List of Equipment Used in Construction

Construction is a large avenue and coming up with a list of equipment used in construction is a rather daunting task. However, we can come up with a general family of equipment’s used for certain tasks.

Excavating and loading: Excavating refers to digging the earth and loading refers moving the dug earth form one place to another. The machines usually used are what we call the crane shovel family. These usually have three major components

• A mounting or carrier as we call it which is used to mount the deck and transport the machine from one place to another. It helps provide stability and mobility to the machine.
• A revolving deck aka turntable that usually has the operator’s pit containing the control unit.
• Front end attachments for various functions.

The mountings are usually either crawler, truck or wheel mountings for this family of machines. A tractor with a crawler mounting and an earth moving blade becomes a bulldozer while a bucket assembly attached to the front end makes it a bucket loader. Other types of attachments include a claim shell, crane and hook, dragline, backhoe, pile driver shovel etc., to name a few.

• Compaction and Grading: Compaction refers to artificially creating higher density soil while grading refer to the final shape and elevation of the earthwork done. Different types of rollers are used to perform various tasks. Towed sheep foot roller, self-propelled tamping foot roller, self-propelled vibratory tamping foot roller grid roller and grid roller to name a few. Motor graders and grade trimmers are usually used for grading and surface finishing on most sites.


• Drilling and blasting: Rock excavation is usually done by either drilling, blasting or using both in combination. Drilling depends on a lot of variable depending on the type and quality of rocks in question. Drilling usually requires different types of drills like percussion drills, rotary drills or percussion rotary drills. Which drill to be used depends on the site where it has to be used. Blasting usually requires explosives which are exploded in a set way to get the desired results.


• Lifting and erecting: Tower cranes are used to lift loads to great heights. Horizontal boom type cranes are especially used when constructing high rises while the inclined boom is used to erect steel structures. Then come the derricks which can be either guy derricks or stiff leg derricks depending on the nature of the job site and task at hand.


• Mixing and paving: Machines used for paving include machines that dispense asphalt, cement and other bituminous materials for pavement surfaces. Concrete mixers are used for construction jobs other than paving. These mixers are used to mix a slurry of cement, sand, gravel and water for construction purposes like making roads and filling slabs in buildings etc. Truck mixers have mixers mounted on a truck, which act as the central plant for manufacturing the mixture for various jobs on the site.

Each of these family of machines occupy a major chunk in the list of equipment used in construction.