After 105 years in business, one would expect to find a company entrenched in habit and set in its ways. Nothing could be further from the truth at the Borger Group of Companies. Since Henry Borger started the construction company with grit and shovels in Winnipeg in 1919, the company has moved steadily forward with the times. His son, William, expanded the company to Alberta in 1947 where he stewarded the transition from wooden pipe, shovels and trenching machines into an era of concrete pipe and cable excavators. In the 1970s, his three grandsons, lead by Robert Borger, took over. That generation oversaw the transition towards plastic pipe and hydraulic excavators and implemented a number of game-changing construction practices that are still the industry standard today. Henry’s great-grandson, Bill Borger, is the current CEO of the business, and the corporate culture of innovation is as prominent as ever.

“Our most significant innovations and improvements in the past 15 years have not been my ideas at all,” says Bill Borger, “but rather the collective ideas and innovations of the more than 400 talented team members that work here.”

All’s Fair in Innovation

For the past 15 years, the Borger Group’s safety and innovation initiatives have been driven by its annual Innovation Fair. Teams and individuals from across the organization put forward solutions to issues they’ve experienced or showcase inventive ideas that would enhance safety, efficiency or profitability. With the contest open to all employees from management to site teams, pitches cover all aspects of the work and present Borger with opportunities for improvements that the company otherwise wouldn’t consider or know were necessary.

“It’s like a kids’ science fair. Sixty or 70 people submit posters about different ways of doing business, whether it’s a different type of cylinder on a piece of equipment or a unique tool or new process or methodology. People share what they think the company could do better,” says Borger.

A Dragon’s Den-style panel chooses the top innovations that would most impact the company and awards the innovators with prizes and Borger Bucks (an incentive program from a past Innovation Fair that rewards exceptional performance with virtual currency redeemable through the online Borger Store, accessible through the Team Portal and Borger App, for everything from gear and company swag to gift cards and Apple products).

Better still, nearly all the winning innovations are incorporated into the Borger Group’s procedures and best practices. The team that had submitted the innovation or was part of implementing it earns an Innovation Coin and becomes part of the club.

“We’ve given out over 2,000 coins and it inducts the recipient into the Innovation Coin game and gives you advantages everywhere, whether it’s company draws or discounts in the Borger Store. And when I go to site and flash my coin, if enough people have their coin on them, everyone gets Borger Bucks. Plus it’s a Travel Gnome and you get awards for having the best photos on vacation,” Borger says.

The prizes are coveted, and coins and Bucks are a fun way to engage employees and reward them for being an important part of the Borger family. But more important is that the Innovation Fair and everything that follows it reinforces the culture of questioning the status quo and placing innovation at the forefront.

Questions are key, and Borger offers an example of why it’s critical to ask them, especially as a 105-year-old entity: back in 2013, no one had questioned why Borger’s machines were left running all day. It was just how things had always been done so every generation continued to do it. It turns out that equipment wasn’t turned off because, in the early days, equipment was unreliable and if it was shut off it might not restart. As technology improved over the years and machinery became more reliable, the issue disappeared but the practice remained, until the 2013 Innovation Fair, that is. From that date forward, all machines have been shut off in five minutes or less.

“Turning off machines within five minutes makes a $2-million difference every year to the bottom line. You’re not racing toward your 250- or 500-hour service, you’re not racing to the end of life of equipment that depreciates by the hour, not the year,” he says.

That willingness to question and change produces an environment where everyone in the company feels comfortable suggesting improvements, and the 2016 Innovation Fair introduced just such an idea that marinated with Borger for a few years before it reached development. In 2018, that innovation became a reality: a suite of software solutions they called Vizzn.

Introducing Vizzn

Vizzn was born out of an idea to automate the company’s dispatch and scheduling and it grew significantly once Bill Borger and Vizzn co-founder Rick Salmon of Codify Consulting sat down together to start bringing the idea to life.

A team of 14 full-time programmers began incorporating all the elements of a construction job into a comprehensive platform, and it evolved from just a dispatch and scheduling system into a total construction management tool. It brought together 16 products optimizing estimating, dispatching, safety, job-site logistics, quality control, environmental, ticketing, project scheduling and extra billings while also introducing fueling, trucking and fleet management solutions.

“You can’t manage what you can’t see” was the statement that instigated the development of the dispatch and scheduling tool. It was recognized that in order to run a profitable job, all of the upcoming events must be synchronized for optimal flow. From equipment moves to material delivery, fueling to equipment repairs, subcontractor activities to trucking events, there are a hundred ways for a job’s flow to go sideways and if it does, so goes that job’s profitability. The challenge in synchronizing these various events, however, is that they are independently booked from many different divisions and those divisions all have their own objectives. Vizzn’s dispatch and scheduling solution was designed to get everyone back and aligned toward optimizing the underlying projects.

Vizzn’s dispatch and scheduling solution automatically organizes all the company activities, regardless of division, into meaningful calendars and dashboards that are customized to each user based on their individual needs. Vizzn does this simply by digitizing the dispatch and scheduling functions that every construction company is already doing. Now, users can see and address well in advance any activities that don’t synchronize properly and nudge them back to alignment before it is too late. Vizzn has the added benefit of holding everyone on the schedule accountable for their specific contributions and eliminates a ton of redundant phone calls.

After implementing the initial dispatch and scheduling software, the Borger Group found scheduling had greatly improved but there was some work to do to ensure jobs were being built exactly as they were bid. The Vizzn team took the software to the next level with its patented interactive drawings.

“People can see themselves on the drawings on their phone based on where they’re standing, so we mark up the drawings so everyone in the field knows, based on where they are standing, the optimal construction methodology and sequencing. This ensures every job is constructed correctly every time, leaving nothing to chance.”

“Because construction is repetitive,” says Borger, “chances become probabilities and probabilities become statistics.” For example, if there is a 90 per cent chance that any job will start at the best spot, if left to chance this means that it will start at the wrong spot 10 per cent of the time. And where to start is just the first decision of the next 1,000 decisions that need to be made as it pertains to the job’s sequence and methodology; those 1,000 decisions left to chance will just result in more troubling statistics.

“Construction is a science not an art,” says Bill. “There are only a couple of ways to construct a job right but a thousand ways to do it wrong. Identifying the exact right way to construct any site requires extensive thought and deliberation. This is done during the bidding stage at Borger, and the field and office leaders collaborate at great lengths to create the perfect construction plan. Vizzn’s interactive drawings are the mechanism with which the perfect plan is communicated to the person who is ultimately constructing the site so they can do so with confidence and accuracy.”

The next natural step in the Vizzn journey was creation of a world-class safety solution. Borger identified that 90 per cent of a construction company’s safety paperwork is generated as a result of events happening, or by people activating equipment or trucks. Vizzn is conveniently already tracking all that information with its dispatch and scheduling tool. Vizzn was poised to become the first and only safety solution for heavy civil companies that would be able to identify and escalate all types of missing safety paperwork.

And that is exactly what has happened. Vizzn has become the only safety solution that can identify missing safety paperwork like equipment checklists, pre and post trips and hazard assessments. It can do this by comparing equipment status and events to the paperwork received and identify all omissions. Some divisions within Borger realized a mindblowing 300 per cent improvement in compliance overnight as a result of this tool. Also, companywide compliance rose to a staggering 100 per cent, every day, no exceptions. Heavy civil contractors trying to determine if their compliance is 100 per cent should check the volume of their daily safety paperwork; if it is less than 65 per cent of their headcount, paperwork is missing and a solution like Vizzn is needed.

Vizzn has had a powerful impact on the Borger Group of Companies. The philosophy is proving true that seemingly insignificant improvements in efficiencies, done daily and multiplied by every job, will reveal itself in staggering results over the course of a year. It’s no surprise that Vizzn was named a Top 10 Construction Tech Solutions Provider in Canada and was one of the Top Construction Technology Firms of 2023.

But Vizzn and its dedicated team aren’t done. They are now developing a world-class communication tool within the platform as well as focusing on integration with other best-in-class software. It has been so successful internally that Borger and Salmon are looking to spread the word and share the benefits.

“We’re a construction company that got into software to solve a problem, and now that software is commercially available as a subscription. The focus is primarily on U.S. sales right now, and there’s no end in sight for the development or sales of this product,” he says.

The Borger Group of Companies has been a cornerstone of the heavy construction industry for 105 years and continues to redefine the business through innovations like Vizzn. This impressive tool is poised to revolutionize the construction business, and as the team continues to focus on innovation, the best is yet to come.

Vizzn

Email: info@vizzn.ca
Toll Free: (833) 698-4996

www.vizzn.ca