The Tenna team is returning home and winding down after the Tenna March Madness event marathon with lots of takeaways to share! Having attended four national association conferences, a user conference and multiple local association chapter events, Tenna attended 20 total industry events this month with association and integration partners. Let’s get straight into the recaps and takeaways.
NUCA Annual Convention
Tenna kicked off March Madness in San Antonio, Texas at the NUCA Annual Convention where we met with NUCA chapter leaders, integration partners including Caterpillar, John Deere and Coins, current customers and contractors across the United States. Tenna is a proud member of NUCA National as well as several local chapters including New Jersey, Colorado and South Florida. We are increasing our participation to include additional local chapters across the country including Washington state, Nebraska and others.
Tenna enjoyed a prime location in the exhibitor’s hall as well as the fun team building events put on by NUCA and sponsored by Caterpillar. Tenna’s Chief Business Development Officer, Russ Young, presented on equipment management and technology integration trends on Saturday, and introduced the guest speaker, Anirban Basu for an economic outlook update at the Saturday awards luncheon. Per Basu, using technology to do more with fewer resources is a continuing trend across construction businesses as the industry struggles with labor shortages.
Tenna has great respect for the accomplishments NUCA has achieved for the industry over the past year, including their influence in the passing of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and is excited to see what 2022 has in store. The team looks forward to staying involved at the local level and is glad to be part of an association that makes such a tremendous impact on issues that matter to the contractors we serve.
Foundation User Conference
The next show on Tenna’s tour was the Foundation User Conference in Orlando, Florida where they exhibited with other integration partners such as Procore. This show had a great turnout and gave the Tenna team the opportunity to discuss the existing ERP integration between Tenna and Foundation’s systems to active users.
Key topics discussed included the effects of COVID-19 on the supply chain, driving up material costs and wait times and making it harder and more expensive to buy and rent equipment; the recently passed Infrastructure Bill; and the current industry labor shortage forcing contractors to get more done with less people. The common theme being the emphasis of the importance of equipment management as a “need to have” rather than a nice to have.
Tenna looks forward to continuing to build their relationship with the Foundation team as they work together to bring efficiencies to contractors through their ERP integration.
ABC Annual Convention
The team returned to San Antonio, Texas for the ABC Annual Convention on their third stop of the tour. Tenna is a member of the ABC Tech alliance helping to educate the industry about construction technology and participated as a Keynote sponsor. Tenna exhibited in the Tech Alliance booth and participated in just about every event and fun activity put on by ABC and other sponsors.
With ABC and fellow tech alliance members continuing to go deep into safety, a key theme was leveraging safety technology to reduce injuries and accidental death across the industry. Other themes included mindfulness around mental illness and improving employee happiness on the job. Great conversations were held around the present supply chain crisis and how technology can help the industry recover from COVID-19-related disruptions.
Tenna is proud to be a member of the Tech Alliance and thought leader for ABC at the national and local levels helping to educate the industry on how to leverage construction technology. The Tenna team has several upcoming speakership and networking events with local ABC chapters across the country planned throughout the rest of the year.
AEMP Connect Annual Conference
Still in San Antonio, Texas, Tenna kicked off the AEMP Connect conference with a big bang. The team hosted the opening night celebration in the Tower of the Americas overlooking the city with good food and great networking.
On Monday morning, Russ Young, CBDO conducted the keynote presentation on elevating the equipment manager and related professions followed by Tenna CEO, Austin Conti, moderating a panel on equipment management costs with other contractors and industry leaders. With standing room only, these sessions were well received by the audience and the team looks forward to going deeper on these topics with AEMP members throughout the year.
Hot topics at this show were supply chain issues, specifically around forecasting for equipment purchases, communicating with manufacturers and struggling to find available equipment to buy or rent, as well as safety.
Tenna is excited to partner with and be a member of AEMP and respects their commitment to elevating the equipment management profession across the construction industry. The team looks forward to contributing and being a part of AEMP’s goals to educate the industry and seeing members in person again at AEMP EquipmentSHIFT in the fall.
AGC Construction Association Convention
Last, but certainly not the least of the national shows was the AGC National convention in Grapevine, Texas. Tenna had a team of seven staff their booth on the showroom floor and attend events, speakership sessions, and more to meet with partners, customers and local AGC chapter leaders. Russ Young, CBDO presented twice with Rose Hall of AXA XL to educate the AGC audience on ways that technology providers and insurance companies are partnering to reduce risk for the construction industry.
A key theme at this show was risk reduction and how that matters to contractors in terms of making money, keeping people happy, not doing duplicate work, and saving lives. If we all do this well together as an industry, accidents and tragedies happen less, more people go home safely to their families, and businesses make more money while working more productively.
Tenna looks forward to staying involved with AGC at the national and local level to help educate and advance the industry and participating in several other AGC events across the country.
March Madness Takeaways
Tenna prides itself on staying in the know and involved with the big players that are making an impact on the construction industry. The team is proud to have a voice at these events and remain a part of the industry buzz and appreciates the opportunities to hear more from contractors in attendance firsthand about what they need to help them compete and improve.
Repeated key themes across all shows, including both the national shows covered above as well as numerous local events, point to priorities around safety, reducing risk and better managing resources. Contractors are leveraging their mobile devices and incorporating more varied technology into their businesses to improve processes and efficiencies in these areas. With key challenges around supply chain and labor shortages plaguing the industry, contractors are increasingly turning to technology to help them do more with less.
These industry priorities reinforce Tenna’s total equipment management platform offering as a need to have for construction businesses owning and operating a fleet. Technology solutions like Tenna make the lives of people working in construction businesses easier in the field, shop and office, while also saving them money, delivering accurate data to make better financial and operational decisions, keeping them safe and helping to reduce our carbon footprint.
Contact Tenna to discuss how you can incorporate equipment management into your technology stack to improve safety, reduce risk, and better manage your high-value equipment resources.
