AI in construction
We are two people who put AI into the paperwork of construction firms of 20 to 200 people. The tender pack, the supplier chase, the site diary, the variation, the subcontractor papers. Take a contractor pricing 12 tenders a month at about 9 hours each. AI drafts the take-off and the cost build-up. It chases supplier prices, writes the daily site record from a voice note, assembles a variation for review and tracks subcontractor papers. The estimator still sets risk, preliminaries and margin. Nothing leaves the office without a person approving it.
An example firm built from firms like yours, for demonstration only. It is not a client and not a case study. We print the inputs so you can put in your own, and the totals follow.
If the audit finds nothing worth building, you don't pay.
Each job below carries the hours it takes today in the example firm and the share the system takes over. The rest stays with the person who owns the decision.
The system reads the drawings, the specification and any pricing schedule. It measures what is missing or changed into a draft. It applies approved rates and supplier quotes still inside their validity. Each line carries its source, its date and what it leaves out.
Requests and reminders go out on their own. It compares replies on scope, delivery, validity and exclusions as well as price. The ones who never answer stay visible.
A three-minute voice note becomes the day's record, with the original audio and photographs linked. The system flags what is missing: labour, plant, deliveries, weather, safety, delay.
What changed, when you notified it, what it costs. The system gathers the instruction, the site record and the photographs for commercial review.
Documents collected, dates extracted, missing or expiring items flagged. An authorised person confirms validity and site access.
It does not price the risk, set the margin or decide which client is worth winning. It does not fly a drone survey, run a predictive planning model or staff a BIM department. Those are tools for firms with a hundred people in the office. The guides on page 1 describe them well.
In a firm of 20 to 200 people, paperwork between people eats the hours. The tender pack, the supplier chase, the evening site report, the variation nobody submitted, the insurance certificate that lapsed. That is where the hours come back. It needs no new software on site.
Estimating first. It carries the most hours, the inputs already exist as documents, and the estimator can check every line the system drafts. The other four follow in the order we agree with you at the walkthrough.
Finding out costs $2,500–$5,000: two conversations over fourteen days, ending in a written plan. Which job first, what building it costs, what it gives back, with the sums shown. If we find nothing to improve, you pay nothing.
Six things you can check before you pay us.
We run our own company on what we sell. Two people and no operations team: AI processes our meetings, drafts our reports and keeps our CRM honest, and we publish how it works in our letters.
Both of us do every audit, from the first call to the walkthrough.
The price is on the page: $2,500–$5,000, fixed before we start. Half of it comes off the build if you go ahead within 30 days.
The system drafts what someone used to type, and the estimator keeps every decision. Nobody loses their job to it.
One process first, and the other four only if the first one pays. You can stop after any step.
If we find nothing to improve, you pay nothing.
Two free guides worth an hour, read in September 2026: FFB on AI in the building trade and francenum.gouv.fr on its uses in construction. Neither prices it for a firm of 70 people or says what the estimator keeps.
The example contractor above continues in four chapters: what the audit found, what we build first, the team afterwards, and who runs it.
The general models behind ChatGPT and Claude, reading what you already have. The tender pack sits in the inbox, the rate library in Excel and the site photographs in WhatsApp. The work is connecting them and checking the output.
No. The estimator reviews a draft the way they review a junior's. The site manager records a three-minute voice note instead of writing at seven in the evening.
The audit is $2,500–$5,000. What the audit finds sets the price of building the first job, about 10 weeks in the example firm. You see the number before you decide.
No. It prepares what the estimator used to prepare by hand, and the estimator keeps scope, measurement, risk, preliminaries and margin. The estimator catches a wrong rate at review, as before, and nothing goes out before that review.
It is the normal starting place. The system reads what arrives where it arrives, drafts the daily record with the photographs linked, and holds it for review. Where the information sits is one of the three things the audit measures.
The same five jobs at smaller volume. At six tenders a month the hours on estimating halve, and so does the case. Start with the job that keeps the owner in the office after six.
From $2.5K, fixed scope, half of it off the build if you go ahead within 30 days, and the first call is free. You'll know what to build, in what order, and what it gives back, before you commit to building it.
Tell us the one process that costs you most. One of us reads every application and answers it with a name.
We invoice in US dollars from Sena Technologies, Inc.; the French page shows the same amounts in euros.
We reply within two business days, always with a name. No sequence, no chasing.