How Bruno Builders Built a Vertically Integrated GC in Halifax — Procore Lessons, Labour Shortage Realities, and 700 Units in Downtown Dartmouth

Bruno Builders founder Elliot MacNeil and commercial construction manager Evan Boutilier trace a decade of people-first GC growth in HRM — covering vertical integration into multi-residential development, Procore adoption lessons, and a coaching-over-sink-or-swim hiring philosophy.

Episode 50 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast features two guests from Bruno Builders Group: Elliot MacNeil, founder and president, and Evan Boutilier, commercial construction manager. Elliot's backstory spans a digital-design agency exit, owner-rep consulting, and spotting a gap for a mid-sized GC that combined operational rigour with a people-first culture — a positioning he credits to carrying advertising-world relationship skills into construction. Evan came up through carpentry in Oklahoma, earned a construction management diploma at NSCC, and worked site-super and PM roles before joining Bruno. The conversation covers Bruno Group's three-entity structure (Bruno Builders for commercial/residential GC work; Black and Brew for multi-residential CM; Sidewalk Red for development), the Centennial Office Tower conversion and a 700-unit pipeline in downtown Dartmouth, the labour-shortage reality and a coaching-model approach to developing talent, and a candid Procore implementation account — signed up July 2021, underestimated the change-management effort, only two months into finance-system synchronization at time of recording. The episode closes with Bruno's four core values (be open, be better, be kind, be bold) framed as a hiring and exit framework, and a shout-out to the internal team.