Construction
In construction, AI pays off where information passes between companies
The AI Business Center Foundation (AIBC) is a think tank and advisory partner that helps the boards of construction, industrial and technical-services companies adopt artificial intelligence so that it delivers measurable results and builds competitive advantage. In construction we start with the flow of information between the parties to a project.
Tools are no longer in short supply. A common language between the parties to a project has become scarce
A construction project is a chain of companies: the investor, the designer, the general contractor, subcontractors, suppliers and site supervision. Each has its own names, its own documents and its own systems. AI tools speed up the production of documents at every link in the chain, but they do not make those documents fit together. The cost ends up in corrections, follow-up queries, disputes over scope and delays at the interfaces between companies.
How cost arises
On a construction site, the most expensive thing is information that did not arrive in time or arrived in a different version: a design change the crew cannot see, an order scope the supplier reads differently, a record that cannot be matched against the programme. Artificial intelligence can reduce this cost only when the process and the names are described. Otherwise it produces more documents of the same quality.
That is why in construction we start with semantic transformation, that is, organising a company’s names, processes and data so that people, language models and board reports understand them the same way.
Segments
- General contractors: coordinating subcontractors, changes and claims, reporting to the investor.
- Building-services contractors: estimating from documentation, service, fitters’ know-how.
- Prefabrication and structures: production orders from the design, changes, quality documentation.
- Investors and project managers: requirements for contractors, control, reporting.
Design offices and architects have a separate page: Design offices and architects.
What the Foundation does for construction companies
- Audit and strategy: which office and design processes are worth organising first. AI audit and strategy
- Semantic transformation: process descriptions, a shared vocabulary, process translators in departments, a report for the board. Semantic transformation
- Compliance: which AI uses in the company require action under the rules, and from when. Compliance and ESG
- Funding: matching digitalisation and competence projects to public programmes. Grants and funding
- Competence: programmes for offices, contract managers and bid departments. GenAI competence
The Foundation is vendor-neutral: we do not sell licences or implementations. We act on the board’s side — we help choose the contractor, prepare requirements and criteria, run the procurement procedure or tender, and assess bids and contractor quality. The board makes the decision.
Frequently asked questions
Where should a construction company start working with AI?
With one office process that recurs on every site and has an owner: bid preparation, the flow of queries and changes, handover documentation or reporting to the investor. That is where the time spent in the process before and after shows most quickly, and the risk is low.
Does the Foundation implement site monitoring or image analysis systems?
No. We help assess whether such a solution is justified in a particular company, describe the process and the data, prepare a brief and criteria for selecting a vendor, and check compliance with the rules. The implementation is carried out by the technology vendor or the company's IT department.
Can a small contracting firm benefit too?
Yes, but the scope should be small: one process, one owner, one measurement. In smaller firms the greatest value often comes from organising bid preparation and documentation, and from a competence programme for the office.
Let’s start with a conversation
Let us choose one process that recurs on every site. Arrange a conversation.