Tomahawk Construction is developing land to create a 700-acre residential community in Naples, Florida. It is also among the many heavy construction companies looking for ways to overcome an ongoing labour shortage.
"We really have just had a hard time getting people into haul trucks," said Tomahawk Owner Scott Lyons.
The labour shortage isn't going away anytime soon. As experienced operators retire, the industry is struggling to attract much-needed new operators to fill job vacancies, resulting in spiralling project costs and timelines.
Teleo builds autonomous technology for heavy equipment and provides a solution for Tomahawk's labour shortage. Teleo retrofits heavy equipment with its technology that enables remote and autonomous operations of the machines. Teleo's technology allows Tomahawk machine operator Max Bogacz to remotely operate three Teleo-equipped articulated dump trucks (ADTs) simultaneously on the Naples job site from a command centre 40 miles away in Fort Myers.
Tomahawk recently became the first contractor to get Teleo's autonomous capabilities on its machines. This means that while machines are set to autonomous mode, they can perform routine and repetitive tasks like hauling materials from one point to another. If there are any complex tasks that the autonomous technology cannot yet fully handle, the machine waits for the operator and Bogacz is there to take over. Bogacz switches between machines with the press of a button.
"Ever since we have installed Teleo units on the trucks, we haven't had one sitting," noted Lyons. "It lets us expand who we would typically hire for a haul truck. So today we'll see one operator per three trucks."
The land Tomahawk is developing is the future home of Caymas Naples, a luxury community of 457 single-family homes by Stock Development. Set on 780 acres, the 12-acre amenity campus features a 30,000-square-foot resort-style clubhouse, a sports center, a dog park, and numerous other amenities. The community also features approximately 280 acres of lakes and 270 acres of onsite preserves. As part of the development, Tomahawk will excavate and move more than 2.2 million cubic yards of material from the Naples job site, a former mining operation.
