Civil construction firm Symal is strengthening its DevOps and AI capabilities using Microsoft Azure as it looks to build on its $437 million ASX listing last year.
Trent Dawson, CIO of Symal
Chief information officer Trent Dawson told the iTnews Podcast that the company is using Bicep, a declarative, domain-specific language to manage its Azure infrastructure as code, providing repeatability, governance and scalability for deploying new resources.
“Instead of it being a guesstimate when staff are [developing] things, it is a repeatable process,” he told the podcast.
“It was important for us, as we are scaling up and down, that we had that repeatability, so my team wasn’t building things, and our partners weren’t building things in ways which were outside of normal.”
Dawson noted that Symal’s DevOps practice largely steers clear of custom-built coding, relying heavily on Azure and Bicep to manage and automate its infrastructure stack at the moment.
According to Dawson, Microsoft Azure accounts for around 95 percent of its IT environment, encompassing capabilities including Dynamics 365, SharePoint and the Power Platform, with Dawson adding: “It is probably easier [to say] which Microsoft product I’m not using because we do use a lot of it.”
Currently, Symal is using Azure OpenAI to “fine-tune” its large language models using data stored in internal applications, including Dynamics 365 and SharePoint.
At the same time, Symal is trialling Copilot and developing custom AI agents in Azure to assist with specific workflows and reduce manual handling.
One example Dawson gave is of an agent recognising text in images, ingesting it into lists, and building automations around that data.
“Our approach is a practical one,” he said.
“We start with targeted use cases and then deliver outcomes for business value, and then we’ll scale from there.
“We will continue to scale like that. We know it’s the future, and we know that agentic AI is something that we will definitely get into.
“But, at this stage, we will make conscious decisions based on where we focus to make sure that we are getting that measurable business value.”
From shoestring IT to cloud-first
Founded in 2001, Symal is a civil construction company that also offers equipment hiring and runs a recycling arm and three quarries for building materials.
Dawson joined the company as general manager of IT and systems in 2021 and was promoted to CIO in September 2025.
When he first joined, Symal’s IT function was run “on a bit of a shoestring”, he told the podcast, with one person handling IT for 600 people, aided by a managed service provider.
But “the business saw a need for technology and understood the need for innovation”, Dawson said.
“Fast forward to today and we’ve got around 25 staff spread across infrastructure, cyber security applications and support.”
Since his arrival, Dawson has steered Symal’s cloud-first strategy, migrating all business-critical systems to Azure and rolling out Dynamics 365 Customer Experience and Customer Insights.
He also delivered the implementation of SAP SuccessFactors as Symal’s new human resources information system (HRIS).
Part of the need to move to a new HRIS was Symal’s rapid growth, more than doubling in headcount since Dawson joined four years ago.
“SuccessFactors is a key component for us in terms of making sure that we can manage our staff across 1300-plus employees, especially now that we are spread very much up the east coast of Australia,” he said.
“No longer can you see everybody in the office every day; we need platforms and tools to make those decisions, [and] no longer can we just assume that things are getting done. We need to make sure that there are systems, processes and procedures in place.”
According to Dawson, SuccessFactors “ticked a lot of boxes” for the company’s immediate needs and also potentially its long-term operational efficiency.
That includes integration with the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) stack, which Symal is still in the early stages of evaluating.
Ahead of Symal’s initial public offering (IPO) on the ASX last November, Dawson also launched a program to uplift the company’s cyber security maturity.
This included aligning with the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential 8 framework and the United States’ National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards.
Looking ahead, Dawson said, the next step for Symal will be “operationalising AI at scale”, moving beyond pilots to embed AI into its core business processes, including project delivery and financial reporting.
“We’ve grown heavily; the business is now a little over 1300 staff spread across the eastern seaboard and continuing to grow,” Dawson said.
“None of these would be possible without the backing of our executive team, the understanding of technology and its critical function for our group and our innovation journey.”
