Ericsson’s (NASDAQ: ERIC) enterprise wireless solutions are supporting Coffrages Synergy Formwork as the company focuses on being a leader in innovation in the construction industry, while improving productivity and processes.
Through the deployment of a reliable Ericsson wireless wide area network (WAN), Synergy’s employees are better equipped to do their work, with stable access to applications and devices they need – even when they’re on a high floor of a project site.
Coffrages Synergy is a Montreal-based construction company that specializes in formwork and high-rise towers. The organization has more than 1,500 employees working on jobsites across Québec and Ontario, including Ottawa, Gatineau, Québec City, Montreal and now Halifax, N.S.
Reliable internet connectivity is imperative on construction sites in order to enable employees’ access to important applications and information. However, the vastness of job sites was impacting the ability of Synergy’s workers to stay connected. Getting wires to a new build job site is also a complex process that is subject to onsite issues and statuses. Wired networks in particular posed difficulties for Synergy, as crews frequently move between different floors during their projects.
Extending wired networks across multiple floors of high-rise projects proved not only to be time-consuming and disruptive to ongoing construction, but also very costly and highly inefficient.
To solve this issue, the company needed a wireless network that could effectively support all requirements. Synergy created portable office units called Sky Shacks that can move from floor to floor of a high-rise under construction. The units are equipped with devices including tablets, laptops and printers, so employees can easily access what they need to work without having to descend to the ground floor. Synergy selected Ericsson Cradlepoint R2100 5G and S700 4G routers to create a reliable Wi-Fi network that connects these devices and extends internet access across the floors of the high-rise project. So far, the company has rolled out 67 Sky Shacks across their project sites delivering reliable connectivity to even the highest floors.
As employees move to work on a different floor of a high-rise project, the Sky Shack follows, providing a stable network to connect to cloud applications and more.
Hughes Gagnon, Vice President of Innovation and Technology at Synergy, said, “It’s important for us to be leaders in our industry so we can better support our workers in the field, in turn providing our customers with reliable, efficient service. We collaborated closely with Ericsson to find the right technology to address our unique business requirements, and to deploy it quickly to create a unique, state-of-the-art solution. With this Ericsson wireless WAN in place, our entire work process has improved. Workers can easily connect and collaborate, increasing their efficiency, productivity and workflow. Having the connected Sky Shacks also saves time as our employees no longer need to go down to the bottom of the construction site for internet access.”
Synergy’s workflow has significantly improved since implementing the wireless WAN solution:
Jason Falovo, Vice President and General Manager, Canada at Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions, said, “The solution deployed for Synergy demonstrates how Ericsson’s leading enterprise wireless network technology can empower businesses to simplify processes, no matter the industry or environment. Organizations can easily and cost-effectively build a network to support devices and applications, enabling productivity and saving time without wires and complicated infrastructure. Synergy’s Sky Shacks are a great example of innovative thinking, and our team is proud to support the work they do both on the ground and in the sky.”
