If we could forget all we know…
If the construction equipment makers of today could travel back in time and converse with their predecessors, would modern machines look the same or would they better reflect the needs of the modern user?
There’s a very old and a largely unfunny joke about an American tourist stopping at a gate and asking an old Irish farmer for directions to Dublin. The farmer pauses, rubs his chin and replies: “Well, I wouldn’t start here”.
As I said, it’s not a rib-tickler. But it does contain a certain truth. Given all that we now know about construction equipment — about its uses and applications — would excavators still look like excavators if we had our time over? Would dumpers still look like dumpers? Would the backhoe loader look like the site workhorse we have come to know and love?
Or, to put it another way:
“If I knew back then what I know now. If I’d understood the what, when, why and how”
George Benson — 20/20
Designed by Nature
I distinctly remember a conversation with the late Richard Comley, a man who is sadly missed for so many reasons. He was pointing out just how closely demolition equipment mirrors Mother Nature: how a high reach excavator boom is reminiscent of a giraffe’s neck; how a hydraulic shear looks exactly like a parrot’s beak.
He was right, of course. Show a photo of a high reach excavator to a child, and they instantly see a dinosaur. And we know what happened to the dinosaurs!
So yes, a high reach excavator does look a lot like a giraffe. But would Mother Nature have designed the giraffe in quite the same way if she knew it would need to reach 10 times higher? Or that, in order to feed, it would need to hoist three tonnes of steel into the air? Would a parrot’s beak look quite the same if, instead of nuts and seeds, evolution had decreed that the birds dined upon steel and concrete?
I am, of course, exaggerating for journalistic effect. But think about it this way. An excavator was designed — as its name implies — to excavate. It was designed to dig downwards, below grade. The people that designed the original hydraulic excavator could not have imagined that, one day, a descendant of their invention would be working upwards, 70 or more metres above the ground.
Going back to our animal analogy, the mole would not have survived this long if it fed upon the leaves at the very top of the tree canopy, would it?
So many machines that we take for granted today were designed for a different time, for a different application; and for a very different industry. They are a compromise; an old-school cure for a thoroughly modern ailment.
Big Rigs for Big Rigs
Around the world, there are dozens — possibly hundreds — of offshore oil and gas rigs that are scheduled to be decommissioned and deconstructed. When they were designed back in the 1950s and 1960s, they were an engineering marvel; but it is now clear that very little — if any — consideration was given to what might happen when they reached the end of their working life.
To remove these blots from the global seascape requires some of the largest man-made structures ever assembled to be hauled back to land (at considerable expense). Hauled up into a dedicated dock (at more considerable expense) and then cut apart by an excavator that (a) was originally designed to dig holes and that (b) has been modified to demolish buildings, NOT offshore oil rigs.
It is a slow and laborious process. It is a potentially hazardous process too. It is taking even the most thoroughly-modified excavator WAY beyond the very extremities of its comfort zone.
If the undoubtedly brilliant equipment designers of old had seen the need for a machine to demolish an offshore oil rig, would an excavator be the solution they imagined? My guess is that they would have come up with something entirely different.
That’s an extreme example. But let’s stick with the excavator and look at how these machines have evolved from “diggers” into multi-purpose tool carriers.
It is estimated that a modern excavator might spend as little as 50 percent of its time actually digging in the traditional sense. In a demolition application, that figure could be lower still. Thanks to the advent of a plethora of hydraulic attachments, and the more recent addition of efficient quick coupler systems, a demolition excavator is more likely to be found breaking, cutting, crushing, munching, or screening.
Is an excavator that was designed to wield a bucket and to dig below grade really the best tool carrier for all these applications? Or is it just the best that we have available?
Just a car
In my 30+ years of writing about construction equipment, I have not seen the arrival of a truly new style of machine. Don’t get me wrong, I have witnessed innovation that has made my head spin; that has rendered me speechless in awe and admiration.
But everything has been a variation on a theme. JCB’s Hydradig, for example, remains a shining example of the design engineer’s ability to reimagine an established product. But, scratch the surface, and the Hydradig is still “just” a wheeled excavator.
I am old enough to remember the arrival of (and initial dismissal of) the mini excavator. At that time, the mini excavator was novel. But it was merely a “honey, I shrunk the kids” downsizing of the existing 360- degree machines. I have seen autonomous dumptrucks (just a dumptruck but without at operator) and remotely-controlled skid steer loaders (just a skid steer with an operator stood a little way away).
I have witnessed evolution. Yet I cannot recall a single revolution; a single breakaway from the established norm; a single tangential diversion from a path well-trodden. Are we honestly saying that everything that COULD be invented HAS been invented decades before its ultimate use case was even conceived?
Construction equipment designers and manufacturers — some of the smartest people I have the privilege of meeting — can take solace in the fact that they are not alone.
As a company, Tesla has turned the automotive sector on its head. It has heralded a switch in perception of electric vehicles; it has revolutionised the way in which cars are specified, purchased and cared for. Tesla has, as the saying goes, eaten the lunch of the existing car-makers.
Yet for all this, a Tesla is JUST a car. It is a stunningly powerful and beautiful piece of engineering. It is state-of-the-art; the very pinnacle in automotive design and engineering. But it still has a wheel at each corner, a seat for the driver, a steering wheel and some airbags.
The Tesla ticks the environmental box. It ticks the luxury and aspirational boxes too. But does it really satisfy the needs of modern motorists driving upon congested roads pocked with potholes?
Perfect Storm
Will I ever see a totally new breed of construction or demolition machine in my lifetime? Despite all I have said, I remain hopeful.
We find ourselves in the midst of a perfect storm in which the need to replace traditional diesel fuel is driving innovation, and when unprecedented levels of technology and information are at the disposal of design engineers like never before.
I have long thought that construction equipment — like so many other products upon which we rely — were created in an ivory tower, far away from the work face and a real use case. But the advent of telematics has the potential to change all that. Design engineers can now see PRECISELY how machines are deployed, used, operated, moved, and refuelled. They know PRECISELY how many hours a machine is working and the level of power/fuel being consumed across a whole range of duty cycles. They can measure the stresses and strains across the powertrain and all the key components. And they have at their disposal materials that were unimaginable just a few years ago.
Armed with all that field-proven data and with electric and hydrogen power opening up new opportunities all the time, there remains a very real possibility that I could yet see a new breed of construction machine in my lifetime.
I live — and work — in hope.
