) 877-3687.
