KELOWNA – If you work anywhere in Western Canada, and you arrive at your job one snowy morning this winter to find your parking lot clean, and your walkways ice-free and safe – you could very well have 5 Point Operations Inc. to thank for it.
Serving hundreds of clients, from federal and provincial government agencies to private corporations, 5 Point Operations delivers a vast array of site management and property maintenance services for customers from Saskatchewan to the Pacific coast and up into the Yukon.
“We really started off primarily as a snow removal company, which remains a large part of the services we offer our growing number of clients, now just over 75 companies,” explained Gord J. Oliver, one of the firm’s five founding partners (hence the ‘5 Point’ in the company’s name).
“We carry out our own operations here in the Okanagan Valley, while maintaining offices and internal operations in both Edmonton and Calgary, with direct company employees in all three locations.”
Where it’s impractical for 5 Point to open and operate its own offices, the company establishes partnerships with local firms to provide a complete range of site maintenance services, under the 5 Point banner and employing the same environmentally friendly products, state of the art technologies and innovative billing and tracking systems that 5 Point Operations uses wherever it works.
“The partnerships we establish, and we currently work with approximately 200 different local companies, are typically the local companies that can‘t afford to wait 90 days to get paid, which can be typical with the sort of government or large corporate contracts that we take on. We pay our local partners much quicker than the frequent 90 days it takes to get paid from our clients,” Oliver explained.
“These are the small business owners who need to pay the mortgage or put food on the table who simply can’t afford to wait. They are our representatives, our ambassadors across the west, and we want to see them succeed and prosper while working with us. They may not be working exclusively with us all of the time, but when they are we want to treat them fairly.”
The 5 Point Operations business model has proven so successful the company was recently ranked 12th out of the top 50 fastest growing start-up companies in Canada by Canadian Business Magazine. Only founded in 2013, 5 Point Operations recorded unprecedented growth during the past 12 months – solid proof of the wisdom of its operational systems.
“5 Point Operations Inc. is honored to be on the Start-up 50 ranking. The strength of our business is in our people. We know that what we have accomplished in a few short years in business is just the beginning for our group.”
“Since last year’s review, 5 Point has continued to grow at an exponential rate. Our common goal for next year is to make the Top 10,” Oliver explained in a recent media release.
5 Point Operations partners include (l to r) Terry Jackson, Jason Ritchie, Gord J Oliver, Gordon H. Oliver & Kevin Bosch.
In addition to Gord J. Oliver the other four founding partners of 5 Point Operations include Kevin Bosch, Jason Ritchie, Terry Jackson and Gordon H. Oliver – a multi-talented group of business owners with decades of collective experience between them. It’s a group that has pooled their skills and experience to make 5 Point the property maintenance powerhouse it has become.
Five Point Operations provides a range of services, from snow removal to ongoing building and grounds maintenance.While providing property maintenance and snow removal services represents much of the workload for 5 Point Operations, the company also provides a number of different inter-related services, including facility and project management duties, landscaping design and construction, a full gamut of asphalt and concrete services, consulting services as well as functioning as a general contractor.
“We don’t build the buildings themselves, but look after all of aspects of the site the building has been constructed on,” he explained.
“While many of the partners have been involved in construction in the past, and that is something we could branch into in the future, we haven’t built any buildings at 5 Point, at least not yet.”
To look after hundreds of companies and individuals all across the West, to successfully satisfy the needs of clients as diverse as corporations, municipalities and government agencies, while orchestrating assignments and delivering timely billing requires a logistical system the envy of a modern army.
5 Point Operations, working in concert with Edmonton-based information management firm Genicoll Inc., has created a unique and proprietary Smartphone accessible application called ‘5 Pop’ that has helped to facilitate the company’s phenomenal growth.
“We knew from our previous experience that we were going to need a system to keep track of everything, so we began working with Genicoll very early in our corporate life to develop this system. Our slogan has always been: ‘Confident in Management’ – and this system allow us to deliver to our clients, from BGIS across Western Canada to the Alberta Government to Home Depot and many others, confidence from knowing that by working with us they will have professional grade data and real time reporting on every job we do for them,” Oliver said.
“We serve our clients right by not merely managing the people we have in the field, whether our own staff or our local partners, but also by being equipped to manage the data that they require. That’s where we have a significant strategic advantage over other providers of these services. Our custom application streamlines the invoicing and billing process – making data accessible whenever they need it.”
5 Point Operations has, in a very short term, become one of Western Canada’s leading, multi-faceted property management firms. From its environmentally-friendly snow removal liquids (provided through a partnership with Premium Canada) to its state of the art data distribution system, to its expanding network of safety-focused COR™ (Certificate of Recognition) approved regional partners, 5 Point Operations looks forward to continuing its meteoric growth, while providing the best in year round site maintenance services.
“Our organizational culture is based on the principle that the old school way of doing business with respect to trust, honesty, and ethics can be integrated with the new focus on safety, social impact, innovative growth and creative problem solving,” Oliver said.
“We’re always looking for great human capital, finding the right people who share our vision for the future. That’s always going to be a key part of any future we envision.”