After 100 years of growth, bringing order to the Wild West

The Challenge

As Trotter & Morton expanded through acquisitions and organic growth, teams across different offices and business units developed their own ways of managing projects. Information lived in spreadsheets, local file structures and disconnected systems, making consistency difficult. The company needed a scalable approach that could support everything from small service jobs to major commercial construction projects.

The Solution

The company standardized project delivery around Procore, creating a single platform for project information, documentation and collaboration. By rolling out Procore across the business, the company established consistent workflows while preserving the flexibility needed to support a wide range of project types. The shared platform also helped offices and business units begin exchanging knowledge more naturally, breaking down longstanding silos across the organization.

The Results

• Standardized project delivery across a century-old company without sacrificing flexibility
• Collapsed silos with a common operating system across nine offices and multiple business units
• Reduced rework by ensuring field and office teams work from the same project information
• Created a single source of truth for project information across offices, teams and projects
• Increased adoption of digital tools among field teams

A century of success, but a ‘Wild West’ behind the scenes

For a company approaching its 100th birthday, Trotter & Morton — a mechanical, electrical and building technologies contractor with nine offices across North America — still oversees a surprisingly broad range of work.

The company performs everything from quick service jobs worth a few thousand dollars to major commercial construction projects valued in the hundreds of millions. With growth coming through an aggressive blend of acquisitions and expansion over the decades, teams were spread across multiple offices and businesses, often with little communication between them.

The result was a patchwork of disconnected approaches. The company lacked a central knowledge base or standard processes for most jobs, with teams relying instead on spreadsheets, local file structures and highly personalized workflows.

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

The challenge was finding a solution that would impose standardization without strangling the diversity of projects that fueled the company’s success. “We needed a process that scales,” says Hearty. “If somebody is used to doing a $5,000 job, we didn't want it to be a huge change when they moved onto a $500,000 project."

Trotter & Morton had experimented with other solutions, but none delivered the consistency the company was looking for. "We tried multiple technologies before that, and they just didn't work," says Joanne Huckle, Director of IT.

A process that everyone could get behind

Once the company selected Procore, it didn’t hold back. Rather than rolling out a handful of tools to a few teams, Trotter & Morton deployed the platform across the business, involving both office and field personnel from the beginning.

"As a company, we're all about innovation and technology," Huckle says. "When we went with Procore, we didn't just want to standardize across the company. We wanted technology throughout the business. From day one, we had field people involved, and everything went on Procore — large projects, small projects, everything.”

Procore succeeded where earlier technologies failed because it gave Trotter & Morton a practical way to implement the consistency it had been seeking, says Huckle. "Procore became the vehicle that allowed us to implement the process.”

That same structure now supports everything from small service work to major commercial construction. “Today, we have projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Procore, but we also have projects worth only a few hundred dollars,” says Huckle.

Or as Senior Project Manager Simon Momm puts it, "The exact same process applies to a small change order as it does to a major project."

With that structure in place, it’s hard to imagine doing things the old way. “I say it all the time: I definitely couldn't see doing a large project now without Procore,” says Chris Ell, Director of Commercial Operations.  

A shared platform breaks down silos — organically

One of the earliest benefits was creating consistency around project information and documentation, breaking down barriers that once existed between offices. "The Vancouver people didn't really know the Calgary people. We didn't know Winnipeg. We all did things different ways," Huckle says. "Once we were on the same platform, people naturally started communicating more. They started asking, 'How are you doing this?' and 'How are you setting up that project?'"

Having that shared communications platform turned out to be a surprisingly powerful way to unify the company, Huckle says. "The best way to break down silos is not to announce that you're going to break down silos. You just have to create the conditions where it happens organically."

Less rework for the field and the office

The platform also transformed how project teams stayed current on a build. Before Procore, teams were working from printed drawings and other manual documents, which could become out of date moments after leaving the office. "We definitely had people working from different drawing versions," Hearty says. "The office had one set of drawings and the field had another.”

With current drawings now available digitally, those issues have largely disappeared. "When drawings change, site teams know immediately," says Momm. "Everybody is working from the same information."

The shift has caused a substantial decline in rework – in more ways than expected. “The reduction in rework isn't limited to the field,” says Hearty. “In the office, people would save documents in different locations, use different naming conventions and create duplicate files, making it hard to find what you needed.  There was no version control.” That administrative burden is no longer taking up valuable office staff time.

On the estimating side, the company went from sending bid documents, revisions and changes through email to having everything stored in Procore. “Before, once the project was awarded, the project manager would have to spend time figuring out what was sent, when it was sent and what came back,” says Ell. “You still have handover meetings, but now all of that information is already there.”

The field leads the way

Maybe the biggest surprise of the rollout was who embraced the technology most enthusiastically. Like many contractors implementing new technology, Trotter & Morton expected some resistance from the field. "We thought we'd be dragging the field teams along," Hearty says.

“That isn't what happened,” he continues. “It's field-driven now. They're constantly looking for new tools and new capabilities they can add to their workflows."

In fact, the field teams have become some of the platform's strongest advocates, says Huckle. "When they see a new tool, they're the ones asking for more. They're constantly looking for additional ways to use the platform."

What you’re looking for is in Procore

That enthusiasm speaks to the transformation in Trotter & Morton's culture since adopting a single shared platform. While the company plans to continue taking on diverse projects in different regions for the next 100 years, employees today approach those projects with a common set of tools, processes and expectations. What began as an effort to standardize project management has evolved into a shared way of working across the business.

"People laugh at me when they ask me a question and my answer is always, 'It's in Procore. Just go look. You'll find it there,'" Hearty says.