Industry leaders from HaulHub discuss the coming wave in construction data and technical sophistication.
The days of the paper materials ticket in infrastructure construction are rapidly coming to a close.
Among U.S. state DOTs, 43 now use e-Ticketing to track materials delivery in some capacity. As a result, a raft of valuable construction data is coming online. Now, innovators in the field are working to help capture it to help inform smarter decision making and improve safety and sustainability.
In a recent episode of “InfraTalk on the Road,” Publisher Gregory Nadeau — a former FHWA Administrator — got a chance to talk with two leading change-makers in the field: HaulHub’s Vice President of Industry Relations and Government Affairs, Matthew Valle, and National Customer Success Director, Houston Merck.
HaulHub, a leading provider of e-Ticketing software, recently unveiled its newest offering: EDOT. The platform will not only feed materials ticket data into a user-friendly portal, but it also sets the stage for all other kinds of data to be seamlessly integrated.
Nadeau caught up with Valle and Merck at the AASHTO Annual Meeting this fall in Indianapolis to talk about the possibilities that are unfolding.
“e-Ticketing is the foundation,” said Valle. “Seventy-five million tickets a year that are being delivered electronically across the US. That sets a really nice platform for building components on top of that.”
Valle and Merck explained how EDOT is using that data to improve safety. For example, through EDOT, they are able to input telematics data from construction equipment and feed that to drivers in real time.
“We know that there’s a real person out there [on the job site] and we should be concerned about their safety,” said Merck. “Can we take that and feed that into these other programs to divert traffic, reroute traffic?”
The possibilities for environmental improvements are also huge, HaulHub officials say. More and more states are taking advantage of environmental product declarations, which are like nutrition labels for materials used on job sites.
“You start to tie that to the ticket, you can get some real insights into what the CO2 emissions are,” said Merck. “There’s this whole digital ecosystem getting set up to help inform owners of what the CO2 emissions are of the projects.”
Check out the whole episode here. And if you like it, be sure to give it five stars.
