McCarthy Building Companies Achieves 90% AI Adoption With Prosci

McCarthy Building Companies needed to implement Glean, an AI-powered work platform, to maintain their competitive edge while keeping their people-first values central. Prosci's consulting partnership delivered 90% adoption in 30 days, freed resources two months ahead of schedule, and created portfolio visibility across three major AI initiatives.

Challenge

McCarthy Building Companies had a critical business imperative: maintain their competitive edge as an innovation leader in commercial construction through enterprise AI adoption. The successful implementation of Glean, an enterprise AI platform for search, chat, knowledge management, and task automation, would help build the foundation necessary for future technology and transformation initiatives.

Their vision for Glean required a thoughtful approach that honored McCarthy’s core values—putting their people first, listening to feedback, and ensuring partners across the organization felt engaged and supported throughout this business-critical initiative.

McCarthy identified several key areas where partnering with Prosci would strengthen their existing capabilities and position them for even greater success:

Coordinating across distributed teams and regional divisions. McCarthy's offices across the United States required enterprise-wide alignment. Previous technology rollouts highlighted opportunities to strengthen communications, standardization, and regional coordination—improvements McCarthy sought to achieve with the Glean rollout.

Creating a single source of truth for portfolio strategy. With three major AI initiatives and multiple sub-initiatives underway, McCarthy had dispersed views of these efforts but lacked a unified, holistic perspective. They recognized the opportunity to gain strategic visibility into interdependencies and optimize sequencing for maximum impact while managing organizational capacity.

Demonstrating immediate value for field teams. Field teams had limited time for new tools when their focus was delivering projects. They needed to see how AI directly supported their work. McCarthy understood that showing clear, practical applications would be essential to earning trust and engagement across their distributed workforce.

Building trust through transparent communication. Employees had questions about AI's role in their future and its broader implications. McCarthy saw this as an opportunity to lead with transparency, addressing questions about job security and technology impact head-on while demonstrating their commitment to their people-first values. As a 100% employee-owned company, it was imperative for McCarthy to be intentional with how this new technology would be received by its partners.

Accelerating adoption within a compressed timeline. When Prosci was engaged, Glean was four weeks from go-live. McCarthy needed a structured, proven approach to achieve rapid adoption and ensure the organization had both the skills and tools in place to enable the success of upcoming projects, including an ERP implementation and future AI initiatives.

Solution

Prosci began with a demonstration engagement focused on the Glean implementation that positioned McCarthy for success:

Building alignment across silos.

Prosci aligned stakeholders on success definition and project health, establishing clear outcome metrics so McCarthy had quantitative targets to aim for and could measure success with certainty. This foundation ensured all regions understood their role in supporting employees through the AI transition.

Equipping the distributed workforce.

Prosci coached McCarthy's internal certified practitioners and provided strategies for supporting people managers. McCarthy mapped specific use cases—from superintendents finding PTO policies to automating survey analysis—showing employees how AI helps them focus on high-value work.

Meeting employees where they are through varied education.

McCarthy deployed multiple learning approaches to reach their diverse workforce: peer group workshops and presentations for collaborative learning, educational materials from senior leaders and frontline managers via email, regional virtual trainings for distributed teams, video micro-trainings for specific skills, and field presentations tailored for construction site partners. This multi-channel approach ensured every employee had access to the support they needed.

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Building trust through listening and consistent communication.

Prosci coached leaders to use direct, supportive language explaining that AI wouldn't replace jobs—it would enable employees to focus on high-value work like strategic thinking and team building. By listening to questions about job security and addressing them transparently, McCarthy transformed concern into confident adoption.

Accelerating results under tight timelines.

Prosci's structured approach included fast-tracking communications, creating feedback loops, and developing a change agent network strategy that delivered adoption ahead of schedule—ensuring Glean was ready before an upcoming ERP implementation.

Creating portfolio visibility.

Beyond phase one of the project, Prosci developed a custom Change Portfolio Dashboard, integrating McCarthy’s three major AI initiatives (with multiple nested sub-initiatives)—providing their first holistic view. The dashboard includes risk assessments, sponsor mapping, timeline overlays, and modeling to enhance project decision making and mitigate change saturation on an enterprise and business unit level.

"Having Prosci to validate our approach and fill in knowledge gaps made a huge difference. They helped us see blind spots we wouldn't have caught on our own. It elevated our entire change management practice."

– Rico Bertucci, Vice President of Innovation

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Results

McCarthy's people-centric approach to the Glean implementation delivered exceptional adoption rates, positioning them for immediate business impact and long-term AI adoption success:

90% active engagement in the first month—exceeding the original 70% target set for three months out. This wasn't a spike that faded; sustained usage remained at 85% monthly, indicating employees engaged with the messaging efforts and found genuine value in the tool.

AI agent usage delivered measurable efficiency gains. Glean answered 59,000 questions on policy and procedure, 12,000 on salaried and craft benefits, and 11,000 on ERP topics in the first 6 months—eliminating thousands of “phone-a-friend” calls and saving significant time across the business.

Two months ahead of schedule—with cascading benefits. By reaching adoption targets early, McCarthy freed project resources and team capacity for other priorities. The six-week sprint ensured Glean launched ahead of a major ERP implementation, accelerating readiness and reducing overlap with other enterprise initiatives. This demonstrates how effective change management creates business velocity, not just risk reduction.

Synergistic platform adoption amplified impact. Having Glean in place allowed McCarthy to prepare training and adoption ahead of the ERP implementation. They used Glean for ERP training, which drove a significant spike in usage as the tool was readily available. Launching both platforms within one month of each other increased the effective adoption of both—demonstrating how disciplined change management on one initiative strengthens related implementations.

Leaders declared it one of the most successful tech rollouts they've ever had.  McCarthy’s emphasis on listening, trust-building, and education paid off. Internal sentiment scores were high, approximately 87% of surveyed partners had positive responses to Glean in the first 6 months. This reflects strong employee confidence and enthusiasm for AI adoption, reinforcing that success was rooted in a people-centric strategy.

Strong foundation for future AI enables business strategy. The successful Glean rollout established organizational trust in AI, data integrity for advanced applications, proven change capability for replication, and user confidence positioning McCarthy to continue pioneering AI adoption in the construction industry.

Portfolio visibility drives strategic decision-making. The custom Change Portfolio Dashboard gives McCarthy unprecedented insight into their three major AI initiatives, including risk levels, sponsor engagement, timeline conflicts, and modeling for optimal sequencing. McCarthy is now considering how to use this dashboard beyond just AI projects to inform portfolio strategy and prevent change saturation.

"For the first time, we can manage change at enterprise scale, not just project by project. The Change Portfolio Dashboard Prosci built shows us interdependencies we couldn't see before and helps us make calculated decisions around factors like resource allocation and timing. It's become essential for leading our company’s approach to AI transformation."

– Ryan Soltes, Innovation Senior Analyst’

McCarthy's commitment to putting their partners first, combined with Prosci's consulting partnership, delivered exceptional results and built sustainable capability—positioning them to continue impressive AI adoption as one of the oldest and largest general contractors in the US.

"This wasn't just about rolling out one AI tool—it was about proving we can do AI adoption at scale. The success of Glean gives us confidence to tackle future transformation initiatives to maintain our position as an innovation leader in commercial construction. We built organizational trust in AI and established the data integrity we need to keep moving forward."

– Rico Bertucci, Vice President of Innovation