PWE Quarry Services is operating under a new name while expanding its focus on technology.
Phil Wade worked hard to build a legacy and a name for his business, Phil Wade Earthmoving.
Bryce Wade, his son, told Quarry, the company was Phil’s pride and joy, but after 30 years there has been a changing of the guard – and a changing of the name.
Bryce now leads the business called PWE Quarry Services. While he has only been in the general manager role for just over a year, he has a lifetime of experience in and around the quarrying industry.
Bryce remembers spending time travelling with his dad to watch him perform maintenance at quarries in Victoria, even washing dump trucks for pocket money.
“I started as a dump truck driver and worked my way up through the ranks, becoming general manager in 2023,” he said.
“This provided me with the understanding of each role and its impact on the overall production of the business.
Bryce’s journey to following in his father’s footsteps at PWE Quarry Services did not occur immediately, as he spent a few years studying video game development and animation at university.
While quarrying and video games share very little overlap, Bryce has been able to translate his passion for technology into building apps that support PWE Quarry Services and one of Australia’s biggest construction materials providers in Boral.
It all started after a manager at Boral’s Deer Park site wanted an app to track its truck movements, and Phil Wade knew the perfect person to do it.
“I am a bit of a nerd at heart. I build racing drones and computers and all that sort of stuff, so it lined up well,” Bryce said.
“The earlier version of it would just track what material was being moved around the site and the operators would input that information.
“When it was complete, I sat back and realised that with further development the app had the potential to track a lot more than just loads.
“I built something up for ourselves at PWE and it just grew and grew and grew and now it covers pretty much every aspect of the business.”
The app PWE Quarry Services uses is incredibly extensive for a contractor.
The Melbourne-based company can use it to track the number of hours worked by a machine and operator, the maintenance and service history of the machines, and data for invoices and finances.
Bryce has extended the technology to include live spreadsheets, which calculate fuel burn and equipment utilisation rates, so clients can see how productive PWE Quarry Services is on the job.
Clair Handley, executive assistant at PWE Quarry Services, remembered being blown away by the app when she first started at the company.
Now she could not imagine the business operating without it.
“It is a really big difference from how Phil was doing it compared to how we’re doing it,” she said. “The great thing about this app is not one minute of the guys’ time or one minute of machine usage is missed so we know what they’re doing.
“That is really important for revenue and how we track and capture the revenue. We can track it daily so that we know today whether we made money yesterday.
“It allows for so much transparency between the client and supplier. It works from both sides as it helps us and helps them.”
PWE Quarry Services offers an extensive range of skills to its clients in the quarrying industry including bulk earthworks and overburden removal, drone surveying, wet and dry plant hire, load and haul, site rehabilitation, mobile crushing and screening and labour hire.
Its usage of its internal app enables the company to accurately track key measures for itself and its clients to ensure the campaign is carried out as efficiently as possible.
With a year as the newly named PWE Quarry Services, Bryce is confident the business has a bright future as it looks to expand its services across Victoria.
“Almost all of our work is preformed within quarries, and we wanted the name change to reflect that,” Bryce said
“That’s not to say we can’t assist outside of the quarrying space.
“We want to help anyone that wants to use our equipment and our staff and what we have to offer.
“Our technology focus is our competitive edge against the market. It keeps us at the cutting-edge with some contractors still running a pen and paper set-up, and we’re light years ahead of them.
“The more you embrace the technology, the more you can use it.” •
For more information, visit pwequarryservices.com
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