AI for Construction and Trades
AI for Construction and Trades
The delivery note photographed at the gate, the timesheet and the sub invoice, read into job costing instead of keyed.
What this is for a construction business
A construction business generates paperwork faster than an office can key it. Delivery notes photographed at the gate, timesheets, subcontractor invoices, daily reports, certificates from every sub on every job. Most of it arrives as an image from a phone.
The work here reads those documents into the systems that already hold the job — costing, accounting, the project management tool — and puts the specification and the safety manual behind a question box for the people on site.
It runs in a cloud account the business owns. A person approves every record before it reaches job costing, so what the system produces is a reviewed queue rather than a posting nobody saw.
What you get
What gets built
Ordered roughly by how fast the office hours come back. Most firms start with one document type.
Delivery notes and packing slips
Photographed at the gate, in the sun, at an angle. Read into supplier, job, quantity and date, matched to the order, and queued for one approval instead of a keying session.
Timesheets and daily reports
Hours by person, by job and by cost code out of whatever form the crews actually fill in. That includes handwritten sheets photographed on a phone, which is what most of them are.
Subcontractor invoices into costing
Read into fields, coded to the job and the cost code, and posted after a person approves the batch. Retention and change order references come out with the rest of the values.
Bid and proposal first drafts
Scopes, exclusions and standard sections drafted from the firm's own past proposals, so a response starts from what has already been written rather than a blank page. An estimator corrects it and prices it.
The spec, answerable from the truck
Ask a question on site and get an answer naming the section and the sheet. Built over the specification, the submittal log and the safety manual, on a phone rather than a desk. It names the revision it read, so nobody works from a superseded sheet.
Certificates and compliance paperwork chased
Which subs on which job are missing a current certificate, worked out from what has actually arrived rather than a spreadsheet somebody maintains. The request goes out and the reply is filed against the right job, with expiry dates tracked before they lapse.
Enquiries and requests into the system
Work arriving as prose in an inbox turned into a record on the right job, with the notification going to the person who owns it. Requests for information, change order requests and client email all arrive the same way and all get filed the same way.
Somebody who owns it afterwards
Model versions, extraction accuracy and spend reviewed on a set cadence once the build is done. Suppliers change their paperwork constantly, so extraction that measured well in March is worth re-measuring in September.
How it works
How the work runs
Follow one document from the gate to the ledger
Where it is photographed, who chases it, where it is keyed and what it is checked against. The current hour count is what the build gets measured against.
Collect real photographs
Not clean scans. A few hundred of the actual images the crews send, including the dark ones and the ones with a thumb across the total, because those are what decide the result.
Build and measure
Extraction is run against documents whose correct values are known, and the accuracy figure comes out of that rather than a demonstration. The same set is used to test every change afterwards.
Put it where the paperwork already goes
The review screen goes to whoever keys it now, and approved records start landing in job costing. Nothing changes for the crews.
What matters
What makes site paperwork harder than office paperwork
The demonstration always works on a clean scan. These are the things that decide whether the production system does.
Photographs, not scans
A phone camera on a job site produces glare, shadow, folds and a thumb over the corner. Those images are what the build is tested against, because they are what actually arrives.
The job number is most of the problem
A job is a number in costing, a name on the delivery note and an address in the calendar. Matching a document to the right job is usually more work than reading it, and getting it wrong costs more.
The same document arrives twice
A delivery note is photographed at the gate and again at the office, and the invoice repeats it. Anything that writes to costing is built to be safe when it runs twice, or a network blip becomes a duplicate cost.
Handwriting gets measured before it gets promised
Printed and typed text extracts well. Handwritten quantities and initials vary enough that they are tested against your own sheets first, and the answer is a figure rather than a claim.
Suppliers and subs change their paperwork
Templates move without notice and nobody tells the office. The system is built to show that a field has shifted rather than post a confidently wrong quantity.
Site conditions are designed for
Anything used from a truck or a site office is built to work on a phone and to tolerate a weak connection rather than expect a desk. A tool that needs the office is a tool nobody on site uses.
Who it is for
Who this is for
General contractors
Where every job carries subs, submittals, certificates and a change order trail that somebody reconciles by hand.
Specialty trades and service contractors
Electrical, mechanical, plumbing and roofing businesses where the paperwork follows the truck and arrives in a batch on Friday.
Suppliers and equipment yards
Tickets and delivery notes in volume, matched against orders and invoices, with a counter that does not stop for data entry.
Firms bidding regularly
Businesses answering enough invitations that a first draft from past work is worth having, and enough of a proposal history to draft from.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Can it read a photograph taken on site?
That is the case it gets built for. Clean scans extract on the first attempt; the accuracy figure is measured on the images your crews actually send, glare and thumbs included.
Will it post straight into our job costing system?
After a person approves it. The write-back is built against whichever system holds the job — accounting, costing or the project management tool — and every posting is logged.
What about handwritten timesheets?
They get tested against your own sheets before anything is promised. Printed and typed fields extract reliably; handwriting varies enough that a measured figure matters more than a claim.
Do the crews have to learn something new?
The document keeps arriving the way it arrives now — photographed, emailed or handed in. The change is in the office, where a review screen replaces the keying.
Can it help write bids?
It drafts scopes and standard sections from proposals the firm has already written, for an estimator to correct. Pricing stays with a person, and the draft names the past proposal each section came from.
How long does the first build take?
A single document type is normally three to six weeks, most of which is spent on the awkward images rather than the clean ones. A second document type is faster because the review screen already exists.
Also on this site
Name the paperwork that piles up
Delivery notes, timesheets, sub invoices. Whichever one costs the most office hours.
(844) 422-7000