Building an AI-ready foundation for a growing portfolio

The Challenge

Merritt Properties built its vertically integrated development business around innovation, flexibility and long-term relationships. As the company expanded across multiple regions and began managing hundreds of active projects simultaneously, leadership needed new ways to connect teams, standardize data and maintain visibility across the portfolio — without forcing employees into rigid workflows that didn’t fit the way Merritt operated.

The Solution

Merritt adopted Procore to create a connected operational platform that could help standardize project information without sacrificing flexibility. By bringing drawings, budgets and documentation into one system — while integrating tools like Smartsheet, Matterport and Power BI — Merritt improved coordination across projects and created a foundation for AI-driven insights across connected systems.

The Results

• Created a single source of truth across hundreds of active projects
• Improved portfolio-wide visibility for leadership across regions and project types
• Simplified collaboration with subcontractors and teams working across multiple projects
• Created a connected operational foundation for future AI-driven workflows and insights
• Gained a long-term technology partner focused on integrations, innovation and AI connectivity

Developer seeks a relationship to drive innovation

Even as the Director of Innovation for Merritt Properties, Munir Sadiq has surprisingly little interest in flashy tech products. What he’s really looking for is tools – and partnerships – that support the way his company already likes to work.

 Merritt, a vertically integrated developer based in Baltimore, builds and manages commercial real estate projects across the Mid-Atlantic, handling everything from leasing and design to construction and customer service in-house. It’s a model that depends heavily on relationships — something that Sadiq says drives nearly every decision Merritt makes.

 “Everything here is built around relationships, and that includes technology partners,” says Sadiq. “We don’t look at it as simply buying software. We look at it as a partnership.” For years, the company experimented with third-party spreadsheets and legacy management tools, building custom workflows and integrations internally as teams searched for ways to better coordinate projects across a growing portfolio. 

But as Merritt expanded across multiple regions and began managing hundreds of active projects simultaneously, the company realized its biggest operational challenge was not technology — it was coordination.

“Our labor teams knew what they were doing, and our superintendents and project managers already wore multiple hats,” he says. “The real problem was getting the right information to the right people and keeping everyone aligned.” 

Finding a platform that could adapt to unique workflows

As Merritt searched for better ways to coordinate projects, the company evaluated a range of construction platforms. Some solved pieces of the problem, but none fully matched the way Merritt operated. Sadiq soon realized the company needed more standardization and stronger construction-specific workflows, which led the company to evaluate several legacy project management platforms before ultimately selecting Procore.

“What really stood out with Procore was not just the technology itself, but the relationship,” Sadiq says. “Procore was open to feedback and willing to have real conversations with us.” 

That openness was critical for a company constantly experimenting with new ways to work. Merritt’s teams were already building custom workflows internally and trying to connect systems together in ways that fit the company’s operational style. 

“One of Merritt’s biggest strengths is that everybody here is a very high innovator,” Sadiq says. “People are constantly finding better ways to do things. We don’t like limiting people by saying, ‘This is the one way you have to work.’”

With that mindset, flexibility was essential. Merritt didn’t want a rigid system that forced the company to abandon the processes that already worked. “Where Procore absolutely knocked it out of the park was with integrations,” Sadiq says. “They were partnering with almost everybody doing something relevant in construction or the broader AEC industry. They’d say, ‘Oh, we have a Matterport integration,’ or, ‘We have a Smartsheet integration,’ or, ‘You can pull Power BI dashboards directly into this area.’”

For Sadiq, those integrations were a promise that Procore would evolve alongside Merritt. “Having a platform that could integrate with all these different tools and adapt to the way we operate was extremely important to us,” he says. “Our previous project management solution just couldn’t do that. Procore already was.”

Standardizing a growing portfolio inside one platform

Today, Procore allows Merritt to manage hundreds of active projects across multiple regions, giving leadership a newfound ability to monitor every build and every tenant through a single platform. “That visibility really makes a difference at the portfolio level,” Sadiq says. “Leadership can look across the entire project portfolio — regardless of project type — and see everything in one place.”

That consistency has become especially important as Merritt expands into newer regions like Southern Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, where the company is building relationships with new specialty contractors and trade partners.

“Procore has made it significantly easier for subcontractors and teams working across multiple projects to move between environments without constantly logging in and out,” Sadiq says. “It sounds small, but those kinds of workflow improvements add up quickly.”

For a company built on relationships, those improvements help create a more seamless experience not just for Merritt’s internal teams, but for the broader network of partners.

“That’s one thing I think Procore does really well,” Sadiq says. “They solve problems people don’t always realize they have until they start using the platform.”

Bringing an AI-connected ecosystem to life

Merritt’s broader technology strategy is now increasingly focused on AI — specifically, how AI can connect the company’s many systems, workflows and data sources into a more unified process. 

“For us, the real power comes when AI can connect systems together instead of keeping information siloed,” Sadiq says. “We’re already using AI to look across SharePoint, Smartsheet, Procore, payroll data, scheduling systems — all these different data sources — and start building a much bigger operational picture.” 

Over the years, Merritt built a variety of custom workflows and dashboards around tools like Smartsheet and Power BI. Sadiq sees AI accelerating those efforts by making it easier to connect systems and surface insights from the company’s existing project data.

“The future isn’t AI trapped inside a single platform,” Sadiq says. “The future is AI being able to connect all these systems together and help us understand the true health of a project in real time.” 

That vision has shaped how Merritt approaches AI adoption. Rather than limiting experimentation to a small group of technical users, the company has encouraged employees across departments to explore where the tools can create value. “What surprised us was seeing where people found value,” Sadiq says. “One of our accountants became one of the heaviest users because he started using AI for cost segregation work that would normally take an enormous amount of time. Nobody predicted that use case, but it ended up creating real value.”

Ultimately, Sadiq believes connected systems and AI will dramatically expand what construction teams are capable of managing.

That long-term mindset is also why Merritt continues investing in Procore as the platform evolves. Sadiq points to Procore’s recent acquisition of Datagrid as a strong signal that the company understands where the industry is headed. “With the acquisition of Datagrid, Procore is doing exactly what needs to be done with AI,” he says. 

For Sadiq, that commitment to AI connectivity is essential for any long-term technology partner. “If a software company doesn't have a vision or  roadmap for AI, we probably won't be talking to them a year or two from now,” he says. “That’s why we’ve stayed committed to Procore and want them helping drive that mission with us.”