Toronto, Ontario, Canada, August 11, 2025 — CMiC, the leading next generation construction ERP provider, recently announced a new partnership with Grand River Construction, a diversified general contractor specializing in road work, concrete construction, and industrial facilities.
As Grand River Construction expanded across multiple construction sectors, senior leadership recognized that their fragmented system architecture and remote connectivity challenges were limiting operational efficiency. Following a comprehensive evaluation process, the company selected CMiC's integrated ERP platform to support continued scalability and growth.
Grand River Construction: Four Decades of Diversified Construction Excellence
Founded in 1984, Grand River Construction has established itself as a versatile general contractor operating across three distinct business segments. The company performs road work, concrete construction services—often serving as a specialized subcontractor while also providing general contracting services for wastewater treatment plants—and industrial facility construction for power generation, food processing, and pharmaceutical clients.
Grand River Construction's industrial division focuses on building long-term partnerships with continuous customers, handling diverse project requirements as they arise. This customer-centric approach has enabled the company to maintain steady growth and adapt to evolving market demands across multiple sectors. As a union contractor managing complex payroll requirements in-house, Grand River Construction has built expertise in handling the intricate administrative demands of skilled trades while maintaining operational efficiency.
With nearly four decades of experience, Grand River Construction continues to serve clients through a commitment to operational excellence and adaptability across their diverse portfolio of construction services.
Business Challenges Faced: Fragmented Systems and Accessibility Limitations
As Grand River Construction expanded rapidly in recent years, the company encountered several operational challenges that hindered productivity and limited scalability:
Disconnected System Architecture: The company relied on multiple point solutions including Sage Paperless, and Sage 300 (Timberline) that required manual integration efforts. While these systems communicated to various degrees, the integration was inadequate for efficient operations.
Limited Project Management Capabilities: Without a comprehensive project management platform, the company lacked centralized visibility into project progress and resource allocation across their diverse business segments.
Outdated and Non-Robust Features: Given that their existing systems had not received significant updates for six to seven years, lacking basic functionality such as column sorting in queries, which resulted in users manually exporting data to Excel for further manipulation.
Remote Access Limitations: Reliance on remote desktop servers created ongoing technical challenges and limited flexibility for remote workers, particularly as the company expanded its distributed workforce.
Complex Payroll Requirements: As a union contractor managing payroll internally, Grand River Construction needed a solution capable of handling intricate union payroll calculations that many construction software providers could not accommodate.
To address these operational constraints, Grand River Construction prioritized finding an all-in-one solution that could unify their financial management, project controls, and complex union payroll processing within a single database platform.
Evaluating Software Solutions: Grand River Construction's Path to Selecting CMiC
Grand River Construction sought an all-in-one solution that could unify their financial management, project controls, and payroll operations. During their evaluation process, Grand River Construction prioritized finding a platform that could handle their complex union payroll requirements while providing robust project management capabilities.
CMiC emerged as the preferred choice due to its ability to integrate all necessary functions—financials, project management, and specialized payroll processing—into a single, comprehensive platform.
Working with CMiC's implementation team, Grand River Construction developed a phased rollout strategy, going live with all key financial and project management modules, followed by payroll implementation shortly thereafter.
CMiC’s Application Implementation: Comprehensive Integration Across Operations
Grand River Construction has implemented a comprehensive suite of CMiC applications as part of their strategic technology rollout, designed to enhance operational efficiency and support scalable growth. Key implementations on their product roadmap include:
CMiC Financials (Including Human Capital Management and Payroll):
General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Project Costing, Human Capital Management (including Payroll, eTime & ESS), Change Management, Project Billing, Asset Management and Opportunity Management.
Project Management and Controls: Prequalification & Procurement (Subcontractor Pre-Qualification and Management) and Drawing & Construction Documents (Document Management).
Additional Features: Resource Planning.
Quick Wins: Enhanced Efficiency and Operational Flexibility
Grand River Construction is already experiencing measurable benefits from their CMiC implementation. The transition from outdated legacy systems has delivered immediate productivity gains. Simple but essential functions, such as sorting columns in data queries, were previously impossible in their old system, requiring manual data export and manipulation in Excel. These time-saving improvements are already visible, with expectations for greater efficiency gains as the team becomes fully proficient with the platform.
The company's shift from OneDrive-based file sharing to CMiC's integrated document management has streamlined collaboration and eliminated previous sharing difficulties. Additionally, the web-based architecture has enabled Grand River Construction to plan the retirement of their problematic remote desktop server infrastructure, reducing ongoing technical maintenance burdens.
Looking ahead, Grand River Construction anticipates that within six to eight months, they will surpass their previous operational efficiency levels, even before fully developing custom reporting and advanced system capabilities.
According to David Coates, CFO and co-owner at Grand River Construction, notes significant improvements in daily operations: "The web-based capabilities have been a game-changer for our remote workforce. We have one employee who moved over 200 miles away, and it's so much smoother for her to work on CMiC than through our old remote desktop system."
Learn why growing construction firms choose CMiC for integrated project management by clicking here.
About Grand River Construction:
Grand River Construction was established in 1984 with one vision in mind, create industry leading structures that will stand the test of time. Since that date 37 years ago, we have built an amazing team of employees who uphold that vision and continue to showcase our concrete abilities.
We have experience in a variety of different sectors including commercial, industrial, healthcare, automotive, energy, infrastructure, and entertainment. We specialize in general contracting and self performing specialty concrete, however our range of services don't stop there.
Want to see all of our services and a more in-depth look at our projects, visit our website at https://grandriverconstruction.com/ !
About CMiC:
As an industry pioneer, CMiC delivers complete and unified Financials and Project Management software solutions for construction and capital projects firms. CMiC's powerful software transforms how firms optimize productivity, minimize risk and drive growth by planning and managing all financials, projects, resources, and content assets—from a Single Database Platform™. With customers throughout North America and overseas, CMiC serves one-quarter of ENR's Top 400 Contractors and hundreds of small and mid-sized construction firms, from general and specialty contractors to heavy/highway and project owners. Over $100 billion in construction revenue is handled by CMiC annually.