Tuesday 13 October 2015

Online Heavy Equipment Rental Booming


Heavy equipment has literally and figuratively been a big industry in Asia for the last decade. Developing countries have been growing towards urbanization and infrastructures are constantly being built. In the midst of it, investors are creating more projects and needing more construction materials, manual labor and equipment. The construction industry goes in demand until it has become one of the leading markets and has been driving Asia’s economy.

As one of the pioneers in the business, Axis Capital Group, a company which sells and rents heavy equipment in Singapore acknowledges the fact that the sudden boost in business has also been because of the integration of technology to present machines. It made the workload easier and the task more convenient for timely realization of the project. Although the industry has been lagging behind for more advanced technological updates, it has adapted enough modernity to keep up to today’s demands.

One of the leading game changer in the boom of heavy equipment is the renting scheme. Since machines can easily be obsolete with new models and units in the market, heavy equipment rental can be relatively useful for short-time usage. Nowadays, it’s a huge business in Asia and is considered as a billion-dollar industry.

Since rental has started to become popular, other developing cities and countries who are separated by oceans and different regions, those who do not have their own local heavy equipment manufacturer complain of the lack of availability of high-quality equipment. Oceans and the separation of islands became a hurdle in the procurement of equipment.

Online equipment rental has been developed to solve the issue of isolation. Ever since shipment and online shopping has been available, isolated developing cities which are also developing their own urban world. Developing cities like Jakarta, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the Philippines had slowly risen to surprise the world of high city potential. China, Japan and other leading manufacturers also developed connection to other regions to selling and renting used equipment made by the likes of Komatsu or Hitachi to companies in other Asian countries.

However, the industry is not without issues. The most prevailing issue in online heavy equipment sales are fraudulent sales and online scams which have been a part of almost all e-commerce businesses. Clients are being fooled at taking prior payment for equipment which will never come or by delivering rusted and poorly maintained equipment which is not returnable.

The online world of heavy equipment can be unpredictable but the demand continues to grow. Despite this, the industry is promising higher growth and more development.

Thursday 1 October 2015

Construction Industry Recruits Women



Seldom do we see women in a construction site. Since the industry requires every aspect of manual labor, women, who are always considered physically weaker than men, seemed not fit for the job. Gender diversity is not usual in the workplace with women only occupying 11% of the whole construction employees’ population, most of whom are employed for administrative task, working behind the desk and in-charge of data organization.

Sexism is one of the main reasons for the low number of women hiring in construction industry. Axis Capital Group, a company which sells and rents quality equipment, states that both of their offices in Singapore and Jakarta, Indonesia has high attrition rate of female workers. Aside from family and risk issues that women need to adhere to as the reason for their resignation, some have complaints of worse treatment experience regarding the distribution of work or promotion opportunities.

Today’s bigger challenge is to educate the next generation that the industry is not one-gendered. Similar manual careers also have the same gender proportion problems. Analysts have concluded that the issue is one of the main reasons why there are also a low number of laborers and workers in the field.

Construction industry is taking the warning of the lessening number of individuals interested to work in the sector at a more serious level. A person’s gender is no longer important when hiring as long as he or she can do the job and has the qualification to do so. Moreover, the industry is already recognizing women attributes which can help in the betterment of the projects. With an industry struggling to find workers, the insights are worth reviewing for contractors.

1. Learning ability

When it comes to training, women don’t take anything for granted. In our culture it’s sometimes assumed that all men have a certain mastery of machinery. That can lead to overconfidence or lack of attention in the training stage. Women operators also do better than men in pursuing additional educational opportunities. If there are classes in GPS or any other technology related to the job, they’ll be there if it can help them upgrade their abilities. The guys pick it up as they can, but women try to stay ahead of the curve.

2. Attention to detail

It is an innate characteristic of most, if not all of women to keep a keen eye on detail. There is even a study stating that women give more attention to even the tiniest thing and are very observant. You can seldom see a machine operated by women to be as messy as men’s. They keep them clean and don’t leave trash in the cabs. If there was a drop of oil coming out of a wheel or something small like that they let you know about it.