Brown and Gillam form Canada’s first integrated construction services company

About four years ago, infrastructure developer Graham Brown and contractor Keith Gillam sat down over a glass of wine and speculated about the future evolution of the construction industry. Now Gillam’s Vanbots is officially a division of Brown’s Carillion Construction Inc.

Vanbots now officially a division of Carillion Construction Inc.

About four years ago, infrastructure developer Graham Brown and contractor Keith Gillam sat down over a glass of wine and speculated about the future evolution of the construction industry.

“We both predicted a huge growth in infrastructure projects across Canada as aging schools, roads and hospitals were replaced and as new capacity in all these areas was needed to support population growth,” recalls Brown, president and CEO of Carillion Canada.

“We also were all too well aware of the impossibly large financial burden this would place on the public purse. We expected to see Canada’s traditional building companies, many of them small and thinly capitalized, change: either to grow or to merge or form alliances with partners in the facilities management or project finance sectors to gain critical mass.”

At that juncture, neither Brown nor Gillam, then chairman of Vanbots Construction Corp., had any inkling that their two companies ultimately would join forces.

But by the end of last year, the two had come to the realization that the time was ripe to form Canada’s first integrated construction services company, offering a spectrum of services in-house.

“What we had learned in the years since we first met was not only that our vision for the Canadian market was playing out, but more importantly, that we had two organizations that thought the same way, had complementary skills and shared the same core, client-oriented values,” Brown said.

The rest is history.

Early last month, Carillion plc announced that its Canadian division had completed its acquisition of Vanbots.

The two companies celebrated the groundbreaking deal at a reception at the Vanbots-built Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum. About 600 attended the event, among then clients, consultants, subcontractors and even some politicians.

“There is only one organization and one team of people like this in Canada,” Brown said.

“No one else can provide this marketplace with the range and scale of construction, project financing and facilities management capabilities that the team you see here tonight offers.

“We firmly believe we have created the basis for a very successful business.”

Gillam, who acquired Vanbots in 1991 and built it into a company with annual revenues exceeding $600 million, also is bullish about the future. He now is chairman of Carillion Canada.

“The strength of Carillion, the consummate leadership it has shown throughout the years along with the management excellence and general contracting capability of Vanbots is formidable,” he said.

Carillion plc is one of the United Kingdom’s largest support services, development and construction companies and one of the leading players in the worldwide public-private partnerships (P3) market.

For its part, Carillion Canada led the development of the Brampton Civic Hospital, Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre and the new Sault Area Hospital, all P3 hospital projects.

Vanbots now is a division of Carillion Construction Inc.