Read the article in Construction Equipment - June 2023
June 16, 2023
B2W estimating and performance tracking applications were running successfully at Ajax when the company’s maintenance team began looking for a payroll solution for mechanics. The company wanted to correlate mechanic hours to work orders and better track repairs for the fleet, which has an estimated replacement value (ERV) of $35 million. The company does road construction in Michigan and Florida. It paves commercial, residential and government developments as well as large highways and airports.
“That journey led us to B2W Maintain, and our vision expanded as we saw the potential of a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS),” says Dan Maitland, CEM, fleet manager. “We’ve moved from reactive to proactive, improved equipment reliability and cut our maintenance costs.
“We have fully demonstrated the power and capabilities of B2W Maintain,” says Maitland. The software automates the notifications for preventive maintenance, so work is done at proper intervals.
Ajax also utilizes dashboard, repair request, work order processing, and mechanic scheduling and timecard capabilities. The company relies on the application to manage parts, inventory, and purchasing and has developed custom dashboards to display Ajax-specific KPIs.
Maitland says the Maintain module allowed the fleet to expand management capabilities without purchasing additional software.
“We needed more,” Maitland says. “We wanted more dashboards than what Maintain provided. The good thing about B2W is you can work with their development team, and they can develop what you want.”
Maitland wanted to track average mean time between failures, essentially a reliability KPI. Partnering with B2W, which already contained the data within the module, Ajax was able to build out a dashboard displaying this metric. The move helped the fleet improve reliability by 120 percent. Other KPI improvements include a 50-percent decrease in unplanned maintenance work and a 41-percent reduction in emergency work orders0.
“We tapped into the experience of B2W for the implementation and included our entire staff in the process to guarantee buy-in,” Maitland says. “We’ve worked with B2W to optimize some of our processes to take advantage of the software. The dialogue has also led to some great ideas and new features added by B2W to support our specific requirements.”
B2W Inform supports equipment auditing at Ajax. Tablets and electronic forms allow operators or auditors to complete each inspection 30 minutes faster on average.
Speed is only one benefit. When an audit identifies a maintenance requirement, the right people are notified instantly. “We’re not waiting for a paper form to get to the office or shop, with a low success rate and a delay in follow-up action,” Maitland says. “We also have reporting capabilities thanks to B2W Inform.”
Part of Maintain’s CMMS capability is tracking shop backlog, which Maitland says is a measure of shop efficiency. “We can schedule off the backlog,” he says. “Drag it on the schedule, drop it, and there you go.
“If you have zero backlog, something’s not right. Either you have too many mechanics, or the field is not calling things in. They’re ignoring noises and smells and squeaks, until it really breaks down. You can see how everything is tied together.”
Maitland finds the B2W interface well suited for usability.
"One of the strongest benefits of B2W is the way they display it, actually navigating the website,” he says. “I've seen some others, and it's not necessarily as friendly on the eyes in my opinion. Step one, it's got to be friendly on the eyes. You're looking at a computer screen—some people more than others—all day. It's gotta be intuitive. They're pretty good about being intuitive with the layout. Because it's same data that anybody else can give you, so who's putting it in a meaningful layout. That’s what B2W does well.”
