SIERA builds the runway for sustained strong growth

SIERA engineered its capability ahead of its projects. It uses Procore to connect development and construction, hold one record across both, and carry the standard it set on smaller buildings into much larger ones.

SIERA News | The full story behind our Procore case study. A shorter version was published by Procore in October 2026.

The Challenge

SIERA has always run on strong systems. The challenge, as the business moved into larger and denser projects, was building systems that could scale with it.

"Building a vertically integrated development and construction company was always the goal," Brent says. "I grew up in a house where Dad was a builder, and I spent the ten years after school working my way into a position to do it, through a carpentry apprenticeship, construction management, and then my own builder's licence. SIERA started in 2014 with a site in Carina, in the inner east, an area I knew well, for townhouses, which I had built a lot of."

Over the years SIERA's projects have grown in size and complexity, meeting the demand of an established owner-occupier market. Through that time Brent has been recognised with the UDIA Queensland Young Leaders Award, served several years on the UDIA Queensland board, and sat on the QBCC's inaugural Industry Taskforce on licensee and subcontractor accountability.

"We are relentless about detail from inception through to completion," Brent says. "That means the design and the whole process, not just the defects and the paint and patching at the end."

"We only build for ourselves. Our construction business is purely there to serve the developments we deliver," Brent says. "We are fully integrated, so we have our own sales, marketing, construction, development management, as well as caretaking and property management at the back end. Today, SIERA is delivering three marquee high-rise developments on the Gold Coast: Tapestry, Exhale and Canopy."

"From the very beginning SIERA has been systems-focused, and not only for the efficiency," Brent says. "Systems are how you hold a standard, how you stay accountable, and how you repeat a result. Strong systems are the foundation of any successful business, and when you combine them with exceptional people you get exceptional results, time and time again."

All construction is complex, but a project worth hundreds of millions and running several years needs large consultant teams coordinated across every phase. Systems, record keeping, document control and communication matter more, and information has to reach every team immediately and accurately.

"When you think about scaling, it can mean taking on more and more developments," Brent says. "For us, running a vertically integrated model, scaling means taking on more of the delivery of each development and doing it more efficiently and more economically. That not only improves the return, it improves the outcome, and Procore helps us do that across both development and construction."

"We have always run good systems," Brent says. "What we identified with the larger projects we were moving into was that we needed systems that allowed us to scale. Procore was the perfect fit, and implementing it has been immensely successful."

The Solution

SIERA moved to Procore in 2023, ahead of the commencement of delivering Tapestry, the largest and first truly high-rise project the business had taken on.

"The most experienced high-rise construction teams and consultants we now work with are familiar with Procore. It's the go-to system for all the contractors in our space," Brent says. "We knew it would give us the most runway for what we wanted to do now and into the future."

SIERA's project runway begins long before anyone steps onto site. As both developer and builder, the team needs a complete, connected and real-time view of the project lifecycle from day one.

"For us, construction really starts when we acquire the land," Brent says. "All of that information needs to be captured as early as possible so that it can flow through the development team into the construction team as seamlessly as possible."

Procore gives the team visibility and continuity from development application and design through to construction. On site, that extends to drawings, diaries, inspections, quality records, photos, defects and RFIs.

SIERA contracts with itself the way it would contract with an outside builder.

"Construction is extremely high risk," Brent says. "We use a full Australian standard D&C contract between the development entity and the construction entity, and we run construction as if we are a third-party contractor. So extensions of time, notices of delay and all of that accountability are still done by the project team, and that all gets presented to a superintendent. They use Procore for all of that work as well, so that's really critical."

"Plenty of developers are taking construction in-house right now, and a lot of them are doing it because they have to," Brent says. "We have always built our own work. The structure is the easy part. Nobody outside enforces the standard a builder-developer holds internally, so ours is written down, audited and controlled, on safety, on payment and on document control."

Leading delivery on site is SIERA's Head of Construction, Tom Stirling, who joined in 2025 after more than twenty years alongside Brent, from school, to working together as brickies' labourers, to both completing carpentry apprenticeships. Tom joining had always been the plan. It just had to be the right time, and the right people matter as much as the right systems.

"With our inspections, incomplete works, defects, site diaries and photos, it's all in one spot that everyone's got access to," Tom says. "You're not searching through someone's email to find what you need. It's the consistency and uniformity across each person and then each project, so if someone's off sick or away, it's tracked and logged and you can find it. You don't have to wait for them to come back."

"If you think of an elite sports team, they all wear trackers in the back of their jerseys: top acceleration, how far do they run, how many big efforts did they do, monitoring their recovery," Brent says. "If you want to be elite at what you do, and we very much are striving to be, you need ways to measure performance, issues and defects. Procore enables us to do that. Otherwise you are hitting and hoping."

The Results

Problems resolved where they happen
Current drawings and markups are available on site, so issues are closed out at the point they are found rather than carried back to the site office.

A quality record that stands up to inspection
Inspections, ITPs, checklists and photographs build an auditable record that certifiers and engineers can close out against.

Onboarding measured in minutes
New team members, consultants and subcontractors are granted access to current project information from day one, with no link chasing.

Performance tracked across projects
Centralised project data lets SIERA track issues and defects, and carry the lessons into the next project.

Evidence for lenders, certifiers and partners
A complete project record demonstrates to banks and other stakeholders how a major project is being managed, documented and delivered.

Solving site problems on the spot

Ask Tom what Procore changes on site and his answer is immediate.

"It's just the fact that everything you need is at your fingertips. You can get things sorted out while you're standing on site, exactly where the problem is."

"Say you're up on level 20 trying to find a detail with a steel fixer who has an old plan that they've printed out, you can pull up the current drawing, zoom into it, do a markup and send it from where you're standing."

"You've fixed it straight away without wasting an hour getting down to the bottom, reprinting it and bringing it back up. You walk away knowing the job's done, and done properly."

A single 'bible' for drawings

For the SIERA team, site diaries and document control are the biggest day-to-day benefit of using Procore.

"So definitely the site diaries, skip registers, quantities for any concrete pours that are getting done, inspection checklists, ITPs, incomplete works and defects. These all make a big difference," Tom says. "All the foremen use the notes section inside that diary, so they've got their own notes applicable to their work areas too."

"Ultimately Procore is the bible for drawings and documentation. All of the consultants upload the drawings, and then our document controller, contract administrator or site engineer will filter through those drawings and upload them so they're ready to go for the guys on site. Gone are the days of printing A1 sets and having a plan bench."

"That's so important," Brent adds. "There used to be so many mistakes and errors and reworks because people were working off the wrong set of plans. Everyone tends to forget that and take having one up-to-date set of drawings for granted now, but to be honest, it's massive."

The same central project record makes it easier to bring new people onto a job.

"All of the approvals, all of the record keeping, everything's able to be done in Procore, and it means that somebody can be super simply brought onto the project," Brent says. "Today, I've got an estimator working on one of our new projects. I'm able to get them added to Procore and know that everything's been uploaded by the consultants and checked off by our design manager."

"In the past, you'd be sending Dropbox links, then tomorrow a consultant uploads a new set of plans and you're sending another link. Then they're getting confused: which link have they got? What are they working off? We never have those problems and delays now."

Proof when it matters

The same record supports SIERA's quality and compliance processes, creating a verifiable record of inspections, checklists, photos, defects and work completed on site.

"On this project, we have the structural engineer come through and do inspections for every concrete pour," Tom says.

"When we're financing a project of this scale, we can sit down with the major banks and show them: here's our system, here's Procore, here's how the project is being managed, here's what the site team is doing," Brent says.

"That level of transparency gives a financier confidence. They can see how the project is being run, how it is documented, and the track record behind it, and that counts for a great deal."

Building for what comes next

Brent and Tom both treat the investment in systems as an investment in the people using them.

"We are on a relentless pursuit to find the best people, and as you grow as a business that is the challenge," Brent says. "We have people who have built a lot of things and know how to build and talk to trades and communicate, but if they don't know the technology as well, it is our role as a business to take everything they're good at and allow them to shine, and then take the things they need help with and support them."

Tom makes the same point from the site end, and he is blunt about what it takes.

"The first part and the biggest thing is having the system and the processes in place, but you need to get buy-in from your people and get that consistency going," Tom says. "It's about everybody buying in to the fact that it's actually quite simple to use, and that we're not doing the work just for now, it is also for later, and we're protecting that future."

SIERA has gone a step further than most. It employs its own AI software engineer and has built a custom operating system that plugs into Procore, HammerTech and every other platform the business runs on, bridging the gaps between them. It watches programme against the contract dates, cost and commercial exposure, safety and incident data off the site, open certifier and consultant items, and every document that arrives, captured and filed as it lands. Overnight it reads the project, writes a construction brief for each site, flags risks while they are still cheap to fix and surfaces what has been missed.

"Every morning as I'm driving down the coast, just after 5.30am, I've got a brief for two projects," Tom says. "It pulls all that information together, your Procore diary uploads, anything that's been done on HammerTech, it's all there to go through. You're not having to think about emails you're waiting on answers for. It sets your day up, and it gets re-sent every day."

Brent is equally direct about the system itself.

"Even today, we don't use Procore anywhere near to its fullest potential yet," he says. "But we know we will over time."

"Technology is going to change how this industry builds, and I intend SIERA to be in front of it," Brent says. "I'm obsessed with optimisation, with reducing waste, and with what that can do for the cost of housing. It's not about taking people out of jobs, it's about asking how we do this better."

"Our choice to use Procore was never about one or two projects. It's about what SIERA is delivering in ten years, and having the systems ready well before those projects arrive."