Emergency Response.

Experience with negative air units and building zones

Xpertek started by doing emergency response work for institutions such as school boards and universities. Some of the emergencies involved mold remediation and type I and type II asbestos work with containment rooms. We eventually got a really good grasp of building and containing/controlling air within occupied buildings. From there we were quick to apply these experiences across all our clients from hospitals to government buildings.

Xpertek is experienced and efficient in the setup of negative air zones and building zones to:

• Maintain a safe work environment for the occupants
• Minimize the disruption of the occupants
• Minimize the visual impact of the construction

Experiences in working in occupied spaces in a professional setting

Since the creation of Xpertek, we have been working in occupied spaces as this is the reality of working with institutions. This experience has created a culture of respect for the occupants and the fact they also need to get their job done while we are present.

This experience has permitted us to come up with multiple solutions to get our job done without interfering with others. We have also grown politically savvy on when to say safety of occupants is being compromised. Xpertek is very aware of the political risks of social media with regards to safeguarding the information of our clients. Our staff are trained and adhere to a strict social media policy that prohibits them from posting about customers and/or the job site activities. From working at the official residences of the government to kindergartens and elementary schools, we have grown to understand what is reasonable and what is not in terms of working around occupants.

Xpertek will do everything in its power to do its work within the demands of the clients and its occupants in a professional and discrete manner.

Administration, technology, and transparency

After the multiple inquiries in the construction industry and the corruption issues that came about, public works was the client who required the most transparency in our billing. We adapted to create the most transparent billing system we could and applied to all our contracts.

This has become over the last few years a selling point to our clients who get audited multiple times. Rather than fight it, we just embraced it. With a medium size company, we have an administration staff of 4 people who are able to service the ‘paperwork’ needs of our institutions. The administrative staff is also responsible to handle the billing which is as important a service to us as the work itself.

Our PSA software platform is our information and planning backbone. We utilize this software for our planning of resources to deliver our services on time and on budget. We use the same software for a $500 job to a $50,000 job. The platform utilizes our technician’s iPhone from communicating work orders and change orders.

Our iPhone timesheet application permits our technicians to ‘punch in and punch out’ directly from their phones on the specific jobs they are at with a timestamp. The time cards are all GPS tracked and automatically synchronized into our project management and financial system. With the GPS in our vehicles, we are able to confirm the location of the employees and provide a history of the technician’s location.

This has become the norm for transparency for Xpertek. We have been able to support billing on audited files with our system, removing any chance of double billing or ghost billing. This has created stronger relationships with our clients who know they can ask for a specific time and place of an employee when doing their own reviews and audits. Xpertek fully understands and embraces the proper management of our provincial and federal taxes.

Speed in response / In house technicians

Over the years, we have felt the only way to properly service an institutional client for emergency response was with our own staff and not sub-contractors for most of the work. We realized this early in our growth as our institutional clients demanded the same technician be the lead resource from the start to the end of the project.

We also realized there was no ‘emergency and rebuild process in high traffic areas where the square footage is required asap. The emergency was done when the client could reuse the space… making the rebuild part of the emergency. It makes no sense to have 2 separate crews in those instances. The speed in response is much faster by having the same technician handle the emergency and the rebuild process.

We sub out very little of our work. Our staff are all required to have a vulnerable sector check and they also need to pass reliable security clearances from Public Works. In addition, all technicians must have and maintain a minimum set of skill training and qualifications as well as certain expertise. This enables us to control the quality of our work and the professionalism of our workers. With our experience in schools, all staff have learned how to react to requests from multiple individuals and to redirect the requests from the occupants. Sometimes its teachers, students, parents, doctors, nurses… the list of requests are quite diverse and our staff knows that they need to refer the question to the proper individual managing the project.

Xpertek’s staff are 90% bilingual and have the judgement to redirect the questions and requests of occupants to the proper individual (project manager, floor director, etc). Our staff all wear shirts, hats and coats that identify them as a member of Xpertek. Our contracts with school boards made this mandatory for our business 5 years ago… thus it became a standard. Our vehicles are also all identified with large decal logos.