bcbusiness.ca october 2016 BCBusiness 45
Paul
Dunstan
President, Plenary
group (Canada) Ltd.
I
t was at a friend's wedding
in Australia just over a
decade ago that invest-
ment banker Paul Dunstan
and some colleagues came
up with the idea to start
their own public infrastruc-
ture development and invest-
ment company, which would
help to plan, nance and
erect buildings and bridges
across North America.
Vancouver-based Plenary
Group was founded three
months later, in July 2005,
with its six employees holding
their rst meeting at a Ca²è
Artigiano in downtown Van-
couver. The company's rst
big project was a building to
house government archives in
Ontario; that was followed by
hospitals in places like North
Bay, Ont., Prince George
and Kelowna, and roads and
bridges south of the border.
The company was pick-
ing up projects at a steady
clip until the 2008 global
nancial crisis hit. Plenary
Group nearly went bankrupt
when nancing dried up for
a multimillion-dollar hospital
project in Ontario's Niagara
region.´Dunstan and his team
worked days, evenings and
weekends for 18 months try-
ing to nd a solution to raise
the money to proceed with
the project. At the 11th hour,
Dunstan made one last call
to the Ontario government to
pitch a nal funding solution.
It worked.
While Plenary Group
was back on track, it took a
huge nancial hit from the
global crisis, which left
business partners wary for a
while. Dunstan led the team
through the rough waters.
The experience, he says,
taught them that "with resil-
ience and hard work… you
can nd solutions."
Over the course of 11
years, Plenary Group has
developed dozens of public-
private partnership projects
valued at more than $15
billion. It has grown to more
than 90 employees in oªces
across Canada and the U.S.
(Plenary Group Canada is
the holding company for all
activities in the Americas,
while Plenary Australia is
the holding company for all
activities in Australia and
Asia; the two companies
have di™erent shareholders,
but Plenary Australia has a
minority stake in Plenary
Canada.) Business has
doubled in the past three
years, and Dunstan's goal is
to double it again, to about
$30 billion in project values,
in the next four or ve years—
driven largely by growth in
the U.S. where public-private
partnership models are gain-
ing more acceptance.´"There
is denitely an upswing in
the desire of governments
to use that model for con-
struction," he notes.
—Brenda Bouw
WINNER
I n F r a S T r u C T u r E
