Mezintel Inc. facilitates high-volume construction testing labs with cost-effective software Canadian Design and Construction Report special feature Mezintel Inc.'s Breaktest 3.0 serves high-volume (about 5,000 tests per year) construction materials test- ing labs, with many people to organize and a diversity of clients. “Let’s say you have bid on a condo project, says Mini- tel owner Anthony Lukindo. “You need to be available over the course of a year to test concrete whenever it is poured. Time must be spent scheduling dispatch to send a qualified tech to collect the sample. The sample has to get to the lab, be scheduled for testing, results compared against ex- pected results that are based on specifica- tions, the information collected, organized and sent to the client.” Lukindo says Breaktest helps to accom- plish all of this. Mezintel started in 2005 as a general consulting business, evolving to specialize in niche testing markets, including the con- struction/concrete industries. The software is sold through subscrip- tion. Mintel installs it and provides training and upgrades. “We wanted to make the program easy to use and op- erate but also risk free to test to determine its suitability for a materials lab business operations,” he says. Billing is determined monthly from the actual test-vol- ume for a preceding month, where each test report is billed at the rate of a postage stamp. This means com- panies with lower volumes will pay a lower fee than those who do more reporting. The program’s sign-in feature log reports changes, maintains a trail of chain of custody about who did the changes, can put reports on hold, and via a dashboard view will show final- ized or reopened reports. Breaktest also meets current industry standards for all testing requirements. “The Breaktest software bene- fits companies in many ways,” says Lukindo. “By eliminating a paper trail it eliminates distractions from paper shuffling, along with inter-office traffic between engineers and data entry so the engineers can do more billable work. Its auto pass/fail checking re- duces human error and its automated reporting process eliminates omis- sions in reports getting to their in- tended audience.” Lunkindo says: “The engineers in geotechnical labs engage in design and consulting tasks for slope stability, foundation, and structural design that command high billable hourly rates. BreakTest significantly frees up the engineers’ time to allocate to those premium design and consulting tasks helping to generate more revenue.” Lukindo says his work developing software for niche markets led him to recognize much of what he had been developing fit greater industry specific markets. “I began packaging what I was doing into products and got into directional drilling and serving geotechnical materials testing labs.” For more information, visit mezintel.com. The Canadian Design and Construction Report — Spring 2014 – 33