NWO Innovation Centre BTIF Project
Venshore Mechanical
Operating since 1987, Venshore Mechanical has been the region’s leading industrial mechanical contractor. Their projects include mining, pulp and paper manufacturing, waste and water treatment, power generation, and all the processes in between. Jeff Heney and Warren Moshonsky have been with the family company for a combined eight years and they gave us the breakdown of their recent changes. The longstanding business was operating by paper means only, and with the help of the NWO Innovation Center’s BTIF program, they were able to shift their day-to-day operations onto a new server, accessible remotely by project managers on the field and administration on-site.
“Our communications were inefficient,” says Heney. “Holding paper copies of all files on site meant no disaster planning, and no accessibility to on-going projects by staff on project locations.” The BTIF program was able to support a physical server along with software that all staff members were trained to use. “We operate out of Sarnia, Alberta, most of southern Ontario, Sault Ste. Marie, and some parts of the U.S. We also maintain a pipe fabrication site here in Thunder Bay. Connecting all of these locations with data sharing was essential,” says Moshonsky.
Venshore was made aware of the BTIF program by Thunder Bay’s Chamber of Commerce. They applied and were quickly connected with an IT firm that installed the physical hardware. “It’s been one and half years that these changes have been in place, and I can’t calculate how much time it has saved us,” says Moshonsky. “COVID expedited the need to get online, and with work happening five to six hours away from the office, centralizing files really helped. We’ve also been able to restore old files that would have otherwise been lost.“
The BTIF Project aims to increase innovation and efficiency in dayto-day operations of businesses through advancements in software, hardware, and data management. For information on applying, please visit nwoinnovation.ca.