Appropriate software can help contractors monitor performance and productivity by monitoring the business against key performance metrics.

SAINT JOHN, N.B., Canada - Lorneville Mechanical Contractors recently selected Penta Software for its unified project management, Canadian union payroll, and construction accounting.

Lorneville, which has experienced rapid growth over the last five years, is said to have grown to become Eastern Canada’s premier provider of mechanical field construction and maintenance services to the hydro, pulp-paper, petrochemical, and utilities industries.

Growth can lead to increased operations complexities. As the contractor expanded its service offerings, geographical reach, and employee base, its use of isolated, disparate management systems grew as well.

“Our rapid growth over the last five years exposed the need to consolidate operational information currently being managed in non-integrated systems,” said John Warrington, chief financial officer for Lorneville Mechanical. He stated that the new software would “bridge the gap between our project managers and the rest of our back office operations.”

CANADIAN PAYROLL

As a union contractor, the company also needed Canadian Union Payroll software that could handle its large payroll of specialty trade workers, which reached 1,600 total workers in 2009.

“The biggest benefit of this software, for us, is its ability to manage a Canadian unionized payroll environment, including our union agreements,” said Warrington. “We will also benefit from its document management, powerful business analytics capabilities, and broad ranges of functional modules for mechanical contractors, which will help us continue to expand our services into new markets.”

Diverse, geographically dispersed, and multi-trade contractors are increasingly turning to this software to improve business performance and simplify the management of complex operations.

“Lorneville Mechanical Contractors are proven leaders in mechanical field construction and maintenance services,” said Karl Koenig, Penta president. “Everyone here is excited to help Lorneville prepare for their next wave of growth with software that injects best practices into their construction accounting, payroll, and field operations. We will help them improve business performance through integration, consistent business process execution, and continual performance analysis.”

According to Koenig, specialty contractors are seeking systems that:

• Project managers can use to effectively manage and deliver multiple construction projects to their customers, meeting budget, schedule, quality, and safety standards.

• Unify the management of construction jobs, work orders, and maintenance contracts.

• Simplify multi-location, multi-company, and inter-company accounting.

• Eliminate paper and manual process inefficiencies with enterprise content management.

• Support the decentralized and mobile nature of engineering and construction by being available anywhere, anytime, through use of web, mobile, and other technologies.

• Analyze historical performance for planning, identify exceptions for action, and trend current performance for forecasting, while drilling down to critical supporting details.

Lorneville Mechanical is a professional, experienced mechanical service and engineering company specializing in the construction, maintenance, installation, and fabrication of industrial equipment.

For more information, visit www.penta.com and www.lmc-ltd.ca.

Publication date:12/27/2010