January 23, 2009

Paul Douglas, Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Operations; Ross Grieve, President and Chief Executive Officer; Brad Nelson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Buildings; Peter Stalenhoef, President and Chief Operating Officer, Heavy Industrial.

Founder’s building blocks set stage for PCL to flourish

BY VINCE VERSACE >> CURTIS TRENT PHOTO

“Contracting is an interesting and risky business and for success over long term requires strict adherence to sound basic principles”

With that introduction Ernest Poole, the PCL family of companies’ founding father, would go on to outline the key 11 points by which he hoped his sons would carry on his company’s tradition of quality work.

Employ highest-grade people obtainable.

Encourage integrity, loyalty and efficiencies.

Be fair in all dealings with owners, architects, engineers and subcontractors. Keep your word as good as your bond.

These are among the gems penned by Poole that have been woven into the fabric of today’s Canadian construction giant, the PCL family of companies.

“The building blocks of the original company that Ernie founded were good building blocks that set the stage for the company to grow and flourish and his sons carried that on,” explains Ross Grieve, president and chief executive officer of the PCL family of companies. “Bob Stollery (former president and director of Poole Construction Limited) then handed them on to some of us that took over the company. We all grew up with the PCL way and have tried to keep the story alive in many ways.”

Dow Chemical polyethylene plant, Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.

That story has helped build a $6 billion company that has embraced diversity in project delivery, service capabilities and employee development on its way to being Canada’s largest general contractor and eighth largest in the United States.

“When you track it right back to Ernie’s days, he was part of that whole pioneering era of building Canada’s west,” notes Grieve. “They were pretty creative survivors that got it done.

“I just think they were doing whatever they had to do; whether it was a building or piece of civil work or heavy industrial. They were crossing over sectors naturally because everything was needed in the west. They would build a little bit of everything and that carried through as the years went by.”

PCL’s footprint now stretches across Canada, the United States, Hawaii and the Caribbean, employing more than 3,000 full-time staff and up to 5,500 hourly trades people at any one time. The scope of projects is as vast as the geography the company finds itself in. Name a major commercial, institutional, education, health care or entertainment project and PCL can likely lay claim to having built it — or at least bid on it.

Large industrial projects such as petrochemical plants and upgraders, heavy civil engineering work and transportation network improvements, airport upgrades and renovations sometimes overshadow PCL’s special project and smaller work, says Grieve. PCL does a half-billion a year of work across North America on projects less than a million dollars in value.

“We are recognized as a sophisticated contractor and we joke that we do not get the easy jobs,” adds Peter Stalenhoef, president and chief operating officer, PCL Heavy Industrial. “We always seem to get the ones that are challenging and tough. We have the ability to do it and that is why.”

Stalenhoef recalls how PCL worked with Dow Chemical’s engineering house to build Dow’s polyethylene plant in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta and deliver the design-build project in 16 months. The job showcased PCL’s ability to work and adapt to an owner’s needs to ensure success, says Stalenhoef.

“In that type of plant, you normally pour separate foundations for every piece of equipment. In this case we poured one slab for the entire plant. This allowed us to get on with above-grade construction in a much quicker fashion,” explains Stalenhoef.

“We also did a combined team start up. Instead of us turning systems over to plant operators, as we usually do. We worked together to flush-clean and energize the systems, cutting the commissioning time from three months to a month.”

Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario

The variety of construction projects PCL delivers, through various contracts tailored to meet customer needs, only strengthens its diversity, says Paul Douglas, chief operating officer of PCL’s Canadian Operations. Whether it is bid-build, design-bid-build, construction management or alternative financing projects (Public-Private Partnerships), PCL works as a team to deliver.

“When I joined PCL in 1985, you could see that they were not working in a box,” says Douglas. “PCL is very innovative, making sure we sit down with owners to understand what they need and to understand the owner’s business. Then we can coach them and work with them and say, ‘You know, this is probably how we should deliver this type of building.’”

The construction of Toronto’s Air Canada Centre is an example of the company’s ability to respond to surprise challenges. When the project ownership changed hands with nearly two-thirds of the construction completed, new owners meant a revised vision for the future home of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors.

“We were 60 to 70 per cent of the way through and they wanted something different, with about $20 to $30 million worth of changes and they still wanted us to complete the job on the original schedule, which we did,” recalls Douglas.

One of PCL’s training philosophies is “each one — teach one.”

Stalenhoef says PCL’s ability to develop strong personnel in every aspect of construction, from estimating to accounting, ensures it can adapt to such project changes.

“You are only as good as the last job you did, and we are always respectful of that,” explains Stalenhoef. “You have to do a good job on every job or the reputation you worked 103 years to develop will suddenly evaporate.

“We stay pretty focused on that.”

To this day, PCL’s people remain the company’s strength. Grooming and investing in people allows PCL to adapt to project challenges while living up to the PCL reputation and expectation.

Through the company’s College of Construction, PCL employees are provided opportunities to explore current technology while developing and sharpening their supervisory, management and relationship-building skills.

“We give people the opportunity but we also surround them with the safety net and give them the tools so they are going to succeed,” says Brad Nelson, president and chief operating officer, PCL Canadian Buildings. “We do not leave them out there on their own.”

This interconnected nature of PCL allows people to reach out to colleagues to seek answers and advice on construction challenges.

“For the younger guys, it is a great tool for them to tap into the knowledge base that is out there with a lot of our older guys,” says Nelson. “The old-school way was to immerse through a baptism by fire. Now we are big on training, and giving people the tools to manage. As the projects get bigger, more complex and complicated, they need these tools to succeed.”

Grieve says the concept of “each one-teach one” has been at PCL since his first days with the company in 1969 when it was still Poole Construction. One generation of workers passing on their knowledge to the next, investing both time and money in future leaders, is what delivers a diverse, multi-faceted and skilled team.

“In tougher times training is the easiest thing to cut out of your expenditures because you do not get tangible results you can point to,” says Grieve. “But you have to believe that it is a good thing to invest in your people’s professional development and the tangible results are in the overall results of the company.”

The results of this investment can be seen in PCL’s growth and development in services such as green building, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and project document controls and solutions. As growth in these areas and construction expertise continues, the return on the training investment is evident, says Douglas.

“When people see the investment that we are prepared to put into them, then they are prepared to give back, grow and feel fulfilled. That is the biggest part,” says Douglas.

“As builders, a lot of us do not really understand how to release the potential in people. We are builders of buildings and the College helps us learn to be builders of people. Without the College we would not be able to do that.”

What cannot be underestimated, as an important pillar in PCL’s foundation for diversity and growth, is its employee-ownership model that has been in place since 1977, says Grieve. PCL has turned a profit every year since it rolled out the employee-ownership model and the company continues to position itself as the employer of choice for trades people.

“We have very broad ownership of this private company. It makes my job very easy,” says Grieve. “I have almost 3,000 partners looking after the well being of this company.

“It has allowed us to be profitable 30 years straight and we cannot overemphasize the uniqueness of the ownership model. It makes us ‘special and different’ and gives us distinctiveness from others that are more traditional.”

This employee-ownership model, combined with the company’s investment in people and project diversity all help make PCL a family, believes Douglas.

“I am so passionate about this company it is really unbelievable,” says Douglas. “I have to hold myself back so we do not seem like a cult.

“We have generations of superintendents, from a grandfather, to father to a grandson in this company. Who do I want my kids, my-in-laws and everybody to work for? It is PCL. I could not imagine them working for a better company. That just permeates throughout so many of our people decade after decade after decade.”

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