On May 19, 2022, we went to meet Mustapha El Kandouly and Yoan Moussu, head of job site and assistant site manager at Sogea Hydraulique Provence. Kraafteurs for more than a year, they tell us about their experience.
The agency, based in Hyères, specializes in wastewater and drinking water works. It covers the Var region (83) and is attached to Sogea Hydraulique Provence, and since 2021 to the new Vinci Construction Division, which has over 120,000 employees.
Today, Mustapha and Yoan welcome us on a job site sanitation project in La Valette du Var, commissioned by the Toulon metropolis. "The challenge of this job site is the conditions" begins Mustapha. "We don't have enough room for the trucks and the access is difficult because of the slope of +25%". A usual situation for the public works company that often works in the mountains, where the ground is rocky and where access must be cleared in the morning and evening for local residents who take the road to work. "We start the job site at 9am on site with all the equipment and we have to free the access at 5pm, so that the residents can get off" explains Mustapha.
On this type of job site, it is important to explain to the client the difficulties encountered in real time, to anticipate any overruns in terms of time and budget. "We had the trencher come in last week to open up 300 meters of rock," says Mustapha. The nature of the soil cannot be 100% anticipated at the time of the costing, hence the importance of good communication with the project owner. "The clients can't monitor your work every day, they come by once a week and (...) they have several sites to manage," says Yoan. So we rely on paper reports and photos to explain our progress. "But it's a lot of paperwork and photos in my personal directory (...) and then we have to take time at the end of the day or on lunch break to make reports, and we don't remember precisely all the conditions of the moment" adds Mustapha.
"With Kraaft, we have all the information at any given moment, we send them all directly, it's immediate. Moreover, it is indexed by job site like a file cabinet: each photo goes to the right job site and is sent directly to the work manager. It allows me to stay focused on the field (...) and to save 30 to 40 minutes per day" begins Mustapha.
The principle is simple. For each job site, Yoan creates a conversation on the mobile application. As easy to use as WhatsApp, Kraaft allows to centralize in the news feed of job site all the progress pictures, stop point forms, security greetings and milestones validation (opening, pipe laying, earthworks, finishing).
"With this I can make very detailed and precise reports (...) instead of calling the head of job site I look at Kraaft and I have all the right information (...) when you have several sites it's even better you don't forget anything, it's really comfortable" testifies Yoan.
"It's a good application (...) we are linked with the works manager and it's as if he was on the job site every day." (Mustapha El Kandouly, manager of job site at Sogea Hydraulique Provence)
Kraaft offers customized report formats for the enterprise: in a few clicks, the history of job site is shared in Word, PDF or Excel format to the customer. And since April 2022, it is possible to add the MOA directly on the application so that it has direct access to the events shared with it.
"I use the [mobile] application 5 to 6 times a day to put a photo with a comment (...) the work manager who is behind his desk receives the photos directly [on the web application] and if he is available he can send the report directly to the client who sometimes receives it within half an hour," explains Mustapha. Thanks to the geo-localized photos, "they know exactly when the major stages of the job site project took place (the trencher, the vacuum cleaner, the machines), when there were constraints and why".
"The client was in favor of the reports, it convinced him, he is very reassured to see that everything is transcribed. If ever there is a need to find information that happened a week or a month ago, we will have it, so he is happy" underlines Yoan. Exploring the photos on the satellite map or the chronological gallery allows him to easily explore the life of job site. "Everything is better ordered (...) it saves me between 45min and 1h per day" he concludes.
"It's much easier with Kraaft today, I work more healthily." (Yoan Moussu, assistant works manager at Sogea Hydraulique Provence)
✅ Easy company-wide membership in a WhatsApp-like field tool.
✅ Time saving on the generation of geo-located and time-stamped photo reports
✅ More responsive and transparent collaboration with project owner/manager
✅ Better traceability of hazards during job site
✅ Integration with enterprise tools (Kizeo Forms, SharePoint)
