Australian construction company, Taylor, first with 5G adoption

The Australian construction industry could be one of the first sectors to capture the early benefits of 5G, with Sydney-based construction company, Taylor, leading the way.

Taylor is the first documented 5G enterprise use case. Taylor is utilising Cradlepoint edge routers and Telstra 5G connectivity to implement 5G-enabled solutions in the construction sector.

Do yourself a favour and watch this video of the Taylor Case Study in action

First step was pilot site trial

In February 2020, Taylor identified a construction site where it could trial Telstra’s Enterprise Wireless solution and Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Service for Branch, delivered through a Cradlepoint E3000 5G-optimised router with a ruggedised W2005 5G Wideband Adapter built for outdoor placement.

The enhanced 5G connectivity supports a range of bandwidth and latency sensitive connected devices and applications on Taylor construction sites.   

5G delivers 20x the performance of 4G

Taylor completed its 5G trial and is now successfully using 5G for an enterprise wireless solution.

It is experiencing wide area network (WAN) speeds and coverage at 20 times the performance of its 4G connection.

“The Cradlepoint 5G solution, enabled by the Telstra 5G network, has transformed our ability to employ high-performing enterprise-grade applications, top to bottom.

“The level of shock... and level of wow in their eyes...it's as if they've just seen a rainbow for the first time. To some people, this is science fiction; to me, this is the next generation of business.

“We could have used fibre, but mobility was also important, which is why 5G is the only solution that works. All of these aforementioned devices and applications require real-time data, which is only possible with immense bandwidth, low latency, and constant uptime at the edge of the network. Thus, it’s only possible with 5G.

Christian Neyle, IT manager for Taylor Australia

New 5G-enabled use cases under experimentation

The performance the company is now getting with 5G will enable it to deploy its current 5G-ready high-tech applications, made possible by the Wireless WAN.

Watch the video above to see firsthand how Taylor is now experimenting with the following applications:

• Holographic Building Visualisation —Microsoft HoloLens is a type of mixed-reality smart glasses that Taylor employees and customers can wear on-site to render a virtual model of the building or elements of the construction process such as holographic structural steel, framing, or electrical schematics.

• Wide-Area Safety Scanning —360-degree 8K streaming and QR code scanning from wireless video cameras enables digital induction tracking, which improves risk management by automating the process of ensuring every person on site has completed safety training.

• IoT Structural Sensing —Smart sensors affixed to rebar and embedded in concrete aggregate and send data to the Cradlepoint router, then onto the cloud. This can help Taylor determine if concrete is poured correctly and track any shifting of the concrete for years to come.

• Real-Time Design Display — The Taylor team needs to be able to make changes to digital blueprints in real time and display on tablets and large monitors in the trailer. This will replace expensive physical drawings and speed the design change process. 

• Large-Site Failover — The IT team also will look to replace expensive back-up fibre with 5G as a failover link, gaining fibre-like speeds with the diversity of a wireless connection. Further diversification is possible with dual carrier connectivity.

• Building Structure AI — Following on from several high profile cases such as the failed Mascot Towers building in Sydney,  Taylor is considering how to provide reassuring IoT data and augmented reality data to customers. "So that even after the lifecycle is handed past the builder, the customer can come along with their iPad and see the structural steel behind the walls, they can see the information and actually check concrete gradings."