Lightyear Case Study: Aecon

Aecon is a leader in infrastructure development, managing impactful construction projects in civil, nuclear, industrial, and urban transportation. With offices and sites across North America, Aecon's growth demands scalable, reliable IT operations.

Meet the Client

Aecon is a North American leader in construction and infrastructure development, delivering some of the most impactful construction projects in the civil, nuclear, industrial, utilities and urban transportation sectors. With offices and work locations across North America, Aecon’s growth demands a scalable, reliable, and high-performing IT operation.

Andy Matthews, Director of Technology and Operations at Aecon, oversees a team of nearly 50 IT professionals supporting more than 15,000 users across Aecon’s construction group, subsidiaries, and joint operation projects. His team is responsible for delivering comprehensive technology infrastructure—including networking, computer storage, enterprise applications, identity management, and integrations—while also providing critical IT services such as job site mobilization, office deployment, endpoint management, and on-site technical assistance.

In a recent Lightyear webinar—and as a 2024 Lightyear Luminaries of Telecom award recipient—Andy shared how Aecon partnered with Lightyear to manage this heavy load and modernize their complex telecom operation.

Procurement in a Constantly Shifting Landscape

Aecon operates within a diverse telecom landscape consisting of constantly shifting sites as new projects come online and others shut down. With dozens of business units and active projects spread across the continent, procurement was historically handled independently at the site level.

Andy found that every time the team had a new service request, it became a mixed bag of experiences. His team spent hours conducting research, working directly with carriers trying to figure out what was on and off net, defaulting to the “big names” out of convenience, and conducting manual follow-ups once a contract was awarded to ensure the service was installed. 

Spending weeks chasing ISP quotes and managing manual telecom processes simply wasn’t going to be sustainable.

Automated ISP Quoting

Looking for a better way, Andy discovered Lightyear’s free-to-use Procurement platform. He began by launching a few site RFPs and was immediately struck by how simple the process was: input the service location, specify configuration needs, and Lightyear Procurement did the rest.

With Lightyear, Andy could easily see a side-by-side comparison of all available carriers, pricing, and options—something that previously took weeks of manual research and outreach to achieve. He can also rest assured that he’s getting back the best prices available. Lightyear’s proprietary pricing intelligence leverages 1M+ price points and live market data to ensure bids received are always in line with the best rates possible. 

This ability to source carriers in as little as hours, means Aecon can confidently deploy connectivity to project sites on tight timelines and at reduced costs,  without sacrificing redundancy.

Complete Network Inventory Visibility

One-off service requests were just the beginning. Andy had another challenge lurking beneath the surface: visibility into the existing network footprint. With circuits sourced locally scattered across ISP portals and manually-maintained spreadsheets, Aecon was able to bring in hundreds of existing circuits into the platform leveraging Lightyear’s Network Inventory Manager. The Lightyear team reviewed every contract, ISP web portal, and billing statement to onboard and normalize network data behind a single, digital pane of glass. 

This consolidation of data helped discover approximately $700k in annual savings, offsetting Lightyear's cost by more than 50x in the first year alone.

Beyond cost savings, the time Aecon's team has gained back is equally significant. Instead of juggling different ISP portals with unique logins and interfaces, they now log into Lightyear to view their entire network footprint—past, present, and planned. The field teams are then empowered to do the same, with full visibility at their fingertips:

Looking Ahead: Scaling with Confidence

Today, Andy’s team operates with unprecedented visibility and control over Aecon’s telecom infrastructure. With Lightyear, they can instantly identify connectivity options in new markets—enabling them to confidently bid on projects in unfamiliar regions, knowing they’ll have reliable, cost-effective service from day one.

Each RFP flows directly into Lightyear’s Network Inventory Manager, freeing the IT team to focus on supporting Aecon’s growth.

As Aecon continues to move south of the border and expand across North America, they're now building on the foundation of a modern, automated telecom operation—purpose-built to scale with them.