Idle equipment and overdue rentals can erode margins without anyone noticing until it’s too late. 

That means equipment-using GCs have a shared goal: Eliminate equipment blind spots to protect profit margins. Telematics gives you a way to do just that. 

Telematics relays data from your equipment, then organizes it to tell you about that asset’s utilization, location, and more. It can help you spot issues like excessive idling while supporting more intelligent resource allocation across all of your projects.

How telematics works

Telematics gives you a way to gather regularly updated data from your equipment, then use it to your advantage. 

Getting the data

Some manufacturers sell equipment with telematics functionality built in. And some rental companies include telematics with many of their rentals, too. 

Even if the piece of equipment doesn’t come with telematics, you can add it yourself. Other companies make gateways and asset tags to help you get telematics from virtually any asset you want to track. 

That means you can use telematics on a wide range of equipment, from excavators to scissor lifts to company trucks. And if you feed that into your project management software, you can see data from both your owned and rented equipment in one place, helping to minimize portal hopping for your team.

Using the data

Just tracking equipment data doesn’t do anything unless your team uses that information. 

When you integrate equipment telematics with Procore, you can push data straight into your resource management platform. This gives you a way to get regular (e.g., hourly) updates on your equipment, or to refresh the connection to pull information on demand.

Your team can decide how to use that telematics data. You might:

  • Apply the map view to make sure equipment is where you expect it to be, or to identify the closest piece of equipment that could potentially be pulled from another job to meet field requests

  • Track idle hours, making sure you’re not burning too much fuel that isn’t contributing to project progress

  • Identify discrepancies that could eat into your margins, like equipment that’s marked as on-site and in-use but doesn’t show any engine activity or movement

  • Track usage to improve accuracy when mapping to cost codes

  • Monitor operating hours to proactively plan maintenance 

This gets particularly powerful with rented equipment. Telematics can help you see where equipment sits unused so you can call it off rent to prevent overages. 

Get your equipment connected: Configuring telematics 101

If Procore is your resource management platform of choice, we have several options you can use to pull in equipment data through telematics.

Integrated telematics (John Deere and Caterpillar)

We have telematics functionality with two leading OEMs:

You can configure the data connection through the Equipment tool in Procore. The links above provide step-by-step guides for each OEM. 

Telematics on rentals (United Rentals)

If you get your rentals from United Rentals, we have a prebuilt telematics integration with them. You can set it up by using your United Rentals Account ID.  

Gateways you can add to equipment (Samsara)

If you buy or rent equipment that doesn’t come with telematics functionality, you still have options to add it. Samsara makes vehicle and asset gateways that allow you to bring the Internet of Things (IoT) to the equipment you want to track. Depending on the gateway you choose, it can collect and relay data like location, fuel consumption, and engine hours.

Procore allows you to activate telematics with your Samsara credentials.  

Deciding if telematics is right for your team

Telematics can be a useful tool if your team has a lot of equipment deployed across a lot of jobsites. It’s also helpful if you’ve faced margin erosion from rented equipment sitting idle or, worse yet, from equipment getting lost. 

Having the latest data from these assets helps you keep projects on track and profits in your pocket. Beyond that, analyzing the data from equipment telematics can help you refine your resource allocation and sharpen future bids.

If you want to protect the margin on projects you’re already working on while adding a bigger buffer to future jobs, equipment telematics might be right for you. 

Back to all posts