UHN Toronto Western Hospital

1. Project Context

EllisDon is leading University Health Network's (UHN) largest capital project to date: a 15-storey, $750M surgical tower featuring 82 private patient rooms and 20 advanced operating rooms.

Key Challenges

EllisDon engaged Crewscope to mitigate elevated schedule risk such as:

No room for schedule slippage as funding depends on ongoing private donations.
Tight urban site with no storage space and complex multi-trade sequencing.
Risk of permit-related stoppages.
Traditional trade weekly meetings are complex and too slow to prevent miscommunication.

2. Crewscope’s Role

Crewscope was built for self-performing teams. Chris Masse, the EllisDon General Superintendent, saw the opportunity to adopt this functionality and shape it for third-party collaboration. Masse invited Crewscope to automate and accelerate the existing process, rather than replace it with a new one.

Schedule integration. Crewscope connects directly with FieldWire, the master schedule, and pulls four-week lookaheads into trade-specific work packages.

Planning participation. Foremen get SMS lookaheads days in advance of the lookahead meeting so they can prepare. The SMS includes a calendar link, which they receive on paper at the lookahead meeting.

Real-time worker communication. After the lookahead meeting, the updated plan is confirmed and everyone on site, including workers, gets trade specific targets for the upcoming week.

Measure field performance. Foreman and workers get progress updates to understand performance. When goals are achieved, the team earns points. Points are used to calculate forecast accuracy to keep everyone accountable.

Celebrate team wins. Points can be converted into fun and meaningful recognition for workers to say ‘thanks’ and build site camaraderie.

3. Outcomes

Schedule risk mitigation - Crewscope kept the project ahead of baseline schedule. This built resilience against disruptions, critical in hospital projects where reputational damage from delays is unacceptable.
100% jobsite adoption - Within eight weeks, supervisors, trades, and UHN’s permit team were fully engaged, embedding accountability and alignment across the workforce. Critical path participants:
- Concrete Forming: Dual Forming
- Rebar: Nucor Rebar
- MEP: Plan Group
Client visibility and zero permit stoppages - Integrating UHN’s permit process demonstrated operational excellence and eliminated risk, ensuring no interruptions on a zero-tolerance schedule.
Faster communication & decisions - Lookaheads are shared within hours instead of days, improving foremen collaboration and participation. Blockers are identified early and resolved before becoming delays.
Clarity and ownership - Prior to Crewscope, pour dates could shift at a moment’s notice, creating confusion and unclear expectations. Now, SMS summaries and live calendars strengthened sequencing, reduced conflicts, and increased alignment.
Recognition Loop - A modest financial value was attached to the reward points. Workers used Crewscope to redeem their points for gift cards, which they received by email. Converting field performance into a meaningful reward drives the cycle, improving execution and reducing client risk.

4. Stakeholder Feedback

“Crewscope helped ensure our plans are done on time and shared with the crews early. It enabled better trade collaboration, giving structure to how we plan. It’s effective when the whole site uses it, and I wish we had implemented this earlier in the project to get faster adoption. Crewscope facilitates site communication and keeps trades accountable."

– Chris Masse, General Superintendent, EllisDon

5. Future Applications

Leaders like Masse shows that simple tools and vision transform multi-trade collaboration and execution. Getting field data into the hands of the people doing the work improves efficiency and reduces risk.

Seamless integration with existing systems and a simple tool built for the field enables quick adoption. Leaders like Masse take innovation and build a repeatable scalable model that can be used across any multi-party project.

Structured field data collected by Crewscope is a powerful differentiator and indicator of future performance. It supports healthy relationships built on trust and execution.

Clients define contractual performance targets, measure trades against contracts, and get visibility into execution.

Construction Managers uses trade performance data to select top-performing trades based on quantifiable data.

Site Superintendent build a digital record of project execution that can be included in bids for similar projects.

Trades use their accuracy rate to differentiate on schedule execution, justify higher pricing on schedule value, and identify top crews to invest in training.

Workers use their performance data to track experience and qualify for work.

Visual calendar displaying the critical-path milestones by trade. This calendar is linked to the Fieldwire master schedule, shared via SMS, and printed to support the weekly lookahead meeting. When viewing the calendar online, it is dynamic and can be filtered by trade.