Edmonton-based company looks to big data to stay competitive

Williams Engineering Canada is embarking on what’s described as an “experiment” as it looks to become more efficient in the search for new business.

“We’re focused on research and development, which is an unusual thing for an engineering company to do,” the company’s president and CEO, Naseem Bashir, explained.

The transition started several years before the downturn, with a push to find work beyond Alberta.

“Unless you actually disrupt yourselves, you will get disrupted from somewhere else.”

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The scope of change expanded when Bashir learned more about AltaML, a growing Edmonton machine learning and artificial intelligence company.

“If we’re more efficient than the next guy, in an economy that’s not doing that well, then maybe we got a leg up,” Bashir said.

The partnership will develop a platform which will use artificial intelligence to harvest vast amounts of Williams Engineering data with the hope to be more competitive when bidding on new work.

Cory Janssen, co-founder and CEO of AltaML, describes it as “a tool to a help a professional make better decisions in terms of what projects to take on, how to cost it and so forth.”

“We think we can build a tool that can be exported to the world.”

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If the partnership proves successful, there could be spin-offs, with the platform adapted for related industries like architectural services or construction.

“We think that this has potential to be a large company on its own and is part of that eco-system and part of what we’re seeing in terms of the next generation of start ups right here in Alberta,” Janssen said.

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Williams Engineering continues to weather the downturn the best it can. Simply waiting for a boom isn’t an option.

“If you don’t go out and experiment and start to change the way that you do things in your business, then you could get left behind,” Bashir said.

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