Kahua's Enabling Innovation: Igniting a Future Beyond the Status Quo

Last week, Kahua hosted its Enabling Innovation 2023 conference, a time we meet with customers and partners to take a deeper look into our technology, obtain valuable feedback and ideas, get inspired by one another, train on our software and continue to build relationships. 

As I told the largest group we’d ever assembled, our company – our product – is not about the status quo. We are not satisfied with being good enough or even better than our competition (which, by the way, we are!). We strive every day to continuously improve our design and construction project management software so that our partners and customers aren’t just content with what we do, they will become raving fans of it. 

It is not sufficient to just be better than other software vendors in this industry. That is not the measurement of success that we ascribe to. The bar Kahua sets cannot be relative to our competition. Fundamentally, we must operate and deliver at a level that is far superior to other vendors.  

I did a little poll from the stage where I asked the audience how far along they thought we were in Kahua’s development of its Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution: 50%? 60%? 70%? 80%? Or something else? 

The answer was “none of the above.” At my estimate, we are no more than 10% of the way in making Kahua what it will become. We will accomplish as much in the next two or three years as we did in our first 14 years! 

While we expand and refine, we will remain who we are – and have been from Kahua’s beginning – the only PaaS that allows you to continuously improve your applications, business processes and workflows. With Kahua, you can minimize time-to-value and operate at peak efficiency today with the agility to quickly adapt and innovate as changes and requirements in the industry dictate tomorrow. 

Here are the pain points we work to mitigate every day with our solution: project stakeholders are using many different solutions, solutions that do not integrate or share information; data is siloed across project stakeholders, and lack of interoperability impacts collaboration; owners often have limited information, only able to see part of the picture, an imbalance of information. 

We do this by enabling third parties – our partners and customers – to develop applications and business processes to enhance existing functionality. One vendor cannot change the industry, but a community – specifically, the Kahua community of customers and partners – can. 

No one else is doing this. No one else can. 

Speaking of our customers and partners, we had the chance to honor some of them at Enabling Innovation. We truly could not do the groundbreaking things in construction planning software without them. 

Partner of the Year Award, OnIndus: OnIndus is dedicated to getting its team certified in our low-code app-building training and has launched a public Kahua application for wider distribution, including a rapid implementation process. 

Delivery Excellence Award, Procon Consulting: Procon has been involved in some of our largest and most complex federal implementations, driving adoption across diverse and dispersed user groups across the country. This Kahua partner is a thought leader in the federal PMIS space and helped us deliver our first-ever Federal Symposium in Washington DC this April.  

Customer Excellence Award, Jacobs: Jacobs has steadfastly worked with Kahua Professional Services and our Product Management teams to configure and deploy Kahua to meet the needs of many complex programs. Jacobs has replaced a legacy system and successfully implemented Kahua on over 10 major complex programs, including Fort Bend Independent Schools, Fulton County Schools and the Tampa International Airport. The Jacobs team continues to invest in building Kahua expertise, pushing Kahua to innovate with functionality enhancements and with refinements to our partner program.   

Customer Excellence Award, San Juan (California) Unified School District: This customer has consistently gone above and beyond to enhance Kahua not only for themselves but for the entire K-12 industry. The San Juan staff using Kahua’s software has shown dedication to partnering and innovating with us to make the Kahua for K-12 packaged solution the industry standard for school districts.  Cherie Chenoweth who works in facilities management for San Juan is also supporting other districts in California and across the nation as they consider and adopt Kahua technology. 

Building a Better Future Award, Cari Stieglitz:  This award celebrates the extraordinary achievements of women in construction who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, resilience and innovation in driving positive change and empowering women in our industry to reach their full potential. Campos Sage President Cari Stieglitz has accomplished herself in those ways and many more. 

Other nominees in this category were Niti Anand, Program Manager, Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Construction and Facilities Management; Michelle Glazier, Byrne Software Associate Vice President; and Cherie Chenoweth, Coordinator Facilities Business, San Juan Unified School District. 

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To sum up the Enabling Innovation week, we sought to imagine, inspire and ignite ourselves and the entire Kahua community of customers and partners. And we were successful. Hopefully, next year, you can join us, too. 

Take a look at our Enabling Innovation 2023 wrap-up video to see what our week looked like. If you were there, please let us know what your favorite moments were!