Throughout the world, onsite equipment is becoming increasingly advanced with much more powerful and highly efficient machinery entering the sites each year. The overall performance of onsite equipment is crucial towards achieving construction, agricultural, mining and tunneling productivity and nearly all site managers and their teams recognize the importance of choosing the right kind of equipment. There are high numbers of factors that ascertain the type and technicality of the equipment required for successful execution of a project.
There are a wide variety of factors that a manager needs to address before settling on the equipment which includes the overall acquisition and running cost, specifications of the project, logistical feasibility, adaptability of the equipment, availability of the parts, performance record of the machine, the power required off the machine, expertise of trained operators and their availability, company’s internal policies, brand equity and reputation of the manufacturer, performance life and salvage value, safety orientation and other need specific factors which may differ from project to project.
However, even onsite equipment has some sort of an impact on the surrounding environment whether it’s in the form of CO2 emission levels or noise pollution. A research estimated that the construction process produced nearly 40-50% of the total greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere each year and onsite equipment is a substantial part of the whole process. Environmental Sustainability is an important factor in consideration for selection of onsite equipment because this will avert a significant amount of damage to the environment quite easily. Here are the criteria you should weigh for the successful selection of sustainable onsite equipment:
Lowered Greenhouse gas emissions:
Probably one of the most, if not the most important selection criterion among all, acquiring onsite equipment that has the lowest of emissions of harmful gasses like carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide and more, is what will truly make the equipment “Sustainable”.
Onsite equipment produces more greenhouse gasses than passenger cars because they run mostly on Diesel. The presence of Gasoline powered equipment is little to virtually non-existent because the combustion of gasoline cannot provide the power required for executing the wide variety of applicable onsite technical requirements for e.g. gasoline engines might not be suitable at all when it comes to running extremely resilient load carriers like dump trucks or giant concrete mixers.
To mitigate these harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions, there are two options. The first one is to opt for equipment that runs on bio or other forms of sustainable fuels and the second is to select equipment that has an efficient engine with better performance resulting in lower overall emissions. Making this a priority is important for the wide variety of industry involved in the use of onsite equipment so that they work and deliver the perfect triple bottom line result which will include profits, environment, and people, benefitting them in the short and long run.
Lowered Noise and Vibration:
Becoming a nuisance should never be one of the outcomes of employing onsite machinery on a particular site, whether it’s to people living in nearby homes or in the adjoining areas or maybe even a closely situated interstate highway. They don’t cause environmental damage by deteriorating the situation further but certainly affect the living conditions in the close vicinity of the actual location.
Noise and ground vibrations can cause a wide variety of problematic issues like not being to sleep or relax, uneasiness, headaches, irritability and more for the populace and therefore they are not sustainable. Onsite machinery selections should meticulously look into the vibration and noise levels executed by a certain kind of machinery before settling on the one that can stay the most silent without affecting or disrupting the operational capability of the machine itself.
Environmental Degradation:
This one is tough as features pertaining to this problem might not be available in the brochures or information leaflets for different kinds of onsite machinery. But despite that, a lot of similar machines leak oil and other similar lubes, which then run off or are absorbed into the ground, increasing the chances of them mixing with ground water sources, polluting the nearby cultivable land and causing toxicity levels to rise.
To check and assimilate information on this selection criterion, you would need to look at past experiences of different companies that might have used the product or its reputation among the people or personnel who actually use it. Mostly firms miss this criterion entirely due to not being easily decipherable making them vulnerable to placidity. The nearby land and resources need to be protected and that’s where sustainable onsite machinery will play its part.
Protecting the environment is one of the most important considerations that not just people or firms selecting onsite equipment should keep in mind, but other stakeholders need to get involved in the process equally and responsibly to expect a major change in how things are done and executed.