Business Central December 2021

58 | Three dimensional tech ups the ante Karen Phelps Gair Contracting uses Trimble combined with Caterpillar machinery. to page 60 FORESTRY Gair Contracting ONEKAWA 47 Austin Street, Onekawa, Napier Ph: 06 843 9119 • onekawa@baytyres.co.nz Proud to support & supply tyres and servicing to Gair Contracting • Keeping hawkes bay rolling • Big or Small we do them all • 24/7 Fleet/Farm on site Service www.baytyres.co.nz Visit us on facebook For all your tyre requirements in the HAWKES BAY come and see... YOUR LOCALLYOWNEDANDOPERATED INDEPENDENT TYRE TEAM PROUD TO WORK WITH GAIR CONTRACTING FORESTRY - CIVIL AND COUNCIL ROADING 09 273 4033 | WWW.TPMS.CO.NZ Napier /Wairarapa / Christchurch Transport New Zealand wide Storage available Class 1 & 2 Pilots Proudly Transporting Gair Contracting Ph. 027 557 7720 hbheavyhaul@gmail.com officehbhh@gmail.com G air Contracting is proud to be pioneer- ing the use of three dimensional ma- chine control for constructing roading for the forestry industry. Although the technology has been used for some time in the civil construction sector it is newer for forestry projects, says Gair Con- tracting general manager Richard Jardine. “Basically instead of employing a surveyor to hammer survey stakes into the ground with the information for how deep etc we should dig the new technology means a plan is sent to our equipment and shown on a screen in the cab and we work off that. “With some of our equipment we even have the capability for the machine to automatically do the digging to the correct depths,” explains Richard. Gair Contracting uses Trimble combined with Caterpillar machinery. He says on forestry projects the technology can increase efficiencies hugely: “As we cut soil we have to store it on the site and sometimes use it on other parts of the project. With machine control in three dimen- sions we can work out the most efficient way to do this so we are not moving soil around the site unnecessarily,” he explains. “We can really optimise our construction.” Interestingly founder of Gair Contracting, Joe Gair, had started to utilise this technology from 2015. Goodman Contractors was further down the track with its implementation and Richard thinks Joe, who he describes as “vi- sionary”, would have been pleased to see his company able to invest significantly and fast track its uptake.