Modern civil engineering projects are big and complex. They require long duration and huge amount of fund. It has become essential to use construction equipment to economize cost of construction.

Use of equipment offers following advantages

1. Tough work which is beyond the scope of manual labour can be performed efficiently and speedily.

2. At the time when human labor is uncertain, machines are the only alternatives. Machines are not affected by social and economic conditions of region.

3. Due to use of machine, proper planning can be done, which reduces overall cost of project.

4. Equipments help rapid industrialization of country.

Drawbacks of using equipment

1. It creates unemployment problem to human labour.

2. Equipments are required to be maintained properly. When they are under repairs, work progress hampers.

3. It requires early investment.

Cycle Time

It is the time taken by machine to complete one full cycle of operation. The time to complete a task or collection of tasks from beginning to end. Cycle time is key indicator of process and equipment performance.

It consists of fixed time and variable time. Variable time is time spent on travelling hence is a function of travelling distance, time spent and speed of equipment. Whilst fixed time is the time spent in actual operation of equipment other than travelling like loading-unloading, turning, dumping etc.

In ideal conditions equipment should work for 60 min an hour. But due to many reasons it works 50 min an hour in daytime and 45 min an hour in nighttime.

Downtime, equipment breakdown time is not included in cycle time.

Productivity of equipment

The manufacturer generally provides the information regarding productivity ratings for equipment under different operating conditions. This is of course under ideal conditions which cannot be realized at site. Since such ideal conditions do not exist on site, actual output is always less than that quoted by manufacturer.

Cost of owning and operating construction equipments

It is essential to analyze the cost of owning and operating the construction equipment before an equipment is purchased.

1. Cost of equipment including taxes, frights etc

2. Service conditions

3. Number of hours per hours it is used.

4. Resale/ scrap value after useful life of equipment.

5. Maintenance of equipment

Following costs are considered

1. Equipment cost (Investment cost for purchase )

2. Depreciation cost

3. Maintenance and repair cost

4. Operation cost.