News Release
Canadian Heavy Construction Contractor Kitsaki Projects Adopts B2W Software to Improve Estimating, Field Tracking, and Link Between the Two
Portsmouth, NH – May 15, 2017 – B2W Software, a leading provider of heavy civil construction management software, today announced that Kitsaki Projects has implemented the B2W Estimate and Track solutions in tandem to establish faster, standardized estimating processes and gain more timely insight into field performance.
Kitsaki Projects has close to 200 employees and focuses primarily on utility-based construction projects in Saskatchewan, Canada. The company is Aboriginally-owned and operated under the Kitsaki Management Limited Partnership Group of Companies.
“B2W Estimate and Track have had a profound impact on our company,” says Benson Thoudsanikone, general manager of Kitsaki Projects. He says estimating and field tracking go hand in hand, and it made perfect sense to implement both of the B2W elements as a unified solution. Previously, with independent systems, managers at Kitsaki struggled to pinpoint why some jobs were unsuccessful.
“We couldn’t determine whether we were underbidding in the first place, or just not performing as effectively as we projected in the field,” Thoudsanikone explains. “The reality was it was a bit of both. The bidding process was inconsistent from job to job, and we couldn’t really translate bids to the field to make it clear to the foremen and their teams what we bid on and what was expected. The link between Estimate and Track automates that connection.”
Thoudsanikone says economic challenges in the Canadian market are forcing contractors to focus on improving efficiency and productivity through specialized software. Estimators at Kitsaki previously relied on Excel spreadsheets to produce bids, but the process was long and prone to persistent errors.
“What used to take us four days to bid, now takes us less than a few hours with B2W Estimate,” says Thoudsanikone. “If you have errors and you underestimate, you’re behind the eight-ball from the beginning. There’s no way to recover, no matter how efficient or productive you are in the field.”
The team at Kitsaki also previously established its own paper-based process to get better and consistent visibility into productivity, labor and materials in the field. That solution produced incremental improvements, but it quickly became apparent that it was too slow and cumbersome to keep the company competitive over the long-term.
“We were getting data from the field two weeks and sometimes four weeks after the fact, and it’s too late to make project management decisions by then,” recalls Thoudsanikone. With B2W Track, field crews at Kitsaki can complete daily field logs and enter labor hours electronically with instant, accessible data.
The Kitsaki Management Limited Partnership Group manages economic development activities for the Lac La Ronge Indian Band and includes businesses operating in the transportation, construction, insurance, environmental, hospitality, mining and agriculture sectors.
About B2W Software
Headquartered in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, B2W Software empowers and inspires heavy civil construction companies to win more work and complete it more profitably. The company’s ONE Platform connects resources, workflows and data and includes advanced, unified elements to manage estimating, scheduling, field tracking, equipment maintenance, data capture and business intelligence.
Benson Thoudsanikone, general manager, Kitsaki Projects
