Adam Steffens, Steffens Farming & Contracting
A recent series of field days, organised by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF), saw our General Manager Michael Munro team up with Adam Steffens from Steffens Farming & Contracting to demonstrate the power of precision landforming.
Adam, an earthworks contractor based in Pittsworth, Queensland, has been behind the reins of laser buckets for eight years.
While Adam’s bread and butter is using laser buckets for contour bank work in Central Queensland, he also handles irrigation work, tail drains, dryland and contour bank projects, and dam maintenance across the Darling Downs.
Running a primarily Case IH fleet and Horwood Bagshaw Laser Bucket, Adam trusts Trimble’s precision ag applications and hardware for his grading needs.
“I’ve used Trimble products for about four years,” says Adam. “The main two programs we use are Trimble Field Level II and WM-Drain.”
The Trimble® FieldLevel™ II system streamlines the earthworks process by handling the survey, design, and levelling. The system precisely maps the field, creates a best-fit surface design, and then automatically controls the scraper’s hydraulic valves to move the optimal amount of dirt across the field based on the design.
“FieldLevel II is great for doing in-field work,” says Adam. “It works just as well as a traditional laser but without all the problems that come with wind and range.”
Trimble’s WM-Drain® streamlines the survey, analysis, design, installation, and mapping steps of surface and subsurface drainage, enabling growers to carry out all drainage operations with one on-the-go system.
“WM-Drain excels at doing contour banks,” explains Adam. “Doing contour banks with a laser bucket used to be a time-consuming job. Before GPS and WM-Drain, we had to do our earthworks with a laser which only really works with a straight line—and I don’t know many straight contour banks. WM-Drain goes around corners really easily.”
For Adam, another benefit is the software’s ease of use.
“I can walk my team through how to use WM-Drain in about 30 minutes,” he explains. “And with Field Level II, once the design is done, you can’t go wrong.”
For his earthworks designs, Adam trusts the Vantage BMS team.
“For level or simple-grade solutions, our laser-based solutions are an economical landforming tool,” says Vantage BMS General Manager Michael Munro. “But for those needing a higher level of flexibility, GPS and Optimum Surface Landforming is the next step”.
Optimum Surface Landforming involves minimally modifying field topography by cutting and filling to a predetermined 3D surface using GPS machine control.
“We utilise the world’s leading system for farm earthworks design, OptiSurface™,” explains Michael. “The software calculates the optimised field topography to solve water management problems.
“When compared to planar laser levelling, our land forming service can save up to 80% on earthworks costs because the aim is not to totally level the surface but to optimise,” says Michael.
“We do the survey work and send it to the BMS team,” Adam continues. “They then use the OptiSurface software to design a map for me.”
“I already know which parts of the field I need earthworks for so I can handle the survey, and BMS has the experience to know the earthworks side of things plus the design side of it. So, the process works really well.”
“Since using GPS over laser, there are more hours in a machine in a day,” says Adam. “We spend more time in the machine and less out setting up. I’d say our set-up time has been cut in half.
“We originally engaged BMS as we heard from other people that they were the most reliable in terms of performance and reliability.
“Our experience working with them has been very good. I can ring their team and there isn’t much they can’t solve for me over the phone.
“The systems work great. I’d definitely recommend reaching out to Vantage BMS."
Learn more about Vantage BMS’ range of laser scrapers and landforming solutions:
