Time is the most powerful investment you can make
One struggle we’re going through is budgeting and estimating projects so I experimented with a test agent for pricing. Now, when somebody comes into my office and asks for an estimate I can go into my pricing agent, and it’s right there. But that took time to build, and I had to test it on my private platform. I took the time to stop and finish the tool, publish it and share it with team members.
Now it’s rolled out and I have dozens of tools like that, so it becomes a matter of time. We’re all busy, but by committing and allocating time to do those things, now I know that tomorrow, my employee isn’t going to come here asking me the same question; instead they’re faster doing their projects. It’s worth remembering that we’re all running so fast that we don’t have time to stop and get on the bicycle. Stopping to get on the bicycle is implementing AI.
Your data is priceless
There is a ton of start-ups and pop-ups all over the globe. Most of them don’t have any security features, so I could be uploading data to them and they own the data and I have no control over that – they’re training and building their tool on our data. There is a major risk in that, so be careful what platform you use: it might look shiny and have a shiny website, but does it have the data compliance in place? We consolidated all our tools with Microsoft because it has all the compliance infrastructure and security features, so I know I can trust it.
Join the dots
I don’t just try to solve one immediate problem, because once I have that data collected or that tool set up, I can create automations to take things to another level: there are augmented experiences, when I can have one tool talk to another. Once I create these pricing agents, it’s exponentially useful; I can add a Teams chat agent to a group chat, which means I don’t have to go and find the price somewhere else; I’m immediately getting that answer without going anywhere. Those connections take things to another level of efficiency.
Marry your expertise to the right AI tool
We have a huge database of frequently asked questions. We took that database and created an agent with it that coordinated with all our MEP disciplines. And now, even an intern in the office can go to that agent and literally just copy and paste a very complicated email from an architect or engineer and get a professional, knowledgeable response that draws on 15 years of knowledge from our company. Both the PM and I are comfortable that the response is not ‘AI generated from the web’; it’s generated from the company’s knowledge base.
Start with the basics
Play around with ChatGPT: create a project for your company and it will learn from you in that process. The more questions you ask, the more e-mail and data you put in, the more it’s going to sound like you and respond like you. So, start from there.
Christian Doherty
