AI for Construction
Companies
Estimators burning evenings on takeoff. RFIs sitting unread for a week. The senior people who knew the last job in their heads are getting close to retirement. We build the AI loops that take the back-office grind so the team can stay on site.
0.4%
CONSTRUCTION PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH / YR
239,300
EXTRA WORKERS UK NEEDS BY 2029
~10 days
AVERAGE RFI RESPONSE TIME (NAVIGANT)
Stop running the back office on overtime.
UK construction productivity has grown about 0.4% a year over the past two decades. The wider economy and manufacturing have both pulled away. McKinsey first put a number on the gap in 2017. The number hasn't moved since.
It isn't the trades. Site is as productive as it's ever been. The drag is the office around it. Estimating, RFIs, submittals, programme updates, drawings, all still done by a person reading a PDF and typing into a template.
AI lands in the back office first. The trades carry on doing what trades do.
TODAY'S BACK OFFICE
- Estimators counting on PDFs at 9pm
- RFIs sitting unread for a week
- Drawing revisions tracked by filename
- Site diaries on WhatsApp
- Knowhow walks out at retirement
WITH THE LOOPS IN PLACE
- Takeoff drafted before the estimator opens it
- RFI draft replies on the desk by morning
- Drawing changes flagged automatically
- Site reports written from a voice note
- Past job knowledge stays searchable
Five places AI earns its keep on a UK construction job.
We've built versions of each of these for contractors and consultants. The names change by trade; the work underneath doesn't. Pick the one that hurts most and we start there.
Estimating & takeoff
AI reads the drawings, drafts the quantities and pulls historic rates from your past jobs. The estimator checks and prices instead of counting symbols on a PDF.
RFI & submittal flow
Inbound queries get classified, cross-referenced against the spec and the drawing pack, and a draft reply lands ready to send. The PM signs it off, doesn't write it.
Drawing & document control
New revision lands. The system diffs it against the last one, calls out what's changed, and tells you which RFIs, packages and subcontractors are affected before anyone misses it.
Programme & risk
Daily reports, weather, deliveries and RFI delays feed a model that flags the activities about to slip. You see it on Monday morning, not when it hits the critical path.
Site reporting & knowhow
Site manager speaks into the phone. The system writes the diary, files the photos, flags the safety items, and adds it to a job memory the whole company can search next time.
The maths is already against you.
Three numbers from the public record. Read them together.
CITB CONSTRUCTION WORKFORCE OUTLOOK 2025-29
35% of the workforce is over 50.
UK construction needs 239,300 extra workers by 2029 just to keep up with demand. Apprenticeship completion has dropped to around 41% on 2024/25 starts. The senior estimator who reads drawings in their head is closer to retirement than you'd like.
McKINSEY GLOBAL INSTITUTE, 2017
Construction spends under 1% of revenue on IT.
Aerospace and automotive spend more than three times that. McKinsey put the productivity gap between construction and the rest of the economy at one of the largest in the developed world. Nine years on, the gap is still there.
NAVIGANT CONSTRUCTION RFI STUDY
A typical commercial job carries 500 to 800 RFIs.
Average response time is around ten days. Multiply that across the dependent trades and you've got weeks of float quietly being eaten by inboxes. Shrink the wait and you hand that float back to the programme.
Sources: CITB Construction Workforce Outlook 2025-29, ONS productivity in the construction industry, McKinsey Global Institute (Reinventing Construction, 2017), Navigant Construction Forum RFI studies.
Where we come in.
We're an AI build shop. We sit between estimators, PMs and the site team, and turn the messiest bits of the office into software they'll use. Not a chatbot bolted onto Asite.
Fixed-scope phases, working software, your team owns the code at the end. No twelve-month consulting engagement.
BOOK A WORKFLOW AUDITWorkflow audit
Half a day with your estimators, PMs and document controllers. We map where the time goes and pick the two or three loops worth building first. Scope and price on the page, not in a slide deck.
Capture the job memory
Past tenders, RFIs, drawings, specs, site reports, the comments in the corners of old spreadsheets. We pull them into one place an AI can read so every tool you build inherits twenty years of company knowhow.
Launch the first loop
Usable internal tool live. Plugged into the systems you already run: Procore, Asite, Viewpoint, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Outlook, SharePoint. Your team uses it on a live job, not in a demo environment.
Add a learning loop on top
When the AI gets a takeoff or an RFI wrong, a second model works out why and updates the instructions overnight. By the next job, the same mistake doesn't repeat. The system gets sharper while you're asleep.
It's built for how you actually work.
Generic AI tools were written for an American GC and a different document pack. We build for JCT contracts, NEC4, NRM2, ISO 19650, BIM Level 2, the CSCS card you have to check before someone walks on site. The rules of the job stay the rules.
UK contract forms
JCT, NEC3 and NEC4 clauses recognised on sight. Early warnings, compensation events and notices drafted in the right voice. Not a generic American "change order".
UK measurement & standards
NRM1 and NRM2 for measurement. CESMM4 on civils. CDM 2015 for safety. BS 1192 and ISO 19650 for document naming. The AI reads it the way your QS does.
UK data, UK rules
Hosted in the UK or EU. UK GDPR, ICO-compliant. No drawings or commercials leaking into a US training set. Building Safety Act golden-thread evidence kept where the regulator expects it.
The ones we get asked first.
We've already got Procore / Asite / Viewpoint. Why do we need this?
Those are filing cabinets. Very expensive ones. They store the drawings, the RFIs and the cost data. They don't read them, write back, or notice patterns. We sit on top of what you've got and do the work the people inside it do today.
Will it get the takeoff wrong and bid us into a loss?
It's a draft for a human estimator, not an automatic bid. The AI counts, classifies and applies your rates. The estimator checks, adjusts and presses send. The same way you'd treat a junior's first pass, except the junior is awake at 3am and never gets bored.
Our drawings and tender prices are sensitive. Where does that data go?
Into your tenant, hosted in the UK or EU, with named human access only. We use enterprise model endpoints where the provider is contractually barred from training on your data. We hand you the audit log so you can show clients, insurers and the ICO who saw what.
How fast can you get a first version live?
First RFI replies usually go out in days. We work in a live job from day one, not a sandbox.
Our PMs aren't going to type into a new tool. They live in email and WhatsApp.
Good, we don't want them to. We build into the inboxes they already use. A drafted RFI reply appears in Outlook ready to send. A site report writes itself from a voice note in WhatsApp. The new interface, where there is one, is for the estimator or the document controller, not the PM on a wet site in Stoke.
What about the Building Safety Act and the golden thread?
Everything an AI does on your behalf gets logged: what it read, what it wrote, who approved it. That log is exactly the audit trail the Building Safety Regulator wants to see for higher-risk buildings. We build it in from the start, not retro-fit it under duress.
How much does it cost?
Workflow audit is fixed-fee. First loop is priced per phase, scoped against the audit. We tell you the number before you commit. Most clients pay for the first loop out of one job's worth of saved estimating overtime.
Do we own it at the end?
Yes. Source code, data, prompts, model configuration. We can host it for you, or hand the lot to your IT team. No per-seat licence, no lock-in, no surprise renewal letter.
Got an estimator working past midnight?
Tell us what the back office is grinding on. In 30 minutes you'll know which loop we'd build first, and what it would save you on the next tender.