At the construction site for one of North America’s newest carbon capture facilities, a jungle of steel beams and pipes rise from concrete pilings, embracing towering stacks in a dizzying jungle of metal.

Starting in the third quarter of 2027, the Shell Polaris carbon capture and storage (CCS) project will remove around 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from the Shell Scotford refinery. The gas will be funnelled via pipeline and permanently stored in a rock formation more than two kilometers underground.

Throughout the Shell Polaris CCS facility, aluminum trays wrap around steel beams. Each tray will be filled with dozens of high-voltage cables.

The process for planning and installing electrical cables and the trays that support them hasn’t changed much in recent decades, though advances in BIM  (building information modelling) have augmented the planning.  

Essentially, designers plan it out as accurately as they can from project plans, but much of the heavy lifting comes down to what’s known as “field run.” 

“We’d get engineering drawings and tape them all together and say, ‘OK, we have to go 500 meters from east to west, then vertical for 100 meters, then back 200 meters west to east,” says Chad Rezewski, preconstruction services coordinator in PCL’s Edmonton Industrial office. “It’s a maze. And then field run is even worse because you just get a start destination and an end destination and a cable length, and you find your own way.” 

Rezewski has used those methods to run thousands of kilometers of heavy industrial electrical cable over his more than 20-year career. He says the process is inefficient because there are constant surprises, like obstacles or other utilities in the way, forcing crews to be inefficient with their time and sometimes even reroute or repull long lengths of pricey cable. 

“We would sometimes choose a path, then find it had more steel supports than we expected, or a longer route than desired or find some other conflict and have to spend hours starting that cable pull over again,” he recalls.  

The time-consuming method results in risk to schedules, cost, performance and safety. Even small amounts of daily wasted time, effort and materials add up quickly.  

Part of the problem with the old system is that teams rarely had complete information about the area they were working in, and there was a lack of high-quality visual instruction to guide field crews on site. 

“When I was a young journeyman, I would be given a cable schedule, I would stare at it, picture it in my head and think ‘how do I do this?’” says Trevor Campbell, a superintendent for PCL Energy. “That is not efficient.” 

In recent years, inefficiencies embedded in industry norms have become a bigger problem. With a massive infrastructure deficit across North America colliding head-on with a growing skilled trade shortage, meeting the construction needs of today is challenging, and addressing the needs of tomorrow presents a growing concern. 

In 2016, Rezewski decided there had to be a better way. 

“That was just our standard industry practice for years and years, and we needed to challenge it and do a better job for our clients, our employees and ourselves.” 

When PCL was awarded an EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contract for a new oil refinery in Alberta in 2016, Rezewski and his team attempted to plan out as much of the cable routing as possible ahead of time, through digital modelling.

“My goal was consistency, with no conflicting opinions or personalities influencing the solution,” says Rezewski. 

By pre-mapping field run tray and cable runs, the team minimized unnecessary work and material usage and greatly improved the project schedule. The process proved valuable enough that the project owner requested PCL’s model when construction was complete. 

“There was added value for our clients because at turnover, they had more information on their operational space than they did when we got here,” says Rezewski.

That effort became the catalyst for a bigger goal: a system that can automate plans for routing cable runs in large construction projects. The idea for Project Beeline was born.

“Even though we hadn’t encountered it in the field, we knew it was possible to do something like this,” says Brian Gue, manager of Canadian Industrial's data science team. “And it was only possible because we’re standing on the shoulders of previous PCL teams and their proud history of going out and forging new, better ways of doing things.” 

The data science team at PCL has been around since 2021. Data scientists use advanced modeling and analytics, coding and AI algorithms to analyze complex datasets and provide real-world solutions. 

In this case, the objective was to create an automated tool to analyze the digital model of a large project during the preconstruction phase and determine the optimal routes and lengths of cable needed. From there, the goal was to create simple, visual representations of those routes, so when workers arrived on-site, they had clear plans that worked. 

Doing so required a high level of mathematical complexity. 

“At the get-go, it was not necessarily clear that this was a math problem,” says Orion Sehn, one of the data scientists on the team. “But we quickly realized through mathematical optimization, we could find a particular way to answer this problem.” 

“The math problem is big enough that it could apply to many different fields,” says Krizzia Concepcion, another data scientist on the team. “It just so happened that this particular problem, once worked out, had a construction application.” 

The team members leveraged open-source platforms, applied their own advanced algorithms to field data for optimization and assembled these components to develop a platform that can analyze every possibility at once and pick the best option based on a client’s specific goal, much like how a computer chess program identifies optimal moves. 

The name for the new tech suite, Beeline, was chosen because the new tech platform produces just that: the most direct line possible from point A to point B. 

“There’s no guesswork involved anymore,” says data scientist Rowan Andruko. “We developed something that gives teams not just a route, but estimated cable lengths, and what we’re finding is that they’re extremely accurate.” 

“What we have built is helping our self-perform field teams in their core activities,” says Gue. “There is less hunting around, more certainty, and clear, unambiguous communication supporting our teams’ work.”  

Back on-site at Shell Polaris CCS, crews forgo the usual long hikes in search of viable cable paths. This time, they review computer-generated renderings and immediately start cutting and running the cables.  

“With Beeline, we know we’re in the right spot and we can execute the run more efficiently,” says Campbell.  

“There’s no going back, trying a different route or length of cable. You finish the entire area much more quickly, and you can have two crews actively pulling cable in two different places without interfering with each other, because we know exactly where each crew is going to be.” 

Polaris is one of two sites where Beeline is now being piloted. Plans include expanding the use of the tech suite to more projects in the near future.

With more than a quarter of the electrical cabling now run at Shell Polaris CCS, the project team says every pull has been successful and no cables have been abandoned. Campbell believes the technology has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars or more on large projects.

“For our heat trace, it’s been phenomenal,” he says. “I would say there has been a 100% return on investment just by using the data and making the computer be the electrician. As this technology advances, it’s only going to get better.”

For Gue and his team, the goal has been to create simplicity out of complexity — moving from a difficult problem to a solution that’s easy to use. They believe Beeline has the potential to optimize the routing of electrical cable in much the same way Google Maps transformed the way we navigate cities and highways.

“Once the math is done, it still doesn't help anyone until we’ve created a visual that people can hold in their hands and make sense of,” says Gue.

“Yes, 100%, it’s Google Maps for construction,” says Rezewski. “That was the concept and they hit the nail on the head. We’re really answering the field’s request for more information in their hands quicker and allowing our employees to be more efficient with their tasks.

“As tradespeople we all like to work with a good plan that’s productive and efficient, rather than wasting time searching for things.  With Beeline, we’re also reducing our employees’ exposure to risk, because there's less climbing structures, crawling around scaffolds and searching unnecessarily for proper routing of our field run trays and cabling. That is a win in itself.”

It’s an effort that took decades of field experience, powerful data centre capability and sharp minds. The trick with Beeline — like much of the new technology being developed by PCL — was working together.

“We only come up with new concepts when we break down silos and work together  transparently, out in the open,” explains Gue. “That’s how we can fight inertia and make real innovation happen.”

In 2026, the Canadian Construction Association awarded their Excellence in Innovation Award to Beeline, recognizing the seismic shift that data analysis and digital rendering are bringing to an evolving industry. 

Gue says the tech tool has potential to one day be used in other construction sectors and even beyond electrical work.

“Electrical cabling is the case study,” he says. “The idea is to find solutions to difficult planning and execution challenges on complex projects. The more effectively we can communicate, the better our industry can execute.  We’re hearing from colleagues and industry peers, excited to consider how the same concepts can be applied in other ways.”

Ultimately, it’s about using science, artificial intelligence and technology as tools, paired with PCL’s passionate leadership, to make construction smarter, more efficient and safer — augmenting the ability of PCL’s people to build the future.