Sirius, which has offices in Durham, Leeds, and Warrington, began fitting its machines with Sitech Trimble technology more than a decade ago after recognising how GPS systems can save time, fuel, labour, and improve the quality of the work and site safety.
The Sirius uses the GPS technology across its earthmoving fleet of more than 130 diggers, dozers, scrapers and compactors. With clients including Taylor Wimpey, Keepmoat Homes, Miller Homes, and Gleeson Homes, Sirius uses the technology in site surveys and throughout the project development.
Plant director Stuart Kirk, responsible for all equipment and investment in the Sirius plant division, was an early adopter of site GPS technology after seeing it in action on a dozer back in 2001. In 2010 Sirius purchased a new Caterpillar D6 fitted with machine control, and over the last decade it has continually invested in GPS technology to remain at the forefront of machine control.
He says: “We’ve just taken delivery of 15 new Kobelco machines which are all fitted with Sitech Trimble technology because machine control helps us to make efficiencies in all areas.
“Back in 2001 people struggled to see the savings having a site sat nav provides and I had to push to get investment in them, but slowly things began changing. People began to see how much production can improve with efficiency savings on fuel, maintenance, tighter tolerances, engineer time on site and safety as your operator can stay within the machine.
“When you’re running on Trimble machine control there’s less supervision needed. Operators can see exactly where they are on site, what depth they’re digging to, and can refer to the plans so they can be confident they’re doing the job right first time which means they’re not tracking about using fuel or increasing wear and tear on the machine.
“Having our engineers, surveyors and machine operators all using the same systems means we have complete confidence when tackling some of the most complex and challenging brownfield or greenfield sites.”
Sirius Group has invested around £400,000 on Sitech Trimble technology over the last 12 months, and it currently operates 15 Trimble GPS rovers, 15 base stations and a site surveying system; it has 25 excavators installed with the machine control system.
Stuart Kirk adds: “Thanks to Brent Taylor at Sitech our team of three scrapers are also up and running with Trimble technology after he was able to create harnesses for them for us, and we’ll continue to invest in future technology. We’re now looking at the Trimble Business Centre to create the 3D models for our machines.”
