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Nialli began with a simple idea — and a critical insight from the field. Hear how feedback from PCL Construction inspired Nialli™ Visual Planner, a purpose-built solution for construction planning. This is the story of how real-world needs transformed an open digital canvas into a new kind of visual planning tool — and the people behind it. |
Nialli began, as many good things do, without a grand plan. Looking back, its origins are closely tied to the work David Martin and I began with Nureva, the company we founded in 2014 to explore better ways for teams to collaborate.
One of Nureva’s early products was Span software — a general-purpose digital canvas designed for ideation. It offered an open, flexible environment where people could create, explore and organize their thinking using digital sticky notes. Span was intentionally unstructured, mirroring the freedom of a whiteboard and giving teams the ability to work quickly without constraints.
Span was useful. People responded well to it. But it was also, in some ways, incomplete.
The turning point came at a Stanford University event when an individual from PCL Construction saw what we had created. Rather than simply accept Span as it was, he saw the possibility of adapting our new tool and modeling it on the Last Planner System® (LPS), a well-established methodology in construction planning that brings discipline to how work is organized and executed. He was particularly intrigued by the opportunity for many people to simultaneously interact across a large surface using our Nureva® Wall.
With Lean principles in mind, he described the need for clearly defined lanes representing different areas of work, colored tags representing different trades, time periods for scheduling, coordinated planning across teams and a workflow that reflected how construction projects actually operate. It was not a request for incremental improvement. It was inspirational feedback that would lead to a full reframing.
We took that input seriously.
We immediately began to study the Last Planner System in depth. We spent time understanding not just the mechanics of the process but the intent behind it — the need for alignment across trades, commitment-based planning and visual coordination to keep complex projects on track. It became clear that this was not just another use case for Span. It was an opportunity to build something much more purposeful.
The ethnographic research we subsequently conducted was critical to understanding the subtleties of both LPS and how people work together effectively in the jobsite trailer using the analog sticky-note process. PCL welcomed us onto their jobsites to observe their teams using paper sticky notes. The deep understanding we gained was essential to ensuring no critical element was lost in the transition to digital.
We assembled a small, focused team — expert developers paired with a user experience designer — and asked them to move quickly. The goal was simple: Create a working prototype that translated the principles of LPS into a digital environment.
There was no lengthy specification process or extended debate. We built, tested and refined in rapid cycles, adding structure without losing the intuitive nature of working with visual elements.
When we invited PCL back to review the prototype, the response was immediate and unmistakable. There was a sense of recognition — they could see the LPS process reflected in our tool — and a sense of excitement about what it made possible. This digital version of LPS didn’t just replicate existing workflows. It improved accessibility, visibility and coordination in ways that physical sticky-note boards could not.
Based on their reaction, we decided to move forward in a more focused way. In 2020, we created Nialli Inc. as a separate company, pulling people out of Nureva to dedicate themselves fully to this new direction and providing funding to bring the vision to life. Nialli was not yet a fully formed company in the traditional sense, but its launch represented a clear commitment to building a solution for a specific industry need.
Of course, enthusiasm is not the same as proof.
We were acutely aware that the real test would be whether construction companies would adopt Nialli™ Visual Planner and, ultimately, pay to use it. With full transparency that we were still at an early, alpha stage, we shared the software with a few forward-thinking individuals in companies willing to explore its potential.
What happened next exceeded our expectations.
After some early exploratory meetings, PCL chose to deploy Nialli Visual Planner on three construction projects — TD Terrace in Toronto, the ConRAC facility at LAX and the Calgary Cancer Centre, a billion-dollar development. This latter project was not a pilot in a controlled environment or a limited trial. It involved full-scale use in a complex, high-stakes setting and it helped PCL deliver on time and on budget.
Working closely with PCL gave us something invaluable: the opportunity to observe, learn and adapt in real time. We were able to see how teams across multiple companies interacted with Nialli Visual Planner in the flow of their daily work. We saw where the software supported them and where it needed to be improved. We learned how critical it was for the system to be both robust and effortless — capable of handling the complexity of large-scale projects without introducing friction.
From the beginning, our focus has been on making our digital planning system both powerful and easy to use. That balance is not accidental. It reflects a core belief that for a product to deliver its full value, it must impose as little burden as possible on the people using it.
Intuitive design is particularly important in construction. Many of the people using Visual Planner software spend their days away from computers. Their primary work is building — coordinating trades, managing timelines and solving problems on-site. Our software is there to support that work and not become work itself.
Looking back, it’s striking how much of our journey can be traced to early conversations with a single company. We didn’t set out to build a construction planning solution — we were nudged in that direction by someone who saw the potential in what we had created and was willing to articulate how it could be better aligned to his real-world needs.
That perspective changed everything. It gave us a clear direction, a meaningful problem to solve and a daily sense of purpose that continues to drive our work at Nialli. We feel fortunate that someone took the time to challenge us and share their insight. That moment of clarity led to a product, a company and an ongoing commitment to helping construction teams everywhere plan and build more effectively.
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