Turning 100 years of project data into a competitive edge

The Challenge

Project managers at specialty contractor Trotter & Morton had all developed their own methods for tracking costs and forecasting performance, leaving critical financial information scattered across spreadsheets and personalized systems. As the company grew, leadership needed a more complete view of project performance, one that could turn financial data into actionable insight across the business.

The Solution

Trotter & Morton integrated Procore with Viewpoint Vista, bringing project and financial information together in a shared platform. By connecting budgets, commitments, forecasts and historical project data, the company gave project managers greater ownership of financial performance while creating a foundation for forecasting, analytics and AI-driven insights across the company.

The Results

• Replaced disconnected spreadsheets with a shared view of project financial performance
• Gave project managers real-time ownership of budgets, forecasts and financial decisions
• Improved executive visibility into project health, risk and performance
• Turned historical project data into a resource for estimating and future planning
• Created a foundation for advanced analytics and AI-driven project insights

A “Wild West” of financial tracking systems

For years, Trotter & Morton project managers had a simple way of keeping track of how their jobs were performing: they built their own systems.

“Everyone had their own spreadsheets,” says Chris Ell, Director of Commercial Operations for the nearly century-old mechanical, electrical and building technologies contractor. “Vancouver did things one way. Calgary did things another way. Even within Calgary, people had different processes.”

The problem was that none of the systems talked to one another. For leadership, that meant struggling to turn project data into decisions. They knew the financial information they needed was out there, but it was scattered across systems, making it nearly impossible to to compare, analyze or learn from.

“It was the Wild West,” says Ivan Hearty, Mechanical General Manager.

To continue scaling the business, financial management needed to become part of the project record itself, not some parallel process conducted haphazardly across spreadsheets.

"We wanted all our systems to be fully integrated and for the data to flow seamlessly across them," says Joanne Huckle, Director of IT.

Integrating Procore with Viewpoint Vista would be the first major step toward that goal.

Bringing financial data into the project record

The ERP integration immediately brought financial information closer to the people managing the work. Project managers gained visibility into budgets, commitments and forecasts within the same platform they were already using to run projects. "The integration gave project managers ownership,” says Huckle. “They could track their financials, see what's been paid and understand what's happening on their projects in real time.”

That shift also changed the role Procore played within the business. Instead of simply documenting what happened on a project, it became a place where project teams could actively manage performance. "It kind of eliminates that tracking spreadsheet and the room for error," says Ell. "You don't have to go to Viewpoint anymore to pull a job report. You can just go to the Budget tab."

Turning visibility into better decisions

With forecasting moved into Procore, operations leaders gained visibility into project health without chasing spreadsheets or waiting for reports to be compiled. "The forecasting tool is fantastic," says Ell. "It saves PM time, and it saves me time. If I want to go look at a job, I can easily go in and see the forecast. I can see the snapshots."

That visibility also transformed how Trotter & Morton could access and utilize its own project history. With financial and operational data connected inside Procore, teams could now easily review the data from previous projects and use it to inform future work.

“All of that financial information being in one place is a huge benefit," says Hearty. “Just recently I was working with one of our newer estimators on a high-level budget. We were able to pull up several similar completed projects in Procore and use that information to guide our thinking.”

Putting project data to work

Once project and financial data were connected, Trotter & Morton gained something it had never really had before: a reliable foundation for analytics. The company now combines Procore and Vista information with Power BI dashboards used by operations teams and executives, giving leaders new ways to analyze performance across the business.

"Safety teams focus on safety metrics. Operations looks at project performance. Executives look at higher-level project health and risk,” says Huckle. “We use custom fields to identify projects that may require additional attention and then monitor those projects more closely.”

“Those analytics help us identify where we need to spend our time,” she adds.

Using AI to see around corners

That foundation has also enabled the company to begin experimenting with AI.

Rather than focusing on automation, Trotter & Morton is using Procore AI to help project teams make sense of large amounts of information more quickly. One example involves daily logs, one of the most heavily used tools in the company's Procore environment. Instead of manually reviewing months of daily reports, project leaders can use AI-generated summaries to identify schedule impacts, incidents and other issues that need closer attention.

"We're using AI to analyze large amounts of data right now," Huckle says. "It's more about giving our senior people a better look at it, because there is a lot of documentation."

For Ell, the shift has helped identify risks before they become major issues. "We're looking to identify problems on a project," he says. "If you discover an issue three months down the road, it's too late. Then you can't catch up."

That ability to spot issues earlier is the culmination of a broader transformation. What began as an effort to eliminate disconnected spreadsheets and duplicate data entry has evolved into a connected system where project managers, estimators and executives are all working from the same playbook. "I don't have to reach out to Ivan or Simon and say, 'Can you show me your forecast for this job?'" Ell says. "I can just go in and find it myself."

A shared platform and a long-term partnership

Today, Trotter & Morton is exploring a vast range of new reporting and AI capabilities, made possible by their decision to create a shared platform that spans the organization.  

“We didn't want to go with a project management solution, a financial solution, a different quality, safety, and so on,” says Huckle. “Procore is our core business, and everything has to connect into it."

"Trotter & Morton is very much about long-term partnerships,” she adds, “and we have that with Procore."