RFID Badges Enable Equipment Access Management

When a national wood products company based in Oregon planned a $700 million capital project to upgrade and expand one of its mills, implementing equipment access management was a key priority. The twin goals: Increase safety and improve fleet utilization.

Monitoring and managing which workers operate machinery can be an enormous challenge on a large site. To mitigate hazards on this project, which will require more than 700 craft workers and 200 pieces of equipment at peak, safety managers aimed to limit the ability to access equipment such as forklifts, aerial lifts and excavators to operators with the proper training and certification.

In addition, the company was keen to optimize its equipment utilization to reduce fleet costs. In particular, it sought to limit equipment access to operators who had a legitimate business need to use certain machines at a certain time. Otherwise, contractor A could use equipment that wasn’t allocated to them and potentially leave it where contractor B couldn’t find it, causing the company to have to acquire more equipment than necessary.

A streamlined digital solution

The wood products company, which already relied on United Rentals as the project’s primary rental equipment provider, sought guidance on how to implement equipment access management.

United Rentals initially recommended adding keypads to equipment and assigning PIN codes to each contractor. However, when the team learned about the third-party site access management system the customer planned to install, a more streamlined approach became possible. The third-party system authenticates entrants using RFID-enabled worker ID badges. Immediately, United Rentals saw a potential opportunity to implement a single-badge, multi-use solution.

With badge-based equipment access management, workers use the same badge issued by a workforce management company for jobsite access to access equipment they are authorized to use. They simply tap the badge on the RFID card reader located on the keypad. The keypads are capable of utilizing badges or pin codes.

Assigning roles and rights in Total Control®

To enable efficient, effective equipment access management, digital worker profiles generated by the issuer of the ID badges are ingested into Total Control®, United Rentals’ cloud-based worksite management platform. From there, managers can assign roles and grant access to certain machines or types of machines and to individuals or specific groups.

Together, United Rentals and the customer assigned equipment access based on the qualifications of more than 150 employees. As contractors are brought onto the project, they will be required to provide the training and certification data for each of their workers. The information will be added to the digital worker profile and used to determine access eligibility.

Benefits of badge-based equipment access

The benefits of badge-based equipment access are many. Preventing untrained operators from accessing equipment is the biggest, but efficiency gains are also significant.

Administrators don’t have to spend time assigning and managing PINs. Equipment operators don’t have to remember PINs, and they can’t share them with other, non-authorized operators. Fleet managers can easily identify who used a piece of equipment, when and for how long. That data not only creates personal accountability but also provides insights managers can leverage to right-size and right-type fleets.

Under-used equipment can be returned to United Rentals. Heavily used equipment can be augmented for increased efficiency. Optimizing fleet utilization could significantly reduce fleet spending while helping to keep the project on schedule.

Helping customers meet goals via technology

United Rentals is one of the first companies in the United States to enable seamless end-to-end access management by implementing single-badge, multi-use equipment access management. The solution is one of the many ways in which United Rentals is helping customers leverage the benefits of connected jobsites, which include simplifying processes and enhancing safety. As the customer moves ahead with implementing jobsite access management at all of its facilities, United Rentals looks forward to providing an equipment access management solution on both rental and owned equipment at all locations across the United States.

To inquire about installing equipment access management on your next project, contact us today.