EDITOR ' S QUESTION
In my experience working in the field of Water Well Drilling over the past 12 years, I’ ve noticed that water well drilling rigs – some of the largest road mobile equipment pieces – and their accompanying equipment haven’ t changed much from the basic technology perspective of hydraulics, diesel engines and compressors.
However, what has changed is the technology around them: The smartphone revolution and Internet of Things has transformed how we track, dispatch and log data from these vehicles.
At our business, over the last five years we started tracking the locations of these vehicles with on-vehicle GPS trackers. Then we integrated that data into a dashboard that lets us track these vehicles alongside our current and upcoming project lists. This has helped us add efficiency in how we move this equipment from job to job, saving fuel and time. Before a live map we’ d sometimes have to double back to a job we missed – no longer.
On top of that we use drilling data entered by our field crews – no longer relying on their memory at the end of the day filling out forms. Our drilling data is then uploaded to our software platform to facilitate faster reporting to the relevant government agencies.
We’ ve even taken this a step further and integrated the state well log data to estimate drilling depths and geological conditions at any site. Our field crews as they are drilling through to the aquifer can reference the data from the well next door
– right on their smartphone – so they know which type of rock they’ ll be encountering next. No longer are they going in half blind as to what conditions they’ ll be experiencing.
Recently we’ ve started using AI features to get a broader picture of the drilling conditions in our area, painting a comprehensive picture of these drilling conditions for our heavy equipment.
We had to handle these integrations internally, however, as in our industry there was no single system that would enable this cross-integration. Sometimes if you want a solution that works for you, you need to build it yourself.
The next step, of course, is live data tracking from the equipment itself – logging how deep we are drilling and being able to feed that information back to headquarters – this would enable a better sense of when the drilling will be complete or if there have been any delays. This would enable clearer communication to the upcoming customers as to when we’ ll be able to reach them.
To best utilise our heavy equipment over the last five years we’ ve layered technology solutions at every level: from the vehicle itself to the operator’ s smartphone, to our office systems. �
CRAIG VANDER GALIEN
FOUNDER OF DRILLERDB
www. intelligentbuild. tech 27