M.J. Dixon Construction Limited

M.J. Dixon Construction Limited was established in 1986 in Canada and has experienced steady growth, while attaining a reputation for quality of work and service. They are a general contractor, focusing on municipal, healthcare and educational facilities. They provide a complete General Contracting and Construction Management service.

MJ Dixon is a member of the Ontario General Contractors Association and are CORTM certified (Certificate of Recognition) with the Infrastructure Health and Safety Association. In addition, they are certified with the League of Champions which highlights the culture of safety within their practice and industry.

Karla Murray, Proposal Manager at MJ Dixon, responds to projects with both public organisations and local government, typically working on these projects at the prequalification stage. She outlines the email challenges MJ Dixon faced and how Mail Manager solved it.

Part of the company’s process involves working with complex and very regimented entities with various checks, balances, processes and intricacies which can vary according to the project and client.

They have been working with clients such as the City of Toronto for over 30 years. Whether through a prequalification or open tender, MJ Dixon still needs to pass the City’s strenuous evaluation. Not having all the relevant information properly organised would make this process more strenuous and time consuming.

Litigations are prominent within the construction industry with many businesses exercising their rights to ensure prompt payment. For MJ Dixon, a situation like this means having to produce various documents and involve other parties in communications. As they receive over 10,000 emails a year, Ali Farahzadi, Senior Project Manager, highlighted that the lack of categories and organised titles made searches extremely difficult and was one of the main issues for the company.

Ali said: “When having disputes or things that are going back for verification, you need to have easy accessibility of all information to avoid any problems. Especially in construction, all documents need to be kept for 7 years. That’s how long we need to retrieve information, and it is complicated to store and search with that amount of emails without a proper email management tool.”

Implementing Mail Manager has allowed MJ Dixon to ensure consistency across the company, making sure all files are accessible to employees as everyone is prompted to save information in the same way, in one system. That organisation and accessibility has also helped to save time, as they no longer need to contact colleagues or wait for a response to access needed information.

Karla said: “This morning, I was looking for a document that I had uploaded for a client and I couldn’t remember when it was or what project it was in, but because of Mail Manager’s great searching feature, I was able to find it rather quickly even without much information, in an efficient way.”

With an email management solution, there is no concern when it comes to finding an email. Ali told us: “If you can’t find an email to back it up when you have a litigation, it could mean losing a case which means thousands, if not millions of dollars on the table, so that’s crucial.”

Mail Manager also helps daily during external or internal meetings and replying to emails, for example, to quickly find information and tackle questions as they come. Ali added: “Mail Manager changed the whole game for us. Not only can we archive and categorise, but we can also retrieve our original emails out of Outlook, giving you unlimited storage, instead of often deleting and going through your emails so it doesn’t reach the limit storage.”

Karla said that not only does she recommend adopting Mail Manager but summarized the software as efficient, practical and a time saver.

Image: Ontario Association of Architects Headquarters – Retrofit and Refresh – Toronto, ON