As legal director of prevention, dispute resolution, and litigation at Pomerleau, one of Canada’s largest construction companies with revenues of $5 billion, Rob Wilson handles a diverse portfolio of complex legal issues.
Wilson’s career started in general litigation, but it didn’t take long for him to gravitate toward construction law. “It often involved the review of long engineering expert reports that other lawyers weren’t that interested in. But I enjoyed the intricacies of how a problem arose and what caused it,” he says. As a result, Wilson took on many of the construction-
related cases that passed through the firm, often dealing with subcontractor disputes, liens, and various contract issues.
This early experience laid the groundwork for Wilson’s move to Vancouver, where he joined a boutique litigation firm specializing in surety law. Surety law is “a specialized guarantee program for construction projects,” Wilson explains. “That got me involved in the details of what a large construction project looks like, what kind of disputes arise, how it gets finished, and how surety steps in to help owners and subcontractors who aren’t getting paid.”
Wilson’s next move after his stint in Vancouver took him and his family to Ottawa, where he joined Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in 2018. There, he worked on significant infrastructure projects across Canada, handling high-profile construction disputes for private and public developments. However, just as the COVID-19 pandemic started, his career took a new direction when he was approached about a position with Pomerleau.
“I knew the company and its reputation,” he recalls. “They were a top-five general contractor in Canada… and it seemed like a really interesting position.”
Wilson’s decision to move in-house coincided with one of the most disruptive periods in the construction industry, as the pandemic threw supply chains and project schedules into chaos. “The whole industry was on fire because force majeure was something that you always glossed over in a contract, but it all of a sudden had a whole bunch of attention,” he says. Like many companies, Pomerleau faced a slew of claims related to project delays, shutdowns, and the increased costs of safety measures. Even when work resumed, social distancing and safety protocols meant productivity slowed dramatically.
“Even to this day, we’re still dealing with impacts from COVID,” Wilson says.
In his current role at Pomerleau, Wilson oversees a litigation team dealing with various legal issues. “Globally, we have a team of seven lawyers and three support staff. Between us, we have about 265 active disputes across the country,” he says. The scale of these disputes ranges from smaller contractual disagreements to claims exceeding $100 million. His team handles everything from environmental and regulatory matters to employment disputes and Indigenous issues.
While dispute resolution is a significant part of his job, Wilson emphasizes that much of his focus is on preventing litigation. Pomerleau’s legal department is proactive, offering guidance to project managers on contract rights and obligations as soon as issues arise to avoid full-blown litigation.
“If we can give them advice on what the contract says and what our rights are and what the other party’s rights are, and that resolves it at the outset, that’s a major win for us,” he says. However, disputes are often inevitable. “With any construction contract, there’s always going to be a fight,” he says.
Pomerleau’s investment in technology further bolsters Wilson’s strategic approach to legal disputes. The company uses sophisticated document-management and file-tracking systems to streamline its operations, but Wilson’s team is also working on more cutting-edge tools. The company’s R&D department has helped his team develop an AI chat-based program to ask questions about contracts and pull out critical information in an answer format.
One of the most innovative tools Pomerleau has developed is an early-warning system that monitors project forecasts for signs of potential trouble. “If we do have an active file and the forecast is, all of a sudden, showing signs of a historical project that had similar issues, it sets off an alert and says legal needs to be involved,” Wilson explains. This alert prompts the legal team to step in before problems escalate.
Pomerleau relies heavily on external counsel when disputes arise, particularly for highly specialized matters like environmental or Indigenous issues. However, Wilson has clear preferences for external counsel: “The most appreciated external counsel that we have are the ones that [are] not only excellent lawyers and have a good understanding of the construction process and construction law, but they come to the table with a very practical, business-minded focus,” he says. His priority is always to find resolutions that preserve Pomerleau’s relationships within the industry rather than prolong disputes unnecessarily.
The delays in the civil justice system have further pushed Pomerleau toward alternative dispute resolution methods. “Our typical preference is for arbitration,” Wilson says, noting that it allows for more control over timelines and can resolve even complex matters faster than traditional litigation. “We know if it goes towards litigation, we could be talking about a five-year process,” he says.
However, arbitration is not without its drawbacks. Since the decisions are confidential, they do not contribute to developing common law precedents, which Wilson sees as a missed opportunity for the industry.
Looking ahead, Wilson is optimistic about the role of technology in the legal profession, especially in enhancing efficiency. Pomerleau is trialling an e-billing system that uses AI to streamline the review of legal invoices, flag any anomalies, and allow lawyers to focus on higher-priority tasks.
“We’re always looking at different technology that we can use to make us more efficient, have us more accessible to the rest of the company, and just do our jobs better overall.”
Profile
Name: Rob Wilson
Company: Pomerleau
Title: Legal director – prevention, dispute resolution, and litigation
Key dates:
2024: appointed legal director – prevention, dispute resolution, and litigation
2022: appointed head of service – litigation, dispute resolution, and prevention
2020: joined Pomerleau
2018: joined Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG)
2016: joined Whitelaw Twining Law Corporation
2012: joined McLeod Law LLP
Pomerleau
- Head office in Saint-Georges, Quebec
- Founded in 1966
- $5 billion in annual revenue in 2023
- 5,000+ employees in 11 offices in Canada
- 200+ project worksites across Canada
Litigation department
- Seven lawyers, two paralegals, and one legal assistant
- 265 active matters in eight provinces
- Value of matter ranging from 10s of thousands to more than $100 million
- Areas of practice: construction, environmental, regulatory, employment and labour, Indigenous