“All in the family” describes Kon Construction, a third-generation construction company based in Calgary, to a tee. “My father Andy who still maintains the title of president, started the company 51 years ago, with one Cat® machine,” said Craig Surkon, vice president and general manager of Kon Construction. “As he expanded and added more equipment his brothers Bill, Mike and Harry started working with him, and as soon as my siblings and I graduated high school we started working for him too.” Craig’s brother Ken is a foreman, Kelly is a project manager and estimator, and sister Carrie is the financial manager. Craig’s children, also work for Kon. “Andrew is the lead mechanic shop coordinator, Anthony is the health and safety officer and Ashly does payroll and accounts payable and receivable,” says Craig.
The company has always been in the earth-moving, site-grading business, working on everything from soccer fields and subdivisions to golf courses, malls, business parks and everything in between. It hasn’t always been easy, and the company has had its ups and downs, but they’ve always been fans of Cat and have a fleet full of yellow iron to prove it. “It’s hard to believe 34 years ago we only had four scrapers,” said Craig. “Today we have 32 scrapers, nine packers, 15 track-type dozers, and some smaller machines. I’ve always loved Cat. Hands down it’s the best equipment – still to this day. It’s overbuilt for the job so the equipment is incredibly durable.” Which according to Craig was really important during the downturn in the economy when they couldn’t afford to buy new machines. “We owe a lot of our success to Finning and Caterpillar,” says Craig. “We have a very tight relationship with Finning and they have provided us with some great service and support over the years.”
The company has emerged from the downturn and is embracing the next generation of both family and technology. “We knew we had fallen behind on the technology side and that we had to get into the new way of moving dirt with GPS,” said Craig. “We assessed last year’s business to identify what we needed to meet the workload for the coming year, checking hours we put on our various machines to gauge usage and by far our busiest machine was our D6K with GPS. So when a low-hour machine became available through Finning, complete with Trimble Earthworks for dozers and the latest 3D GPS, it was a no brainer. We were the first in Western Canada to have the latest and greatest in dozer technology on our D6N.”
And the machine hasn’t disappointed. “It gives us the confidence in hitting our grade, that we won’t over-fill or under-cut, that’s big in our business,” says Craig. “The accuracy allows us to move dirt once, instead of making a mistake and moving dirt twice which cuts into our profits.” The GPS and rover with the hand-held device allows Kon Construction to easily check surveyor data and do their own quantity checks. “It gives us information which gives us power,” says Craig. “And working with Finning and SITECH was easy, seamless really and the support is good. It’s just one call and we know they will be there when we need them.”
Kon’s clients love the Cat equipment with GPS too. “We have clients that call us requesting the Cat machines with GPS because it has worked so well for them and they’re confident we’ll hit grade,” says Craig. “We have their files in our GPS database so it’s just a matter of uploading the data to the machine.” These machines continue to be the busiest in Kon’s fleet and in high demand – they are booked solid for the summer. That’s good news for Kon Construction given the D6N with the Trimble Earthworks for dozers is well on its way to paying for itself. “If you do five jobs in the right application, in the $500,000 range, this machine with GPS will pay for itself,” says Craig. “And these Cat machines run for 4,000 to 5,000 hours before they need servicing.”
As Kon Construction continues to evolve, they know they need to keep pace with technology to succeed. “As we look to the future, we need steady moderate growth to be successful,” says Craig. “As we grow, we will be looking to update our scrapers and add additional GPS machines, we’d love to have a 14M grader with GPS so we can continue to be a thorn in the side of our competition.”
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