With a workforce that fluctuates between 50 and 100 employees depending on active projects, MECC Infrastructure Group operates in a highly complex labour environment involving multiple unions, changing job sites, and strict Canadian payroll compliance requirements.

As the company continued to grow, it began searching for a modern workforce and payroll platform that could support its operational complexity without adding administrative overhead.

The Challenge

MECC Infrastructure Group’s payroll operations had become increasingly difficult to manage due to generic payroll software and manual processes.

The company was handling payroll internally for a fluctuating workforce across three unions, each with different wage structures, fringes, benefits, and dues requirements. Payroll processing required significant manual oversight, including tax remittances, ROEs, EFTs, and job cost allocations tied to active construction projects.

The process relied heavily on spreadsheets and repetitive manual work. Project managers were manually entering crew time into spreadsheets. Payroll clerks were double-entering the same data into accounting software. Before Lumber, the team was spending 6 to 8 hours every week just on the payroll process, which included tasks like recording, entering, processing, and getting bank approvals.

At the same time, it was modernizing its broader operational systems and needed a payroll platform that could integrate cleanly into its construction workflows without creating duplicate data entry or disconnected systems.

Why MECC Infrastructure Group chose Lumber

MECC Infrastructure Group selected Lumber because it was purpose-built for Canadian construction payroll and compliance, and also because they operate in complex multi-union environments.

Lumber provided MECC Infrastructure Group with:

• Automated multi-union payroll management
• Canadian payroll compliance support for EI, CPP, tax remittances, ROEs, and T4s
• Automated fringe, benefit, and dues calculations
• Job cost allocation tied directly to projects and cost codes
• Role-based access for field and office teams
• Bidirectional integration with the company’s construction management systems to eliminate duplicate entry

Most importantly, Lumber delivered automation without removing operational control from the MECC Infrastructure Group. They retained full visibility and approval authority while Lumber automated the heavy administrative workload behind the scenes.

Lumber’s ability to support a fluctuating workforce while simplifying compliance workflows became a major differentiator during the evaluation process.

Results on the ground

The impact was immediate and measurable. Payroll time dropped from 6 to 8 hours per week down to 1 to 2 hours (a reduction of up to 75% in administrative time).

Two of the biggest manual tasks were eliminated:

• Foremen can now enter crew time directly in the field, removing the project manager from the data entry process entirely.
• Payroll clerks no longer re-enter data into accounting software; in other words, the double-entry problem is gone.

The integration of payroll and operational systems has simplified job-costing workflows for the finance team and eliminated duplicate data entry across systems. MECC now has a scalable payroll and compliance foundation that supports continued growth across complex projects.