Microsoft Fabric and OneLake

At Buro Matei, we specialize in implementing Microsoft Fabric and OneLake to transform data management for Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects.
Our solutions consolidate data from disconnected systems, legacy tools, and third-party platforms into a unified, secure environment. With a deep understanding of EPC workflows, we design systems that eliminate silos, streamline processes, and ensure reliable, up-to-date data for every project stakeholder.
Microsoft Fabric is a platform for analyzing data, combining tools for tasks like data engineering, data science, and reporting in one place.
It helps users work with data from different sources without needing to move it between tools. OneLake is the shared storage system in Microsoft Fabric, where data is kept in an open format. It supports many types of data and ensures compatibility with different tools, reducing the need for multiple copies of the same data.


Our services go beyond technical deployment. We work with your team to develop tailored strategies for integrating Fabric and OneLake into your existing infrastructure.
From setting up automated data pipelines to providing training on best practices, we ensure your organization is ready for scalable growth and future-ready analytics. Whether it’s creating a company-wide data repository or enabling project-specific insights, our solutions are built to align with your business objectives.
Why Buro Matei
With decades of hands-on experience in engineering, project management, and procurement, we design solutions tailored to the complex workflows and data requirements of EPC projects.
Our solutions reflect a unique combination of technical expertise and deep EPC industry knowledge, ensuring they meet the demands of real-world projects while driving innovation and efficiency.
At Buro Matei, we prioritize scalability, flexibility, and growth. Every tool, logic, and algorithm we develop is designed to be generic, parameterized, and standardized, enabling seamless expansion across project phases, disciplines, and scopes. Even if a tool is initially developed for a specific activity, such as 3D model progress measurement for piping, it is designed to work universally across other disciplines without modification.
Our ontologies, reference data libraries, and data models are inspired by CFIHOS standards, ensuring alignment with globally recognized frameworks. However, we go further by incorporating improvements and optimizations to address specific EPC challenges and drive better outcomes.
We unify data from diverse sources—including 3D modeling tools, procurement systems, and scheduling software—into a centralized Microsoft Fabric environment. This ensures consistency, accuracy, and real-time updates across all project data.
From designing your data architecture to training your teams, we provide complete solutions that align with your organizational objectives and prepare you for the future of EPC project execution.
Challenges We Solve
Our Microsoft Fabric and OneLake solutions address critical challenges faced by EPC organizations:
EPC companies often rely on a mix of legacy systems, third-party tools, and manual processes that don’t communicate effectively, creating inefficiencies and disconnects between disciplines.
Scripts, queries, and manual workflows result in multiple versions of the same data—often outdated or mismatched—making it unclear which source is accurate or reliable.
Many organizations struggle to keep their integrations running. Scripts fail, passwords expire, excel files change, and interruptions in data flow leave engineers and project teams without reliable data when they need them most.
Engineers and project managers often lack direct access to critical data—such as master equipment lists, WBS structures, or up-to-date schedules—due to licensing restrictions, siloed systems, or security limitations. As a result, they are forced to rely on outdated exports, PDFs, or maintain their own copies, leading to inconsistencies, rework and critical mistakes.
Manual reconciliation of data from different systems wastes time, increases the risk of human error, and slows down project execution.
Many EPC organizations lack a centralized, standardized, and enriched data platform—critical for leveraging modern technologies like machine learning and AI to improve predictions, schedule and cost estimation, and risk analysis. These capabilities are essential for creating reliable proposals and accurate look-ahead forecasts with limited effort.
Valuable data often remains locked in inaccessible formats like PDFs or P&IDs, requiring time-consuming and error-prone scraping to extract and use.
Existing tools and processes are often too rigid, designed for narrow use cases and unable to scale or adapt to handle the complexity of mega-projects or company-wide data needs.
Our Approach
At Buro Matei, we deliver Microsoft Fabric and OneLake solutions through a balanced strategy focused on mindset, technology, and execution.
1. Mindset

1. Mindset
We empower EPC teams to embrace centralized collaboration and data management as essential parts of their workflows.
- We help teams transition from fragmented, disconnected systems to centralized platforms, fostering collaboration and data-driven decision-making.
- We empower engineers, project managers, and automation leads with training on best practices for managing and leveraging Fabric and OneLake.
- We instill confidence in automated workflows and real-time updates, reducing reliance on manual data reconciliation and error-prone processes.
- We build data literacy, ensuring teams understand how to use standardized, enriched data effectively while enabling better collaboration across disciplines.
- We support leadership in adopting and championing centralized data strategies, enabling them to drive cultural change, improve cross-disciplinary collaboration, and make informed, strategic decisions using real-time insights.
2. Technology

2. Technology
Our technical expertise ensures seamless implementation and optimization of SharePoint and Teams for EPC workflows.
- Our technical expertise ensures the successful integration of Microsoft Fabric and OneLake into your EPC workflows, delivering a seamless, centralized, and scalable data management system:
- Microsoft Fabric consolidates all project data—structured and unstructured—into OneLake, creating a single source of truth that eliminates silos and ensures consistency across teams and disciplines.
- Using the Medallion Architecture, raw data is ingested into the bronze layer from sources such as 3D modeling tools, schedules, financial systems, and Microsoft 365, ensuring all data is retained and accessible for future transformations. In the silver layer, data is cleaned, enriched, and standardized, establishing reliable relationships between disciplines, tags, schedules, and equipment lists. Finally, the gold layer delivers high-quality, ready-to-use data in semantic models for Power BI dashboards, paginated reports, and other analytics.
- We connect data from EPC-specific tools, including 3D modeling software, procurement systems, and scheduling platforms, as well as internal databases like on-premise SQL servers and Microsoft Dataverse, ensuring seamless integration across all systems.
- With centralized data, we enable practical features such as dropdown menus in engineering and procurement tools, allowing teams to select live equipment tags or WBS elements directly from the master database without manual imports. This ensures consistency and eliminates errors caused by outdated data.
- For real-time monitoring, we integrate live job site data such as helmet-based QR code scans and AI-enabled vision recognition systems. This allows project managers to track worker locations, equipment usage, and job site safety in real time, publishing the insights to dashboards for immediate action.
- We design segregated workspaces to support clarity and scalability. A central workspace houses reference data libraries (RDLs) and company-wide master data, ensuring consistency across projects. Project-specific workspaces keep individual project data secure and organized, while the gold layer workspace is open to project managers, engineers, and project controls for day-to-day use, with the bronze and silver layers accessible to data engineers and analysts for data processing and maintenance.
- With Delta Lakes in Fabric, we enable time travel, allowing teams to query historical data to analyze trends, track changes, and ensure compliance with audit requirements.
- Fabric’s architecture is designed to scale with the demands of mega-projects while also enabling AI and machine learning applications, such as cost forecasting, schedule risk analysis, and automated decision-making.
- For critical operations, we establish real-time dataflows to monitor live job site activities, equipment statuses, or financial updates. For less time-sensitive needs, data synchronization is performed hourly or daily to ensure optimal resource efficiency.
- Security and governance are ensured through Microsoft Entra IDs and role-based access controls, providing a secure environment while maintaining accessibility for authorized users.
- Fabric powers advanced analytics, including graph analytics, predictive modeling, and machine learning, enabling EPC organizations to gain actionable insights and improve operational efficiency.
3. Execution

3. Execution
Our solutions integrate seamlessly into EPC workflows, delivering measurable improvements across all project phases:
- We assess your existing data infrastructure and develop tailored strategies for integrating Microsoft Fabric and OneLake, ensuring seamless implementation and long-term scalability.
- We implement automated dataflows and pipelines, eliminating the need for manual imports, reconciliation, and error-prone workflows.
- We establish best practices for data governance, including project-specific data segregation and company-wide reference data integration, ensuring clarity, security, and consistency across all projects.
- We align all tools and processes with global standards like CFIHOS, improving traceability, compliance, and alignment with industry best practices.
- We recognize that centralizing data doesn’t just require new tools—it often necessitates revisiting and revising existing EPC procedures. Many current processes exist to manage fragmented data environments, such as exporting data from one system and importing it into another. Transitioning to a centralized platform means eliminating these inefficiencies, but it also requires leadership to embrace procedural changes and support a new way of working.
- We support company leadership in adopting these changes by guiding cultural and procedural transformations. We assist in rewriting existing policies and procedures to align with a data-driven organization, removing outdated steps and introducing new workflows that maximize the value of centralized data.
- We go further by taking on active roles as interim project managers or change managers, helping EPC companies navigate this significant transition. With our guidance, organizations can increase productivity, improve decision-making, and enhance profitability by fully adopting modern data management practices.
- We provide long-term support, including training your teams to manage, scale, and adapt Fabric environments effectively, ensuring your organization is future-ready.
Results
Our experience with Microsoft Fabric and OneLake has allowed us to develop and refine a fully operational system within our own environment, showcasing its potential for EPC projects. Key outcomes include:

We have developed a centralized platform using Microsoft Fabric and OneLake, serving as the single source of truth within our environment. This system connects Dataverse to Fabric and integrates seamlessly with Power BI, enabling live dashboards that deliver actionable insights across all project disciplines and roles.

We have tested advanced features like historical data analysis using Delta Lakes, allowing for trend analysis, data change tracking over time, and maintaining audit-ready records.

We have built data pipelines that bring in information from various sources, with a strong preference for Dataverse for its native integration and ability to store data securely within a cloud-based Microsoft tenant.

While these systems are currently implemented internally, we are excited to partner with EPC organizations to customize and deploy these solutions, helping clients centralize data, unlock advanced analytics, and scale their operations for growth.

We are also seeking partners who wish to use our centralized platform for joint collaboration and EPC execution. In such partnerships, we can take on roles such as project management, project information management, and automation leadership to ensure project success.

Provided training to foster a culture of collaboration, helping teams transition smoothly from siloed systems to integrated platforms.
Pricing
At Buro Matei, we provide tailored guidance and support to help your organization set up Microsoft Fabric and OneLake. Pricing is based on the complexity of your existing infrastructure, the diversity of data sources, and the level of assistance required, whether in strategy development, training, or hands-on implementation.
Microsoft Fabric licensing operates on a consumption-based model called “Fabric Capacity,” with pay-as-you-go or reserved capacity options depending on your compute and storage needs.
Discover how Microsoft Fabric and OneLake can revolutionize data management for your EPC organization. While Fabric is a platform hosted within your Microsoft tenant, we can showcase our internally developed systems to demonstrate the transformative potential of centralized data management. Let’s discuss how we can assist in setting up your Fabric environment, training your team, or providing expert guidance to align it with your business objectives.