Equipment World recently attended Caterpillar’s 2026 Construction and Technology Days event in Edwards, Illinois, and heard how contractors are making technology work for them.
From September 28 to 30, Caterpillar showed customers the company’s latest equipment releases, hosted panel discussions surrounding key industry issues and demonstrated its newest tech offerings, including autonomy and artificial intelligence.
Day 2 of the Cat Tech Days 2026 event included a customer panel, where contractors from across the country discussed their operations, their Caterpillar equipment and technology and how they’re addressing common industry hurdles.
Investing in Training, Hiring for Attitude
The conversation inevitably turned to the construction industry’s ever-present challenge of hiring equipment operators. Andrew Hacker, a heavy equipment coach at Kwest Group, told the audience the company had addressed the problem by investing in its own training facilities.
After hiring their first full-time trainer in 2023 (they have five today), the company built two fully dedicated training facilities with Caterpillar fleets. And with those facilities came a new hiring mindset: find the fight attitude, not the right skillset.
“So, we decided that the best way to combat the skilled labor shortage was to, number one, we gotta make sure we're getting the full capacity of the people that we already have,” he said. “So,after that, we've opted to start what we call a "bench program," and in that program, we hire attitude. We don’t hire for skill, because we can train the skill. We can’t train the attitude.”
Powered byOnce those folks are hired, trainers work with new employees for 90 days or more to learn using Caterpillar technology like 2D and 3D grade control.
Safety Tech Improves Employee Confidence
Panelists discussed how implementing safety-oriented technology on the jobsite — in this case, Caterpillar’s Detect — not only keeps workers from immediate physical harm on the jobsite but can foster an atmosphere of confidence when employees know there are additional safeguards in place.
Jeremy Pierce, director of mining at Nutrien, said their company was using Caterpillar Detect to identify trends in how and when workers were butting against the safety protocols set by the obstacle-detection-and-alarm system and turning those incidents into training and counseling opportunities. Analyzing this data, he said, can also lead the company to make changes to the jobsites and environments to improve safety and make it easier for employees to do their job.
“It has really helped how we engage with our workforce to make it a two-way street on communication,” he said. “Particularly around congested areas so they can see what's around them, they can have comfort knowing that the alarm system's going to go off.
“[This technology] gives them more confidence in their operation, particularly knowing that there’s another line of defense around blind spots, another line of defense around how they're interacting with folks and to make them overall confident and safe.”
Closer Dealer, OEM Relationships Pay Dividends
Panelists also discussed the importance of networking with dealerships and manufacturers to get the most out of their technology investments.
Hacker also told the audience that their dealer, Ohio Cat, introduced the company to Caterpillar’s Edwards training facility to get them the resources they needed to form their own training program.
He prefaces the story by saying, “You can have all the technology in the world, but if you don't know how to use it correctly, it's not worth anything.”
“So, for the dealers in the room and the companies that want to do this and wanna start the training and want to use the technology: the people in the field really need that person within that company that is sort of a subject-matter expert,” Hacker said. “Get those people if you can out here to Edwards. We’ve had a great relationship with Ohio Cat, and getting out here, it's changed the course of our company.”
