Adapted from an interview conducted by Inge van den Berg as part of the PrivCap Spotlight Series.
Marcus Gillam grew up with construction as dinner-table conversation. His father spent most of his career in the industry, and Marcus started on job sites as a student, as a laborer, before moving into estimating, business development and operations. That path took him from Toronto to Vancouver and then to England, helping launch new operations before he returned to the family firm, Vanbots Construction, which became one of Canada’s largest privately owned construction companies.
After Vanbots was sold to Carillion, Marcus found his values diverging from the new owner’s. He left to build something different: a company that would “trade on traditional values,” with relationships rather than transactions at its center. That idea became Gillam Group, a Toronto-based construction management firm founded in 2011 on a “partnership first” philosophy. As Marcus puts it, “I’m in the business of trust, I’m in the business of expectations.”
Growth with purpose
Gillam’s trajectory has been widely noticed. Maclean’s recognized the firm as Canada’s fastest growing company over a five-year period, and Gillam has grown from inception into a team of more than 90 people delivering difficult projects across Ontario. Marcus is careful, though, about what that growth means. Expansion alone is not the point, he says, unless the work is productive and good for the industry. One of the firm’s goals is to raise the bar in the planning and management of projects, and he sees its growth as the product of positive feedback from the marketplace, and as a sign the firm is helping the industry “change and evolve.” Like trust, he adds, it is a marathon rather than a sprint. His personal measure is a legacy one: when he finally hangs up his hard hat, he wants to have “left industry in a better place than when we started.”
Integrity as a business model
Under the firm’s “building with integrity” tagline sits a practical argument. Construction projects carry significant risk for their sponsors, so the people delivering them must be able to rely on one another. “Trust is fundamental,” Marcus says, and trust requires integrity. He points to the reputation Gillam has built with clients, but also with consultants, suppliers and its own staff, all of whom the firm aims to treat fairly and respectfully.
A riskier landscape
Marcus sees the industry’s challenges compounding. Baby boomers are retiring, so project teams are younger and less experienced. At the same time, projects are more complex, schedules are tighter, quality standards are stricter and cost pressure is greater. His conclusion is that “the old school way of managing design and construction doesn’t work today.” Gillam Group has deliberately designed its culture and processes around teamwork, both internally and with clients.
Aligning incentives through IPD
The clearest expression of that philosophy is Integrated Project Delivery. Under IPD, the builder, consultant and key trade contractors come together early and develop the design to the client’s budget, then commit to delivering at that number. Each party places its profit into a shared risk pool. If the project comes in on time and on budget, the money is released. If it runs over, the overage eats into the pool first. If it comes in under budget, the savings are shared. The result, Marcus says, is a financial mechanism that aligns everyone’s interests.
Gillam recently applied the model to an affordable housing project for Loft, which Marcus reports is under budget and on schedule. The lesson he draws applies beyond IPD: assembling the team early lets you understand risk and opportunity before they become problems. On Loft, the sources of financing were unclear at the outset, and early collaboration allowed that uncertainty to be absorbed. “It sounds simple, but industry doesn’t typically work that way,” he notes.
Demand is now moving toward flexible hybrids. Designers, clients and developers are approaching Gillam about progressive design-build, which Marcus describes as a cross between construction management and IPD, and about private-sector design-build-finance opportunities. His advice for this environment is to stay adaptable and ready to pivot.
Partnership, not just a contract
Asked what investors and development partners value most, Marcus points to true partnership. Gillam is technically under contract to build, he says, but that is not enough to deliver success: “The requirements of successful delivery cannot fully be summed up in a contract, you just can’t.” Everyone has to be proactive and “watching out for each other’s backswing.”
In mid-rise rental and affordable housing, that approach has paid off. Gillam has helped clients design to budget, found ways to reduce costs and built a detailed understanding of funding programs, including relationships with sponsors such as CMHC. Many clients are charities and nonprofits with limited budgets and no room to top up, and Marcus says they value the firm’s sophistication and transparency. Staff, too, are motivated by the work: “some people have an extra spring in their step” when building for a nonprofit.
Sustainability, Indigenous partnership and technology
Sustainability requirements, including net zero carbon, passive house and mass timber, are now written into most contracts the firm takes on. Marcus calls them “yet another layer of complexity” but also “the way of the future.” Over the past year Gillam formed a joint venture with a First Nations group, creating a First Nations majority-owned company that has already helped win a project in the power generation sector.
Internally, a cross-functional technology committee drives adoption of estimating and operational systems, building information modeling and virtual design and construction. The firm is also trialing AI tools and reporting significant benefits.
Looking ahead
Gillam’s focus remains on rental, affordable and supportive housing, senior and long-term care, and government work spanning municipal and provincial projects, power generation, data centres, education and cultural facilities. Geographic growth continues, with an office in Kitchener and a presence in British Columbia and Ottawa.
Marcus’s closing message is brief: “teamwork, collaboration, transparency.” And, he adds, “We walk the walk.”
