We’ve previously written about the rise in equipment tagging in the construction industry.
For example, previously the Commercial Construction Index reported that, among the leading jobsite technologies, construction drones and equipment tagging led the pack. Equipment tagging, they reported, had already been used by some 13% of contractors surveyed in years 2018 and 2019, while adoption was expected to rise by 37% through the end of next year.
The uptick in equipment tagging is only natural. 70% of contractors believe that using advanced technology, like equipment tagging (still among the top 3 construction technologies contractors believe can have a positive impact), can help improve productivity, while 78% believe it can improve scheduling.
With rising materials costs and an increasingly narrowing talent pool, staying on top of your equipment, and determining who has what, is ever important. These are two things we’ve also discussed before (construction cost overruns and using inventory to address labor shortages).
With equipment tagging surging in popularity, in this article, therefore, we find it only naturally makes sense that we discuss a tracking solution that’s on the rise in the equipment tagging space: The Bluetooth tag.
A Bluetooth tag (also commonly called a Bluetooth tracking tag, a tracking tag, a passive Bluetooth tag, or a Bluetooth tracker) is a small piece of tracking hardware you can add to any item to track it.
When you hear tracking tag, you might think of consumer-grade tracking products like Apple’s AirTag or Tile’s Mate, or Chipolo’s ONE, which are commonly used to find missing keys, wallets, backpacks, and the like. These products are extremely popular, and equally helpful; however, they’re built with the average consumer in mind, and not with the needs of busy contractors who expect their tools and associated equipment to withstand jobsite abuse.
Contractors, meanwhile, typically turn to professional-grade Bluetooth tracking tags to keep tabs on a variety of different items:
Further reading: Learn what separates a Bluetooth tracking tag vs general asset tag and the applications where you’d want to use one over the other.
Just as you can use your smartphone to connect to a set of wireless headphones or a jobsite radio or speaker to listen to some tunes, cordlessly, you can use a Bluetooth connection to associate any item you’d like with a Bluetooth tracking tag.
Once you’ve established that connection and made the association with your item, you’ll then be able to enlist the help of others around you to find your item should it go missing.
Like Apple’s “Find My” utilizes the Bluetooth sensors in Apple® products belonging to those nearby you, Milwaukee® Tool’s ONE-KEY™ network connects with nearby construction professionals who have our app installed on their devices to create a sort of virtual search party, assembled via the internet, to help you divide and conquer, look around, and find where your missing item is hiding.
Unlike GPS tracking, which creates a constant connection and can be helpful for turn-by-turn navigation (but can be costly and high on energy consumption), a Bluetooth tag, active in the background via a finding app, scans for and connects to nearby devices in an of “ad hoc” wireless network in order to regularly send back location updates to the user and can alert them when items start to wander.
New to the Bluetooth tracking space? Learn more about how community Bluetooth tracking works and what separates Bluetooth vs GPS tracking, as well as the applications where you’d choose one over the other.
The average range for a Bluetooth tracker is about 200ft. While our TICK™ Tool & Equipment Tracker has a range of 100ft, our recently announced One-Key Bluetooth Tracking Tag has a longer range of 300ft.
There are a number of tracking solutions in the marketplace for contractors. Which is best? A combination of the various options is what we commonly see, and there’s good reason for that. Just as certain jobs require certain tools of trade, optimizing your inventory logistics chain may be accomplished with a variety of interrelated hardware.
Equipment tagging, used in conjunction with the One-Key app, can be improved with features like “Find Item” and “tool history.”
One-Key is a free inventory app built for construction pros and to be comprehensive, with the ability to add tools and equipment of all manufacturers and integrate barcode scanning procedures that draws on your mobile device’s built-in camera (no external hardware needed!).
Aside from software features, we also offer multiple hardware tracking solutions:
Construction downtime is only bound to worsen as teams get smaller and projects get more complicated.
The silver lining: Managing inventory by keeping track of your stuff can help make the downtime dilemma less of an issue by curbing the non-productive activities contractors experience (waiting around for materials, trying to figure out where something is, etc.).
The recently launched One-Key Bluetooth Tracking Tag is a part of our commitment to delivering industry-disrupting tracking hardware that seamlessly interacts with our software and makes contractors more productive. And we’re only going to continue down this path, delivering more solutions that will help create a more connected, data-driven job.