Your best chance to gain profitability in equipment-intensive construction today is almost certainly by investing in equipment management. Relative to affecting labor or materials costs, equipment costs are fairly easy to change, and if you've not taken maximum advantage of the technology and service offerings available there's almost certainly profit to be mined from your operation.

Your equipment operation hasn't necessarily slipped. The game has changed. Telematics technology readily available on any heavy equipment (installed by the OEM or retrofit by third-party vendors) can deliver intelligence about machine operation that simply has never existed before—at least not with such quality and consistency.

Equipment makers and their dealers are so confident in the information available from on-board GPS systems that organizations such as Komatsu and Case are using it to support complimentary maintenance programs during the initial years of ownership.