British Telecom completes trial of RFID tracking device, aimed at construction firms

BT has completed a trial of an RFID tracking device that allows construction companies and plant hire firms to monitor the location and status of their equipment on large construction sites.

The trial was conducted on a major London construction site over a two month period, and utilised a box which houses an RFID reader alongside GSM and GPS communications chips, and a battery.

The box can be used to scan RFID information embedded in vehicles, tools and other expensive machinery which is then sent wirelessly to BT’s servers via the mobile network, and accessed remotely using a browser.

“A major problem in the plant hire business and construction industry is that 20-30% of the time, the owners don’t know where their assets are, whilst there is limited access to power and data connections on site.” said Anthony Godec, sales director at asset tracking specialist OxLoc, which partnered BT in the trial.

Geoff Barraclough of the BT redcare Group, which specialises in machine to machine (M2M) communications, says that the carrier has not yet decided how it will commercialise the new technology, which is scheduled to roll out later this year. He believes it can also be used to track trailer consignments in the transport industry using the GPS locator.

“It will probably be sold as part of a larger data management or managed service solution. There’s the one off cost of the box will be rather less than you think, plus the cost of the [GSM] airtime, which will probably be with BT Mobile.” he said.

Godec conceded that the construction and plant hire industry are in the very early stages of RFID adoption, but he feels that the future will see an increasing amount of vehicles and machinery embedded with RFID chips as standard.

“At the moment, the percentage of RFID chips used in plant hire equipment is very small, but it is an emerging market.” he said.