Four or five years ago, just as the industry was emerging from the recession, PCL Construction Services Inc. President Deron Brown and his team decided to invest in a project-delivery software called PartsLab. The move caused a stir within the company. Despite a well-documented need to improve the collaborative use of virtual building models in the field to reduce rework and speed up schedules, BIM software development is expensive and not at the core of what PCL, a vertical, civil and industrial builder, does.

“It was not an easy decision to move forward [with the launch]. The request for a bigger R&D budget back then was a hard pill to swallow,” Brown, 50, says. “It’s hard to put progress in terms of dollars where technology is concerned.”