Digital unity: The story behind PCL’s epic tech transformation

Key Takeaways:

• PCL consolidated 26 independent financial and project management systems into a single platform on Microsoft Azure to improve agility and efficiency across its global operations.
• The project required tight collaboration between PCL and Syntax teams, executive involvement, and extensive effort to ensure data consistency and usability for modern technologies like AI, 3D printing, and digital twins.
• Structured and real-time unstructured data from job sites can now be integrated with financial and planning systems, creating a connected construction environment that allows actionable insights and faster decision-making.

The Whole Story:

Helping set up Canada’s largest construction company for the next century of technological advances is a tall order. 

For Kevin Dattolico, CEO, Americas, Syntax, it was one of the crowning achievements of his career, but when he and his team were first approached for the job, it seemed nearly impossible. A company as old and storied as PCL, the challenge isn’t just its massive size and global scope. They come with technological baggage.

During its 119-year history, the company had amassed 26 independently running financial systems doing payroll, project management and more. Syntax’s task was to consolidate them all into one system hosted on Microsoft Azure. 

“You can trace back to when these companies started, how they formed, both organically and inorganically. When they start to build out these infrastructures, there are very good reasons why a company like PCL would create these separate entities versus one big entity,” said Dattolico. “But for an organization that size, running all those independent systems and processes becomes quite cumbersome and they begin to lose agility.”

And for modern construction, agility is everything. But that means having a solid data foundation to rapidly receive data and insights when that information is still actionable and relevant. The faster you can get insights, the more you can make necessary changes.

“It allows you to be more nimble  and that drives right down to the bottom line. You’re not having as many delays. You’re not having all these misses and your efficiency just continues to go up.”

With today’s rapidly changing market conditions and politics, this kind of agility is not a nice to have. It’s a necessity. This compounds when you are a global company like PCL where you operate in many different markets that are all changing and shifting. 

“It’s a requirement to be able to steer the business correctly.”

The most important goal was to establish data consistency. Dattolico explained that all these systems were operating independently with people making changes. If any of that data gets out of sync, the unified system falls apart and becomes useless. 

The key to success was total synergy between the PCL and Syntax team. 

“At certain times you couldn’t tell who worked for Syntax and who worked for PCL. It required such tight integration of those teams,” said Dattolico. “It’s a long hard road and requires a lot of up-front work and communication. It requires the executive leadership at both organizations to be intimately involved. It’s a labour of love and passion to get this through. It doesn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of time and effort and a lot of weekends. The end result is that PCL is going to be in such a tremendous position going forward.”

Having a unified system with usable, structured data is key to taking advantage of rapidly developing technology, like AI, 3D printing, digital twins and more. Without an agile digital platform, these tools are not usable.  

“This is setting them up for the next 100 years,” said Dattolico. 

While companies have been collecting data for years, the problem of organizing it has grown. While the ERP side of the business tends to generate very structured data, like financial information, information coming from the site has evolved with the ubiquity of smartphones and other devices. Teams are constantly sharing photos and videos, giving a realtime window into what is happening on site, but this data is unstructured. But recent technological advancements now mean this data can be structured and married with the ERP end of the business. 

“You have this connected construction environment where people are using real-time video and pictures to show what’s happening and then allow it to be used to gain insights in real time,” said Dattolico. “In the past you didn’t have that ability. Now it’s married with that structured data from finance and planning. It has all snapped together.”

According to the companies, the project has integrated more than 370 financial entities into a single platform, migrated and validated two years of financial and payroll history, and streamlined workflows using Microsoft’s Power Platform to reduce errors and speed execution. Hosting on Azure also provides high availability, scalability and enterprise-grade security.

“Consolidating our ERP environment on Azure marks a pivotal shift in how PCL operates financially across its global footprint,” said Glen Anderson, PCL’s vice-president of finance and commercial risk. “We’ve significantly improved reporting accuracy, eliminated duplication, and reduced risk — while building a flexible platform to scale with our business.”

Just because you aren’t as big as PCL doesn’t mean you can’t start your digital transformation journey. Dattolico explained that smaller companies without such large, complex legacy systems are actually at a greater advantage. His biggest advice is to find a good partner. 

“They have the purview and expertise to see a lot of things that you may not have had exposure to,” he said.