Andrew Doucet and Craig Duininck took different roads into the Atlantic Canada construction industry — one through a lawnmower, the other through a hockey rink — but both were pointed there by the same person. This is the story of how they turned those parallel mentorships into PMco, a firm that finds the tenant, builds the space, and manages the property, all through one contact.
In the summer before Andrew Doucet ever touched a blueprint, he was cutting Doug Doucet's lawn. He'd come to Halifax wanting to be a chef, dropped that in about two weeks, and ended up getting pulled onto an RCS Construction job site for what was supposed to be a week of work. Fifteen years later he holds a Gold Seal in project management and runs construction operations in Nova Scotia for RCS.
Craig Duininck's introduction was more formal — he won the Sobeys Entrepreneurship Award at Saint Francis Xavier University, met Doug Doucet at the ceremony, and called him on graduation day. Doug's answer, as Craig tells it: "he said i don't have a role for you but come in we're gonna figure it out". That one conversation launched a career in real estate and construction.
In August 2020, with COVID rewriting the appetite for new commercial builds, the two men launched PMco Incorporated alongside RCS as the property management and small-projects arm of Doucet Developments. The business model they built is simple to describe and hard to copy: find the tenant, build the fit-up, manage the property — one company, one contact, start to finish.
The case for boots before credentials
Both Andrew and Craig came up through paths that don't fit the standard industry resume — no four-year construction management degree, no straightforward credential ladder. What they share is a conviction, stated plainly in this episode, that no single path into the industry is more valid than another.
Andrew's road from labourer to foreman to director ran through night shifts and small jobs. The small-jobs environment, in particular, was a forcing function: "you ate what you killed right so you really had to be estimating managing supervising whatever you're wearing so many different hats". That breadth — the ability to price, manage, and supervise on the same day — is the kind of thing you can't acquire by specializing on large projects from day one.
The credibility piece came later, through the Construction Association of Nova Scotia. "every cans course i took over those years all counted" toward Gold Seal, Andrew notes — and every one of those courses is accredited, applying at one credit per three hours of training toward the 25 credits the certification requires. For someone who arrived on a job site without a university degree: "i was always concerned with not having the schooling background and just having boots on the ground background that i wouldn't be taken serious". The Gold Seal put the stamp on what he'd already built.
For anyone weighing their path into the industry, both men give the same advice: work a summer on site before committing to any program. "work a summer job get on as a laborer be a sponge take it all in and see every aspect of it". The site sorts out what a classroom can't.
What Atlantic Canada's construction industry actually looks like
One of the more useful reframes in the episode concerns the industry's self-image. Construction in Atlantic Canada tends to get sold — and sometimes sells itself — as a trade, full stop. The reality on a commercial project is more complicated.
As both guests describe it, the region has, as they put it, "you got a real unique enmeshment of like white collar and blue collar and one doesn't happen without the other". The foreman tracking sub-trade schedules, the project manager writing specs, the director negotiating with developers — these are office functions wearing site gear. Neither credential type dominates; both experience imposter syndrome; and neither produces buildings without the other.
The business consequence of that enmeshment is what Craig built PMco on. His Saint FX real estate background gave him the leasing and property-management vocabulary; Andrew's fifteen years at RCS gave him the construction delivery side. Neither half of PMco exists without the other, which is a reasonable description of how the industry works at its best.
It also helps explain why Atlantic Canada's construction network is stickier than it might appear from the outside. "it's hard to leave when you start building a network because the thought goes where do you what do you do next". The market is small; everyone knows the principals; your reputation travels faster than your resume. That's an advantage if you build it early.
What naming does for your clients
One detail from Andrew's time building RCS's small-projects operation is worth pulling out because it touches something most contractors never think about: what they call the division.
The original unit was called the Small Jobs Division. It did the work. Clients came, jobs got done. Then Andrew noticed something: "people were kind of getting taken back by why am i dealing with a small jobs division this is my life savings". A first-time business owner spending everything they have to fit out their first location is not, psychologically, a small-jobs client. The work may be small in square footage; the stakes are not. Renaming it the Custom Projects Division changed who walked in the door — and how comfortable they felt once they were there.
The lesson applies past construction: if your offering's name undersells the client's investment, you're creating friction before you've quoted a number.
How COVID opened the market PMco was built for
PMco launched in August 2020 — not despite the pandemic, but because of what it was doing to commercial real estate. Tenants who might have looked for new locations in a normal year were, instead, staying put and adapting. "instead of opening new locations they were looking to renovate put a little bit of money staying where they are adapt to covid". That renovation wave fit exactly the small-to-mid commercial fit-up work PMco was built to do.
The integrated model they describe cuts a particular kind of waste out of the client's experience. In the conventional arrangement, a business owner looking for commercial space deals with a leasing agent, then a contractor, then separately with a property manager. Each party has partial context; none has the full picture; handoffs cost time and create confusion. PMco's answer: "we're the one contact the tenant is dealing with us on the leasing side and the landlord the developers dealing with us on all the server side".
A real Hammonds Plains example illustrates how that plays in practice. One client was guided from initial site selection through lease negotiation, space design, construction, and into ongoing property management — with PMco holding the thread at every stage. The client's job was to show up to their business. PMco handled the building.
The logic Craig articulates for why business owners should hand this off is direct: "they should or can be making money doing what they're really good at and then hand it off to us". The mental overhead of managing a fit-up or tracking building maintenance is real. If someone else can carry it competently, that's not a cost — it's how you protect your focus.
The relationship is the product
PMco's commercial strategy is not project-by-project. The clients they want are the ones who will need a second location, a third, ongoing maintenance, recurring fit-ups as they grow. "our goal is never one project it's not get in the door and do one little fit up and we're out it's the next one". That orientation — toward the relationship rather than the transaction — is what makes the integrated model worth building.
A single-contact firm across leasing, construction, and management becomes more valuable to a client over time, not less. The institutional memory of how a tenant uses their space, what the landlord's preferences are, what sub-trades work on the building — all of that compounds. The moat isn't the first fit-up; it's the fifth.
Andrew has also brought that community orientation beyond the business. He chaired the CANS Developing Executives program and co-chaired a mental health board focused on initiatives including the IWK Great Big Dig and Festival of Trees — the kind of outside work that shapes how an industry sees itself and what it offers the people inside it.
PMco and RCS Construction
PMco Incorporated is a full-service commercial property management, leasing, real estate brokerage, and construction fit-up firm operating across Atlantic Canada. Launched in August 2020, PMco is the integrated single-contact solution for commercial tenants and property owners who want site selection, fit-up construction, and ongoing management handled by one firm. Find them at pm-co.ca and on Instagram @pmcoinc, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
rcs construction inc. is the Atlantic Canadian general contractor that both Andrew and Craig trace their paths through — a mid-sized regional GC founded in 1996 as Retail Construction Specialists, now operating across all four Atlantic provinces from a Bedford, NS head office. Commercial, retail, hospitality, institutional, multi-storey residential, industrial. More at rcsinc.ca.
Guests: Andrew Doucet, P.GSC (President & Co-Founder, PMco Incorporated; Director of Construction NS, rcs construction) and Craig Duininck (Vice President & Co-Founder, PMco Incorporated). Episode 9 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Watch the full episode. CANS Gold Seal accreditation confirmed at cans.ns.ca.