Skip to main content

Break into machine guidance without breaking the bank

January 10, 2024 Read time: 2 mins

Watch the video

You don’t get the name “The Dirt Ninja” without a serious obsession with all things heavy equipment and the technologies empowering what’s next for civil construction. For over a decade, Tom Gardocki, co-owner of New Era Excavation, has commanded hundreds of thousands of views on his YouTube channel—with a description that reads, "Anyone can run equipment, very few can operate.” Well said. Fact is, when Gardocki gets in a cab, he leverages iron with unrivaled precision, efficiency and swagger. Recently he got his hands on something that’s breaking new ground in the industry: Trimble Siteworks Machine Guidance. And when The Dirt Ninja put it to the test, it not only lived up to the hype—it became his personal recommendation to anyone looking to break into construction technology without breaking the bank.

Gardocki’s firm focuses on high-end residential and small commercial grading, excavation and utility installation in Southern New Hampshire and Northern Massachusetts. New Era Excavation invested in 2D grading systems in its earliest days, and today, most of the company’s heavy machinery is equipped with 2D and even a few full 3D systems. His latest foray into technology put him in the driver’s seat of a solution, purpose built for site and utility contractors like him. The Trimble Siteworks Machine Guidance Module is a multi-purpose solution designed to perform a range of common activities with ease, including site surveys, 3D machine guidance, in-field design and reporting.

“We’re a small company - just five people - so our success is all about efficiency on the jobsite. For me, that’s where technology comes in,” says Gardocki. Demonstrating the two-in-one workflow of Trimble Siteworks, he gathers site positioning data and then effortlessly moves the receiver and display from the survey pole into the cab to measure grade and start digging. This allows him to do the work of two people, while completing it safely and without delay.

“Over the course of the year,” Gardocki explains, “(with Trimble Siteworks) we can get more jobs done. Even if we got only one more job done, that could make all the difference and have the system pay for itself.” 

Watch the video

Content produced in association with Trimble 

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Plain sailing for Caterpillar’s PM 300 series
    February 22, 2019
    Caterpillar’s revamped small cold planers have upped the stakes in the urban refurbishing market. World Highways deputy editor David Arminas recently caught up with A.J. Lee, global segment manager, on Spain’s Costa del Sol
  • It's all about profit, people and the planet
    February 18, 2025
    Sit in on our latest roundtable discussion on sustainability in the construction and aggregates industries, brought to you by Global Highways and Aggregates Business. AB editor Guy Woodford has been talking to two world-class experts: Jeremy Harsin from Cummins and Michael Gomes from Topcon. Make your planning, your workflows, your contract tenders, and your sites as sustainable as possible. “Sustainability is really about profit, people and the planet,” say our experts. “Being able to drive that is the work that matters.”
  • HxGN Live 2014 attracts record event numbers
    August 28, 2014
    Attracting an HxGN Live event record-breaking 3,500 attendees, HxGN Live 2014 held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, US, June 2-5 showcased exciting new and in-demand design, measurement and visualisation technologies for industries including road construction and mining. Themed Great Stories Start Here, this year’s event also included a variety of exclusive presentations by industry experts, hands-on training, inspiring keynotes and international networking opportunities. Guy Woodford reports In
  • Digital Construction Works develops new fully-integrated highway design and construction workflow tool
    September 7, 2022
    DCW’s latest software allows highway professionals to get new “insights” and “save valuable time” by analysing and visualising project data in a far more intelligent way