GoContractor’s Toronto Breakfast Briefing was held in the beautiful surroundings of Canoe Restaurant, high up in the 54th story of the TD Centre in downtown Toronto. The event focused on the trending Mom and Pop business and the challenges facing heavy industry and the possibilities available to those who choose to innovate, including implementing an online contractor management system. The briefing concluded with an interview with Aaron Olsen, Environment, Health and Safety Manager at Industrial Scaffold Services, one of the biggest scaffold companies in British Columbia.
Kevin Mathiasz, GoContractor’s Business Development Manager for Canada, asked the questions, as Olsen explained the company’s decision to change how they conducted their contractor management. In front of an audience of heavy industry professionals, Olsen outlined the challenges Industrial Scaffolding Services faced implementing the GoContractor platform, as well as the benefits they enjoyed once it was in place, including reducing cost, saving time and ensuring a high level of training across their operations.
Industrial Scaffold Services is a strictly industrial operation that focuses on scaffolding and some related services. They are responsible for scaffolding operations in all the oil and gas fields in British Columbia and Fort McMurray, about half the pulp mills in British Columbia, as well as a major marine operation that includes all the Canadian submarines and navy vessels. They work purely in heavy industry and have about 20 full-time employees, with another 400 contractors on the payroll.
According to Olsen, customers often have a negative view of scaffolding companies. They see the completion of a project but don’t see, or understand, the value of scaffolding. They pay a substantial sum of money for something, the results of which are not clearly visible. For Olsen, the incentive is to provide the best and most efficient service possible, illustrating how scaffolding is a key component in creating a smooth process in heavy industrial projects.
The biggest challenge Industrial Scaffold Services faces with managing its workforce is ensuring that all their workers have the proper training they need to do their job to a high level. The vast majority of the company’s workforce are union-based contractors, with the training they receive varying due to factors outside of the company’s control, such as which province the worker lives in. Industrial Scaffold Services couldn’t guarantee that all their workers were equally trained so Olsen set out to find a solution to standardize their training across Canada.
Once Olsen had identified a gap in how they managed their contractors, it was relatively straightforward to get internal decision makers onboard. He sat down with the company owners and explained what the problem was and how they could fix it to satisfy any issues about diligence and liability. The owners asked about cost but Olsen assured them that by switching to a technological solution to manage their contractors, they would end up saving money.
It was a 10 minute conversation and that was pretty much the extent of it for me.”
Mom and Pop: Implementing Initafy’s Online Contractor Management System
Olsen settled on GoContractor, after investigating various online contractor management systems. With help from GoContractor, Industrial Scaffold Services put together a training programme that covers everything workers should know before arriving at one of their sites. “We have our own training that goes above and beyond the union training to make sure we’re getting the information we need to get out to our employees,” said Olsen. They also include training for supervisors who can give workers practical training, specific to a worker’s job and role, when they arrive on site.
Industrial Scaffold Services have been using GoContractor for about 18 months. Olsen admits that implementing a new technology came with some initial pain. They’re a self-described ‘Mom and Pop’ operation, with a number of the company’s workers being with them for 30 years. There was some early reluctance among some workers to switching to a new system for their orientations but once they discovered how easy the system was, and how much time they were saving, they were convinced. `
They got through these initial obstacles though and Industrial Scaffold Services now have 27 courses on the GoContractor online contractor management system, as well as online training for their supervisors. The process became much easier once GoContractor opened their Canadian office and had a physical presence in the country, something they didn’t have when Industrial Scaffold Services first started using GoContractor. Olsen said that administration costs was one of the biggest areas of savings with paperwork to do with managing contractors a thing of the past.
Workers used to spend the first 2 hours of their day doing orientations, so that by the time they finished it was midway through the morning. Now, they do training before arriving on site, so they only spend half an hour getting practical training at the start of their day.
The time savings have been a big positive for the Mom and Pop business of Industrial Scaffold Services, and have helped convince any workers who were initially unsure about implementing technology. GoContractor has allowed standardization of training across the company’s operations. Industrial Scaffold Services can now feel secure in the knowledge that all their workers, no matter what province of Canada they’re in, will receive the same high level of training they need to do their job productively and safely.
