On March 22, 2022, we went to meet Julien Bigot and Maxime Janvier, works manager and team leader at Bouygues Energies & Services in Estillac city. Kraafters for more than a year, they tell us about their experience.
Bouygues Energies & Services (BYES), is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bouygues Construction group. An expert in energy performance and services, the Energy Division will become the Bouygues Group's leading business after the acquisition of Equans, announced in November 2021.
"Today we are installing traffic lights in the commune of Casteljalou, with a road and two lights on each side, and lights for the emergency exit of the fire station," explains Julien. The job site, ordered from the territory of Energie du Lot et Garonne, is executed by the BYES agency, which is dependent on the market.
"On this type of site, the issues can be related to earthworks, depending on the existing gas and electricity networks, and also the delivery times, which are sometimes complicated with the current situation (war in Ukraine, editor's note)," explains Julien. For this activity, the work center operates with two teams, one for earthworks and another for electrical connections, and communicate is not always easy.
"Kraaft just happened. As the application is made for operators, it was very simple to deploy to team leaders" Julien immediately points out. "Before Kraaft, we tried another application, but it wasn't as efficient" adds Maxime. In only a few days, all the teams of the agency have taken the reflex. "We use Kraaft on all our sites, and every day, as soon as there is something on a job site.
"The benefit is to centralize all the information from a job site in a single conversation, and to mix the field and office part in a single application," adds Julien. The principle of the mobile application, whose interface is close to WhatsApp, is simple: the work supervisors create a conversation by job site and the team leaders upload photos, voice notes or videos on the project progress. The foreman, from the computer interface, can add milestones to be validated, generate reports and share certain information with the client directly from the Kraaft platform.
"Before Kraaft, it was more complicated because we used to send photos by SMS , or by email, and we would lose the photos. It was complicated to find them" continues Julien. "Before Kraaft, we only used our phone and photo transfer" adds Maxime. "The strong point is the fluidity (...) to be able to categorize the sites (...) with the photos and the GPS coordinates". Since each message sent via the application is time-stamped and geo-located.
Another advantage of Kraaft is the real time monitoring provided by the news feed. As easy to use as WhatsApp or Facebook, the application facilitates the passing of instructions between teams, or with temporary workers. "When a team comes to do the earthworks, we have access to what they have done (photo, follow-up) before we even arrive on site. So we know the job site before we start" explains Maxime.
"On a daily basis, it changes the way we work because we can see the progress all along without having to travel. And we can easily find the photos we need to show to the client", says Julien. "It doesn't mean that we don't go to the construction site anymore, but it allows us to be much more informed about what's going on" he adds.
And for those who want to communicate with their customer directly from Kraaft, you can create shared conversations with your customer, to choose what information you share with them. To learn more about this administrator-only feature, watch our tutorial on Youtube.
"Today we have a news feed, everything is listed by job site, it's much easier." (Julien Bigot, works manager at Bouygues Energies & Services Estillac)
"The energy syndicat knows we use Kraaft and we also use it to send photo reports of the work" underlines Julien. Thanks to the customized forms and reports module, Julien can generate Word or Excel reports on his client's format in one click.
"When we needed to get paid for extra work, we had to justify a photo, and when we couldn't find it, it was hard to get paid" explains Julien. "Kraaft, allows us to better invoice our sites because we have more details to show to the client directly". And this also contributes to greater transparency for the client, who must validate and understand the delays sometimes encountered in the field.
"It allows my managers to follow the job site remotely and to better report problems to the customer" adds Maxime. For example, "the difficulties we may have when pulling a cable or when a mast is damaged (...) or if the material does not match the terrain".
In the end, more transparency, better monitoring, and a fair valuation of your work.
"The strong point is really the fluidity of the app" (Maxime Janvier, team leader at Bouygues Energies & Services Estillac)
✅ Easy to handle by site managers
✅ Real-time monitoring job site and difficulties
✅ More transparency and better valuation of the hazards of job site
✅ Time saving on the generation of geo-located and time-stamped photo reports
✅ Less unnecessary travel in the field
