Managing Camps and Crew, The Keeyask Case Study

The Keeyask Generating Station project is a 695-megawatt (MW) hydroelectric generating station that is being developed 725km North of Winnipeg, Canada on the lower Nelson River.

With an anticipated completion of 2021, Keeyask is home to a vast workforce of 2500 tradespeople, support services and professionals that maintain the external construction aspects as well as the internal camp quality of life services. As the sole in-camp service provider, Northern Manitoba provides Sodexo an opportunity to house a workforce of over 2,500 across two camps.

Overview 

As the Keeyask Generating Station project moved into peak construction in 2017, the requirements for more visibility and communication grew within the camp setting. Housing increased as more workers arrived to focus on the all-encompassing project.  Sodexo turned to a technology-based housing platform that would streamline room allocating process, simplify reporting requirements, increase overall control, decrease resident check-in times and experience.

Challenges:

• Multiple reports are required by the client daily in a timely matter. Information had to be gathered from different systems and manually amalgamated into reports by one full time front desk clerk who was solely designated with the task.  Reporting processes were often late, causing frustration from the client.
• Onboarding process for workers traveling to the site was disjointed, slow, and cumbersome, resulting in low resident satisfaction. Wait times at check-in were increasing as camp occupancy increased, often exceeding 1-2 hours to acquire a room.
• Communication between the housekeeping and front desk departments proved to be a challenge to ensure rooms were cleaned and available for guests. Ensuring transparency to view rooms in the system and maintaining adequate room availability was a struggle. Room utilization was low and inefficient.
• Contractors wanted more control and visibility on their employee bookings. They had no ability to see and control personnel numbers on site causing site projections to vary drastically.

Solution 

Sodexo undertook an innovative route using technology to not only streamline their onsite business but to also increase the overall customer experience. INNfinity, an all-encompassing online booking tool, allowed them to:

• Amalgamate and streamline reporting tools and current software programs to ease efficiency.
• Gain insight into real-time room availability at both lodges (36 dorms and over 2300 rooms) and access up-to-date reservation status information at the click of a button.
• Make, change, or cancel reservations instantaneously and access all reporting resources.
• Create employee and sub-contractor profiles with unique identifiers required for the project while providing transparency to contractors and clients with their own login.
• Associate employee photos to guest profiles for secure access to the site, lounge, dining room and all other amenities.

Results 

• A streamlined reporting process for the client with readily available information. Reports were able to be generated and sent within minutes, to the client’s great satisfaction. This resulted in saving of 1FTE.
• Onboarding wait times drastically decreased by 70%. Consumer satisfaction increased 20% (feedback based on the Happy-or-Not Reporting tool).
• Departments can now talk to each other with great results. The housekeeping department was able to see the system from their end, allowing for productivity and reporting improvements. Management was able to address issues before they arose.  The front desk lowered the rate of last minute room clean requests.
• Increased occupancy to 98% at the main camp (2,358 rooms) by utilizing the forecasting and room optimization tools built into the INNfinity application.
• Contractors had more visibility to onsite personnel metrics as well as easy planning tools. They gained access to an online booking tool for contractors, including: flight booking, roster management and their own customized reporting. This provided a more accurate forecasting for the client and Sodexo which lead to more accurate budgeting for meals and staffing.
• Rollout of Phase One between Innfinity and the Sodexo Keeyask lodge was a success. Both teams quickly moved into Phase Two which has brought additional modules such as lounkeLINK™, CapacityTracker™, and housekeepingLINK™ as well as additional reporting.
• Sodexo and Innfinity are working together not only to provide innovative solutions but to discover untapped customer needs and find the most customer-centric solutions.