Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

Photojournalist: Dr. Doreen Galli

ABSTRACT

North America’s largest construction trade show, CONEXPO-CON/AGG and IFPE are held together every three years in Las Vegas. The conference featured over 3 million net square feet of exhibits, over 2400 exhibitors, 200 educational courses, and 139,000 attendees from 133 countries. There were endless examples of Industrial Intelligence of Things (IIoT) and early examples of digitally transformed construction sites. The digital transformation of the construction site is well underway enabling multivendor views to optimize asset use and the total carbon footprint of a given job.  

The Conference

• The first CONEXPO was held in 1909 in Columbus, Ohio. The first CON/AGG was held in Detroit Michigan in 1928. CONEXPO and CON/AGG merged for the 1996¹ show held in Las Vegas. The Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) is responsible for putting on the show. Today, CONEPXO is one conferences with three domains: specifically, CONEXPO, CON/AGG and IFPE. Due the size and complexity of bringing all the equipment together, it is held every 3 years at the LVCC – the only location that can physically accommodate the weight of the equipment.
• CONEXPO-CONN/AGG and IFPE was held in Las Vegas and leveraging the entire expanded LVCC including West, Central, South and North Halls and the festival lot. The Conference featured with 139,000 registered attendees including international attendees from 133 countries. The exhibitions featured over 2400 exhibitors in over 3 million net square feet of exhibits. There was a significant presence of women at the conference not simply joining attendees.
• Attendees at CONEXPO-CONN/AGG and IFPE 2020 held titles such as Job Site Director, Director Heavy Equipment Rentals, Machine Operator, Logistics Manager, Electrical Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, Director of Product Management, Director City Planning, and new this time – data scientist.

Highlights

• Sensors is standard on heavy equipment this time around. Today’s sensor solutions are more intelligent than ever. Predictive maintenance is a reality when information from telematics systems is integrated into maintenance systems.
• Digital transformation is arriving at construction job sites and heavy equipment rentals.
• While there are new Government regulations such as US bidding requirements to disclose carbon footprint and plan to reduce emissions, OEM (original equipment manufacturers) equipment itself does not provide this information. Additional work is required to understand one’s footprint.

Cautions

• The industry would benefit from leveraging six sigma or other practices common in manufacturing to formally document the business benefit of their digital transformation.
• There are many lessons learned in IT data management and manufacturing transformations that can benefit the construction digital transformation. Hopefully, these lessons will be shared so maximum success can be achieved.

Conference Vibe

The largest North American construction conference surpassed the attendance of their last conference which was held while Covid 19 was declared a pandemic². The conference requires an entire month to set up – complex enough that it is only held every 3 years. The exhibits leveraged the entire Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). It spanned the parking lots, South Hall, North Hall, Central Hall, the new West Hall, and the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. When asked attendees reported meeting their business objectives, the answer was a resounding Yes. Some indicated the expected deals came through along with a few pleasant surprises. Once again – the quality of attendees itself was mentioned by the exhibitors. Fortunately, the press room and many exhibits had coffee available – both regular and decaffeinated AND hot water for tea this time around.

Digital Transformation of Commercial Fleets and Job Sites

According to IFM³, 85% of vehicle telematics is used for vehicle tracking with only 27% used to track fatigue management. While the 2020 conference had education modules on digital transformation, in 2023 there were competing modules. CONEXPO 2023 live forced one to choose between ‘Top 10 Uses Cases using advanced Machine Data⁴’ and ‘Predictive Maintenance: Plan the Work and Work the Plan’. In 2020 participants were told the value of sharing one important piece of data⁵. In 2023, the conference offered a plethora of machine data transformational use cases.

Attendees saw a Plante Moran’s customer discuss how they learned to leverage data to better manage their fleets⁶. ICC provided a great session on crane operation safety using data analysis of standards and incidents. When all was finished, the audience understood that less than 23.8% of crane safety responsibility falls on the operator’s shoulders⁷.

POLARIS Laboratories® demonstrated the advantages of simply connecting one’s fluid analysis to the maintenance management system⁸. In another session, participants learned how to use their machine data for 10 separate use cases. The use cases varied from maximizing the ROI of their machines, saving money by maximizing use of remote investigation to minimizing the costs of batteries⁹. Another topic growing in popularity due to federal contracting requirements was understanding the carbon footprint of a job site. A complete solution set with various accuracy levels to measure fleet emissions was presented by Clue¹⁰. DOKA presented a platform that can estimate your carbon footprint. In addition, DOKA platform can optimize most metrics for job sites across the company and across machine vendors¹¹. Furthermore, DOKA offers an augmented reality solution to help customers and teams picture the job site before it is realized¹².

Finally, one cannot discuss all this technology and data without a great session on cybersecurity. To that end CONEXPO did not disappoint with a great panel revealing ransomware and DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are top of mind¹³.

In conclusion, it was exciting to see how far and how fast the construction and agricultural industries are progressing toward digital transformed job sites and enterprises. Unfortunately, transformations stories frequently could not communicate their business impact. If I had one piece of advice to share with the industry it would be leverage six sigma or some business process impact/improvement (BPI) assessment during the transformations. These types of processes capture the financial advantage of the actual transformation. Despite the lack of BPI assessment, construction benefits from the constant turnover of construction equipment within companies. Thus, I would not be surprised to see the construction industry successfully transform faster than manufacturing.

Next Year’s Conference

CONEXPO-CON/AGG is held every three years. The next CONEXPO-CON/AGG and IFPE will occur March 3-7, 2026, in Las Vegas, NV. One may find more information here: The Future of Construction on Display: CONEXPO-CON/AGG Exhibitors Take the Industry.

Citations

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conexpo-Con/Agg
2. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/coronavirus-cases-surpass-1000-us-tsa-agents-test/story?id=69525688
3. https://youtu.be/IbvC4mMd-l8
4. https://youtu.be/_jZawl8zD0I
5. https://youtu.be/btAlIcG9rEw
6. https://youtu.be/dzjPV2WrXY8
7. https://youtu.be/t1BLnp0iNNg
8. https://youtu.be/MG2R9badaW4
9. https://youtu.be/_jZawl8zD0I
10. https://youtu.be/Xgl0z1xQZGc
11. https://youtu.be/oI4phMkytB0
12. https://youtu.be/QbbkZl4u-04
13. https://youtu.be/EFx-SqwNDMw

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