A Phoenix in New England

Established by James Read in 2003 as a contractor/developer, J. Read Corp. self-performed for its own developments for several years, before expanding to take on outside work. Today, the company specializes in complex earthmoving projects and large-scale site development. According to Greg Read, the founder’s son and current owner/president, the roller-coaster ride prompted by the recession was a humbling yet learning experience.

“Right from the outset, we were fairly sizeable — about 40-50 people — in order to support a building division, a quarry division and others,” he said. “As the business took off, we quickly grew to roughly triple that size until the 2008 downturn, at which point, everything came to an abrupt halt. However, even though we went down to that skeleton crew, we managed to keep the doors open. Once things recovered, we started hiring again and our payroll now numbers in the mid-50s, a comfortable area for us to be in.”

Read added that their current size allows them to keep the family environment that has always been so important to them. “We pride ourselves in maintaining close relationships; this size allows that. And, at the same time, we can eliminate that risk of ‘accordion’ construction: too much work, not enough work, too much, and so on.”

It's important to note that, despite their smaller payroll, J. Read is now more competitive than at any other point in their existence. They attribute that to the importance placed on GNSS-based machine control and the benefits it has afforded them since they started using it.

“Our use of GPS goes back almost to the start of the company,” he said. “At the time, my dad was running an excavator and it seemed that every time the surveyor would lay out an edge of a road, one of our haul trucks would back up and take down every single stake. That drove him absolutely nuts, which prompted us to look for a better way to do things. With GPS, we knew we could at least replace the stakes without needing to call in a surveyor.”

Around that time, James Read also owned a manufacturing company that was beginning to do CAD machine work and the person charged with heading up that technology had a working knowledge of model building. “That helped us get savvier and more productive with the GPS solution — we saw that it could be a transferable technology — only on a larger scale,” added Greg Read.

The table was set for J. Read to change the nature of its approach to construction.

Fast-forward to 2017 and a visit by company representatives to the granddaddy of all construction equipment trade shows, ConExpo, in Las Vegas. There, the benefits of GPS-based machine control were laid bare to them, according to Greg Read.

“We spent time in the Topcon booth at that show, quickly learned that machine control was the answer we needed and bought it right there,” he said. “Back home, we put it on a John Deere 700 dozer and upon seeing how well it did, quickly automated the excavation part of the job as well. Cliché as it might sound, it was truly a game-changer for us. While it’s great to have a guy with a good eye in the cab, not only are such people hard to come by these days, they’re still no match for GPS. Athletic fields and other single-plane projects are one thing, but parking lots that are heavy with contours around buildings and so on are another matter altogether. Automation has made all of our machines extremely productive.”

One of the key benefits the technology affords J. Read’s team members is what he refers to as an added level of “job site awareness.” His operators, because they have a view of the full site, know where they are going, where they are needed, what the next piece of the bigger picture will be. “My crews now know that they can’t place material at ‘Point A,’ an area slated to be cut,” he said. “It eliminates the risk of multiple handling — the cardinal sin of earthmoving.

All those gains are continually on display daily at any of several projects in which J. Read is involved. While that list of ongoing work could easily be more extensive, the company opts to focus on larger projects — those of ten acres or more — which play to its strengths. In fact, they recently wrapped up site prep work for a massive distribution warehouse for a major online retailer. That job, according to Read, was hugely successful thanks in large part to their GNSS-based solutions.

“At the site in nearby Uxbridge, we moved one million tons of material in 14 weeks, built 126,000 square feet of retaining walls – some as high as 60 feet – and designed and installed extensive underground stormwater retention systems,” he said. “The slab for that structure was 575,000 sq. ft. with a mezzanine level that brought the square footage up to almost a million. To tackle a job of that size, we used the full complement of our machine control capabilities — dozers, graders and excavators — as well as our Topcon HiPer VR base and rovers. The impact of doing so was undeniable: just in grading alone, we probably doubled our old productivity by doing things just once.”

When asked about the return on investment on the GNSS solutions currently in use, Read does not skip a beat. “We probably have close to a million dollars in GPS equipment at work at any given time, including systems on nine excavators, two dozers, a grader, the base/rover systems, and so on. Based on time savings alone, it is without a doubt worth the investment we’ve made. We’ve eliminated the redundancy of the layout effort mentioned earlier and the workflow is now streamlined and efficient. As to how readily our operators take to it, almost without exception, they are initially apprehensive about using the machine control solution and then after one day’s use, don’t want to work any other way. That’s why we’ve been adding them the way we do.”

J. Read’s penchant for improving its capabilities often calls for thinking outside the box, the most recent example being a pair of GPS-equipped rotating buckets. According to survey manager Brian Pabis, the Stow, Mass. branch of Topcon Solutions Stores, which has been so key for all their GNSS service and support, helped with those as well.

“They have been excellent for us, working with equipment dealers whenever we have new machines heading out to the field,” he said. “When we switched over two excavators to the GPS-controlled rotator buckets, they helped make it happen. If you have a good operator who can leverage that technology — which we do — these rotating buckets can be unstoppable. We have a Rototilt bucket on a zero-clearance SK 140 Kobelco with rubber padded tracks that we use as a finishing machine and it’s amazing.”

He added that they also recently put a GPS-equipped Engcon Tiltrotator on a John Deere 345 which they are using as the finish/utility machine on a nearby school construction project to great success. “In instances when the operator is in a confined area, they can literally dig sideways with it,” he said. “In the hands of a good operator, that rotating bucket with GPS can do everything from grading a rolling fairway for a golf course, to pipe runs for utilities, to backing up the landscape guy. It makes for a great machine.”

Spend any amount of time with him and you learn that Brian Pabis’s passion for grade knows no bounds. Referencing that 65-acre project, he proudly describes the accuracies they were able to achieve throughout the site. “We have precision grade everywhere  — anywhere I put a rover, anywhere a piece of equipment has gone, I am confident in knowing that’s the grade that was designed, bid, and contracted. That’s where GPS — whether it’s on a rover or an excavator, a dozer, whatever — makes all the difference.”

To further make his point, Pabis said that J. Read, in its pursuit of continued excellence, places a self-imposed 1” tolerance on any grading project it undertakes. It’s a point he makes to illustrate just how critical even that can be.

“Consider that 1” of concrete across a 1 million square foot slab represents almost 3,100 additional cu. yd. of concrete — more than $400,000 in lost income,” he said. “So, if we can ensure that the GC is pouring a perfect depth of slab, it’s money in the bank for them. While it’s true that companies allow for a certain amount of overage, if they don’t use it, that’s a savings — and everyone is getting what they aimed to get from the outset. That’s where technology is so important in an operation like this. That’s the whole GPS advantage in a nutshell — and we use it to its fullest.”