Article

How Vantage Data Centers Uses Procore to Aid Global Expansion

Achieve quality, compliance and visibility on your data centre projects, with real-time insights.

With data and real-time connectivity fast becoming one of the most valuable assets a business has, the demand for digital infrastructure and data centre construction is booming.

For companies like Vantage Data Centers, which designs, develops, owns and operates data centres around the world, the growth has been rapid. The company has more than doubled in size over the past couple of years.

Procore hosted a webinar with members of the Vantage Data Centers project delivery team to discuss how Procore is helping them achieve success as they expand their business across the globe. Rapid scaling meant Vantage needed a platform that would grow alongside them. After exploring their options, the company decided Procore was the right solution for their rapidly changing needs, including challenges around cross-portfolio clarity, data ownership, and process standardisation.

Vantage team members Trey Dean, Global Director of Environmental Health & Safety; Chris Totin, Principal Construction Manager; and Abhilash Kunnatoor Margabandu, Project Manager, joined the webinar to discuss the value they are getting from Procore. The VDC team also shared how and why they decided to expand Procore globally, what the process looks like, and the ways their business will be affected.

Chapter 1

One platform that connects everyone

“Having grown so rapidly and having acquired other companies, one of the big draws to utilising Procore is to bring our entire company under a common operating platform,” said Totin.

“Also, as a growing company, we’re in the process of developing and standardising procedures and processes. As we grow and as we bring new folks into the fold, we need to have consistency across all of our teams and all of our markets. That’s where Procore has really supported us in a big way,” added Totin.

Vantage started out using Procore through their main contractors, but quickly realised every GC had their own system and software, and they struggled maintaining consistency, standardisation, and the ability to easily leverage their data. Vantage was losing time and effort figuring out where to get data across the various stakeholders involved in numerous projects.

After acquiring a Canadian company, Vantage decided to try using Procore from the developer’s side, in an effort to maintain control over their own process standardisation and data.

“We had concerns about data security. Vantage takes security seriously and we wanted to own the data on our corporate side as opposed to the GC side,” said Margabandu.

Having all project data in their own system is important not only for data security, but also to improve future outcomes. Both Margabandu and Totin noted that coming from data analytics and project controls backgrounds, they have been given the role of project data architects for Vantage and are excited to leverage all the data they’re consolidating in Procore. Not only can they assess project health across their global portfolio to make better decisions in real-time, but they also can analyse and learn from historical data to make future improvements.

Chapter 2

Key insights boost health & safety

The Vantage team has been using their own Procore account for about two years and spearheaded the international expansion based on the success seen in their health and safety programs. Procore has provided a lot of value for Vantage around health and safety processes, data, and reporting.

“What we have set up within Procore is a variety of auditing tools of which we use one primarily and we focus on certain activities on our construction sites, high-risk activities that can ruin the business or severely injure or kill someone,” said Dean.

“We ensure that every Vantage construction manager, environmental health & safety (EHS) team member, safety consultant, and any other general contractor personnel, are using our auditing tool to look at these activities, and we track the corrective actions that are brought up based on the observations,” Dean added.

Having all of this safety information available on a shared dashboard is key to the company’s business. This shared dashboard saves “dozens and dozens of hours per month” on double-handling of data, the process of analysing it, and reporting it out.

“Now it’s a seamless end-to-end process from data entry all the way through executive reporting and everything in between,” said Totin.

Chapter 3

Single source of truth

Procore’s ability to serve as a single source of truth for project data, even across international borders, helps Vantage ensure consistency and standardisation across projects.

“To have more people attuned to the way we want to do our business makes passing knowledge down to new resources a lot smoother as well,” said Totin.

“Someone from around the world, be it Berlin, Zurich, any one of our new markets could hold a virtual meeting with these new resources and be able to bring that person up to speed because we’re doing business the same way. It’s really exciting to be getting consensus around the company about the way we really want to do something and then put it into action with Procore.”

Chapter 4

The Vantage future with Procore

As Vantage continues to expand, the panellists spoke of how the company is looking forward to the future with Procore, including further leveraging Procore’s Financial Management solutions across their portfolio, and utilising the project data they are collecting in Procore for deeper analysis and learning that they can apply to improve future outcomes. They cited a number of developments in the works they find particularly exciting.

“We use an online software platform for contract management that has certain features that aren’t facilitating an efficient business. Right now we’re in the process of working with Procore on standing up a couple of new modules, namely the contract module, the change management module, and the financial control module,” said Totin.

“We’re looking to standardise our workflows for contract execution and are really excited about the DocuSign integration and the ability to customise the workflows based on the types and values of the contracts.”

For Margabandu, Vantage’s future with Procore is continuing to optimise its integration approach.

“Procore is spending a lot of time to integrate the tools out there like Bluebeam, the core software we use. This means there could be a day where everything is centralised, instead of going between multiple software programs, you have this integrated approach where you have workflows set up in Procore and it communicates with other standardised construction tools,” he said.

“That’s why I’m super excited about it. We have so many really powerful tools that Procore has a potential to centralise when it comes to cost, contract management, and finances. This way we can have a holistic view as opposed to silos of data, it saves a lot of time.”