Hungry for growth, WalterFedy is testing AI but not losing sight of how talent develops

It’s a critical time for Canada’s economy and its business community. The country needs innovation and growth more than ever, yet businesses across a wide range of industries are facing trade disruptions, rising costs and technological change, among other challenges. This series profiles forward-thinking Canadian companies that are growing their markets by re-examining their business practices and trying new things.

WalterFedy turned 75 this year, but the architectural, engineering and construction management company’s growth over the past half-decade is more in tune with a tech scale-up than a legacy firm.

“We were about 150 people at the start of COVID,” says Garth Cressman, chief executive officer of WalterFedy, which was founded in Kitchener, Ont. “We’ve more than doubled since then.”

The company has expanded to six offices: Kitchener, Hamilton, two in Toronto and a pair it opened in Western Canada over the last three years – Calgary and Edmonton. That regional expansion has allowed the company to work on major projects ranging from schools, hospitals and mixed-use modular projects to critical infrastructure like the Shaganappi Pump Station in Calgary and the Darlington New Nuclear Project in Ontario.

Sustaining that rapid pace of growth requires both recruiting and developing senior talent in-house. “You cannot grow a business without adding principals or adding senior project leaders to your team,” says Mr. Cressman. However, artificial intelligence is forcing firms like WalterFedy to rethink how they train and grow talent.

Mr. Cressman says AI tools are automating the tasks that used to help junior team members develop the “engineering judgment” and skills that translate into more seniority.

“I’m worried about how AI is stripping all industries, but our industry in particular, of some of these lower-level tasks that we’re using as a platform to train and develop staff,” says Mr. Cressman. “AI is disrupting the way we’ve done things historically.”

A coming talent shortage

Founded as HK Walter & Associates in 1951, WalterFedy went through a series of acquisitions and partnerships over the years, expanding from industrial projects into a multidisciplinary firm offering electrical, mechanical, structural and civil engineering alongside architecture, construction management services and energy and carbon solutions.

The firm has used that multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to its advantage, pairing architects with engineers to turn around projects more efficiently, an asset that has helped the company compete with larger multinationals. Teams within the organization often function as a pyramid: a senior principal with two or three senior engineers working under them, then a base of six or so intermediate and a dozen juniors to support.

All layers of the pyramid are vital to WalterFedy’s growth. Canada is in the midst of an infrastructure spree with 27 nation-building initiatives on the new Major Projects Office: new ports, mines and energy corridors representing around $500-billion in new private investment. Some of it will be outside WalterFedy’s wheelhouse, “but there’s a lot of infrastructure work that is coming through the pipe,” says Mr. Cressman.

The industry is already facing a shortage of civil engineers, which will be exacerbated in the next decade as a third of those currently in the sector are over the age of 50 and expected to retire, according to the federal government’s Canadian Occupational Projection System. The architectural job market shows a more balanced picture; however, it is also facing a wave of retirements as its workforce ages.

Vaidila Banelis, a senior partner at Toronto-based Zeidler Architecture and vice-chair and director at the Canadian Association for the Practice of Architecture (CAPA), says talent is on the minds of architecture firms as they look to raise the next generation of leaders. CAPA, which launched this year, has developed a roundtable to discuss how to continue to make the business attractive to the next generation. “We want to make sure the profession doesn’t fade away,” he says.

Intentionally hands-on

Mr. Cressman says that WalterFedy is still trying to find the balance between the efficiencies and opportunities created by AI and the effect it has on the firm’s ability to develop its talent. But the industry is already embracing it, he says.

He uses a multi-tenant residential project as an example. A few years ago, the team would sit down with a client and provide three concepts based on those initial discussions. “With AI, you can present 100 concepts in a very short amount of time,” he says. “Our whole value proposition is about delivering an amazing project experience to our client, so if our competitors are doing that and we are not… we’re going to be falling behind our competitors.”

Susan McCahan, an expert on the engineering learning environment and professor at the University of Toronto, says the balancing act will require employers to be more intentional about how they work with their junior engineers to ensure they are continuing to develop so they are ready to take on more senior roles.

Ms. McCahan says firms like WalterFedy could have junior people review AI work for accuracy, completion and whether it demonstrates sound reasoning before it goes to management. “It is not just a ‘dummy check’,” she says. “It helps the junior person learn how the work happens and become fluent in managing AI co-work.”

Inviting junior employees to walk the manager through the AI-generated work is also a helpful way to gain competency. “In engineering, we should not be relying on work we do not understand and cannot explain,” Ms. McCahan says.

Building the funnel for the future

A critical part of WalterFedy’s talent development starts with its co-op student program. That’s where Mr. Cressman got his start in 1999 (he took over as CEO in 2020). This past summer, the company had 30 co-op students across the country, the highest intake yet.

“Even in tough years, you’ve got to commit to hiring young graduates,” he says. “The quickest way to ensure you have a talent gap in the future is to turn off the tap today.”

WalterFedy is already adapting its approach with its co-op cohort, encouraging them to work on “high-order activities” sooner with more hands-on supervision. Mr. Cressman admits that it’s different than when he was in the co-op program and left to grind away on menial tasks for a few days. But with its growth ambitions, WalterFedy has no choice but to adapt.

“I don’t think we’ve got it solved yet,” he says. “But we’re experimenting.”