Touchplan, a leader in construction management and collaboration technology, today announced its continued global expansion into Canada. After seeing success on over 1,200 jobs in the US, this expansion is a pivotal next step toward meeting the growing international demand for digitized construction collaboration and planning tools.

To Touchplan President Michael Carr, originally from Edmonton, the expansion into Canada is the logical next step for the company, and Touchplan has had a team of developers based in Edmonton for several years. “I’m very excited about this next step for the company. This is a great opportunity to get Touchplan onto projects in a new region and continue our growth in North America,” he says.

A Changing Industry

The construction industry has struggled to modernize over the past several decades, preventing contractors from achieving their maximum productivity potential. To maintain and grow their bottom lines, companies are now relying on improvements to operational efficiency.

The change has so far been gradual. Per the Canadian Construction Association’s 2019 Industry Trends Report, Canadian contractors are falling behind on the development and acquisition of cost-saving technologies that can augment the productivity of their workforce.  

Turning to Process Improvement

Now, however, process improvement strategies are quickly gaining traction among forward-looking companies in the region. Touchplan facilitates digitized pull planning, which is integral to increasing efficiency. By planning backwards and involving all the teams, the phase schedules created in Touchplan make optimal use of time and materials by thoughtfully sequencing work. Pulled plans are then transformed into detailed lookahead plans that accurately reflect how tasks will be done week over week. This kind of structured planning results in a more predictable workflow, enabling trades to arrive at sites that are ready for them because the team ahead of them completed their work on time. 

Because the entire planning process is done digitally, companies are also able to capture huge amounts of data on processes and materials that empowers project teams to measure, validate and continuously improve their building process in real time. 

“We’ve seen again and again how Touchplan enables business growth through process optimization and improved collaboration. Even small gains in efficiency across many projects make a significant difference financially, and maximizing those gains creates more profitable businesses,” says Carr. 

Improved collaboration and communication helps address another concern that’s come to the forefront—the sharing of risk. Depending on how a project is structured, risk can be unevenly distributed, resulting in lower profits for contractors, trade partners and owners. When projects are run in a more collaborative, transparent way, the level of project risk declines for everyone involved and problems that arise can be addressed sooner.

“The timing of this expansion into Canada coincides perfectly with some exciting product enhancements. We’re beta testing a mobile version of the app that we plan to release soon that will enable users to plan and collaborate even more efficiently with Touchplan,” says Dave Rolin, Touchplan’s Vice President of Customer Experience.