How to gain a competitive edge using AI assistants

Imagine starting your day with AI already optimizing your schedule and handling complex tasks. Join Wade and Stephen as they dive into how AI assistants are transforming the construction industry.

Discover the competitive edge gained by early adopters and explore examples of AI in action, from organizing historical bidding data to managing project schedules, predicting change orders, and improving cash flow. Learn about open vs. closed AI platforms and data privacy concerns as well. If you're in construction and want to stay ahead, this is a must-watch episode. Share your experiences and let us know how AI is helping your business in the comments below! 

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Topics we cover in this episode include:
00:50 Real-World Applications of AI 
02:07 AI Assistants and Their Capabilities 
02:46 Data Privacy and Security Concerns 
04:38 AI in Financial Operations 
12:53 AI in Project Management and Estimating 
20:40 Future of AI in Construction 

LINKS

Visit the episode page at https://carpentercpas.com/assistant for more details and a transcript of the show.

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Wade Carpenter, CPA, CGMA | CarpenterCPAs.com
Stephen Brown, Bonding Expert | SuretyAnswers.com

Transcript

[00:00:00] wade: Imagine walking onto a job site where AI has already optimized your schedule, flagged potential delays, and even categorized your invoices before you've had your morning coffee. Sound like the future? Well, it's happening right now in 2025. AI in construction has gone beyond simple automation. It's actively managing complex tasks, From financial operations to estimating and project management.

And today we're diving into how AI assistants are transforming the industry and why early adopters are gaining a massive competitive edge. This is the Contractor Success Forum, where we discuss business side of construction to help you run a more profitable and efficient company.

I'm Wade Carpenter with Carpenter Company CPAs, and with me as always, my co host Stephen Brown with McDaniel Whitley Bonding Insurance. AI is revolutionizing so many aspects of construction. what's one way you've seen it make the biggest impact so far?

[00:00:58] stephen: Mainly organizing historical data for bidding processes. And also absolutely being present to do transcripts in meetings. We talked about that. And being able to assign the tasks that were discussed during those meetings. And to be able to send a transcript or synopsis to everyone in that meeting. That's the simplest thing in the world. 

But historical data and construction and bidding is everything. Your construction data from jobs you've bid in the past and what your competitors have bid can so easily be manipulated and used for your future bids to make a profit. And AI can help you predict that.

[00:01:40] wade: Yeah, absolutely. And it's hard to believe that we've come a long way in about two years. I mean, AI, what, November, two years ago people started jumping on ChatGPT. And for years, we've had things like Zapier where you have these automations that are linear. 

But these linear progressions of things that we can automate have taken a completely different turn. And we're going to talk about AI assistants that can do a lot more than just one task. These AI assistants are taking things off of people's plates.

I know I use it every single day.

[00:02:20] stephen: Yeah, I do too, Wade. Absolutely. And also how AI helps you implement new technology so easily, because it helps integrate what you want to do. You can even ask AI to write code for you to operate your own software program. It's fascinating. It's exciting. I wanted to ask you what the difference between these open and closed platforms are for AI. How do you protect your data? How do you protect, AI's access to your personal or company information?

[00:02:55] wade: Well, there's a lot to unpack there. Part of what I wanted to go into today is on the assistants. We've come a long way from just something that can write. A blog post for us, but, now it is actually helping us do our jobs every day. To answer your question, there are definitely open source models out there. And, you can either go out on the internet or you can actually host a lot of these open source models. I think that's where you were going with this, and have it on your own server where your data never leaves your own computer. And that's where, things like Microsoft Copilot is trying to, they've tried to bake it into the Microsoft ecosystem now.

There's a lot of pushback on that because the way they're doing that to try to help you do more, is there taking a snapshot of what you're doing on your computer. so there's a lot of privacy concerns. 

And they've done some things where, it's supposed to live directly on your computer, but there's a lot of privacy concerns there. So that's where a lot of people are saying, hey, we don't want this data we're sending to the cloud, we don't want to train on our data and we don't want to share our confidential information. So I know this is not really where I wanted to go--

[00:04:15] stephen: No, but there's, just to start the discussion. There are ways to do that. And you do it all the time .And who needs to keep their data more confidential than you, an accountant.

But it's a wonderful time saver and you mentioned, a great list of what AI is doing for you and your customers. Would you share that with us?

[00:04:38] wade: It can do a lot more than just, write a blog post that's where everybody thinks. But, what I was alluding to earlier, we had this, linear Zapier. com that was just connecting things in the cloud. 

There was some useful automations that came out of that, but that's where we were sort of stuck. Then along comes AI and there's this program called Make. com that has gotten a lot of traction from that because it's like we don't have to be a programmer to learn how to use these things.

And then in the middle of this is this thing that I think still hasn't taken off, but there's like one or two different, platforms where the Relay. app is one of the first ones that really did what I call human in the loop.

The Human in the loop was another step on this journey. And that leads to the latest iteration that a lot of people are building. There's one called n8n .io, you can either self host it or. Have it run in the cloud, but that is one of the ones that has really, in 2025, people are taking this and building these assistants out of it.

And that's really where I wanted to go with this today. We can take all these tools that we had in make. com that could write a blog post. That's one I was building in right now thatI want to write a newsletter. Let's just say I've got a assistant that is built where it will go out to the internet and look at the latest news in construction or, business cashflow, whatever it is, and, give me a quick synopsis of these things. And, it's like, okay, well that sounds like an interesting article. I can say, take this. And send it back to the assistant the same assistant can say, okay, now we're going to go write it, write an article for it. We can write a, say, YouTube script. a post for Facebook or Instagram or any of these platforms. And then the same AI agent can send that back to us. We can see it on our phone and say, I like this or I don't like this. Assuming I like it, we can send it back to the assistant, and they can go as far as posting it. But, a lot of times, the AI output is not all that good.

So, we've got this human in the loop where, hey, I want to tweak this. In one assistant, I have like seven different tools that can do some of that stuff for me.

[00:07:10] stephen: It's fascinating how you can, simplify these workflows and maximize your productivity, but in the most amazing ways, you're so clearly focused on what you need to know and what you need to do. And AI just helps you get that done.

[00:07:26] wade: Yeah. And I think the way things are going now with 2025, one of the natural things that these, AI workflows were doing, had to do with being creative and things like marketing. That's where a lot of people spent their time in the last year, year and a half building stuff for their marketing. Because it is like, hey, let's be creative.

But now these assistants are really getting to the point where we can actually do really good work for ourselves. One of the things that I've done with it, I've built another assistant that I can get on my phone and just, I can actually talk to it and say, hey, what does my schedule look like for this week?

And it can actually go through my calendar and give me a list of everything that I've got coming up, the dates and times and who's involved. I can actually send it out and say, this is a new prospect. Give me some research on this. Let me know something about this company. I used to employ somebody to do that, and now I don't need that person to do that. And actually get better, deeper information by just talking to my phone and it actually sends back this report. 

Again, this same chat bot, whatever you want to call it, I, like, okay, well, I got an email and then we start talking. Okay, can you get together at 2 o'clock? And yes, okay, well, I don't even have to go in my calendar app. I can actually generate the calendar appointment, send it out to my client, my prospect, whoever it is, without me doing any of this. 

[00:08:59] stephen: I want to hear about the other ways that you're seeing your contractors use it for, like, examples for accounting purposes. 

[00:09:07] wade: Yeah, I mean, obviously there are things that you can do with it, like writing an email and that same chat bot. But along the same lines, that's where, like in our firm, we've tried to be very proactive on this stuff. 

There's so many workflows here, but, accounts payable is one of the most crucial workflows for our contractors. To get the job costing, we needed to build a system where we can get the information quickly. And until AI came along, we had these OCR technology that would read like a PDF, try to extract all the data, it was hit and miss, quite frankly. It did fair job. But now AI comes along and actually can take a look at the thing, even if you don't do the optical character recognition, it can look at a picture or, or even if it's handwritten stuff, and a lot of times interpret that. 

And we've turned that into a system where we can pull in the data and the accuracy has gone through the roof and it's saved my team a lot of time to be able to deal with construction, job costing and, cost coding this stuff.

[00:10:21] stephen: And classifying invoices.

[00:10:23] wade: And it can, say like, this vendor goes with this. If it has a purchase order on that PO, we can look it up from there. But, by the same token, well, we've saved a lot of steps where they just send all the invoices in, AI reads it, and gets it into the system.

And then maybe from that system, we, push it to the project manager to approve it before we put it into the accounting, like QuickBooks or whatever to be paid.

This is one of the biggest keys, and I say this all the time when I talk to contractors about it. I know it sounds counterproductive. You don't want to get those payables in. You don't want to pay those guys, but those costs are what drives your billing. And too often contractors get a bill handed to them on the job site, or I've seen some of them text it in, or some people will call it in, or, there's all kinds of iterations of this, or it will sit there and ride around in the supervisor's truck for a week until he makes it back to the office.

Well, the faster you can get that into the system, the faster you can get that billing out. So, if they get it to you on the 24th and you're billing on the 25th and you don't get that into the system, you're going to wait another month to get that in that month's billing.

Being able to speed this process up actually helps the cash flow of the contractor. So that's just one way that AI is helping us speed up the--

[00:11:50] stephen: Can, can, I mean, can you use AI for just other things like reconciling your bank statements, something like that?

[00:11:56] wade: Yeah, there's a couple of things. Well, we can maybe come back to receipts, but you know, one of the things that we've had some tools where like we get a bank statement or a credit card statement, and we don't have direct access to the bank. We had a tool for a long time that would do that OCR technology on the bank statements.

But now we've got one in the cloud that does it by AI, and it does a far better job of reading this, and we actually can reconcile it to the screen and import it into something like QuickBooks. And saves a ton of hand keying as well as the bank rules that we can set up on-- don't get me started on bank feeds, but, I've talked about that many times. But the bank rules, when you set them up properly on the backend can save so much time in construction. Getting good clean data in is what AI is really helping us to do.

[00:12:53] stephen: Moving on, you would say, I would ask you, how about, how are folks using AI for, for like estimating and project management?

[00:13:02] wade: Well, it might be great to have a couple of guests on here. I've seen some project management, and I've seen some AI tools where it can do like the takeoffs on a bid.

[00:13:13] stephen: Mm hmm.

[00:13:14] wade: You got the blueprint and said, well, it can do all the measuring. And I've seen some demonstration where an experienced estimator versus somebody with these proper AI tools did it in a fraction of the time and it's actually more accurate.

[00:13:30] stephen: Right. And if you want to look at a job and you can use AI to do just a generalized takeoff with some median prices that either it can find or you can provide a range. It can calculate a job bid as fast as you can conceive of it. It's fantastic. 

So often, you'll see in a set of job specs, you'll see all the unit prices and the type of work. Where you, because you've read the blueprints, the scope of just the materials and unit prices. So, you know how hard the job's going to be.

But AI just goes and it, literally can take everything into account that you need to consider as far as material costs and job costs. And then you plug in your overhead numbers and then you can look at historical data to see, whether you think you have a shot of getting that bid at the price you want to turn it, the profits you want to plug in.

And a lot of people just don't seem to get that. They just seem that eventually there's going to be a job where nobody wants to bid it and I'll be the only bidder and I'll get it. And that doesn't happen as much as everybody dreams it would happen.

[00:14:38] wade: Well, I also think about, I've talked to contractors for years and they'll sit there and spend all night doing bids and stuff like that and, and then not get the job. That's always one of the heartbreaks. But you know, these, these tools are actually speeding up considerably.

And just, just as I was saying, the blueprints, well, you can have the measurement, but I've seen some things where it can actually go in and like, here's the square footage of the room. So we're figuring, how much drywall would we need for the walls and the ceiling and everything? It's, it's amazing.

The other part of this is, which I don't know if we have time to go into today, but it's project management. The project management tools in AI are getting incredible. Keeping this Gantt chart, well, people have done that manually for years.

And if something gets off on here, okay, well, we put it in the project management in, in seconds, it, it updates. What can we do to go in and make some adjustments so that we can speed the job, get us back on track?

[00:15:45] stephen: That's an absolute great point. And the things that you can ask open AI source, just based on a territory that you have a project, just generalized questions you have about how's the weather, what's it like working in the soil? What's the status between open and closed shops?

What is the makeup of subcontractors you might need on that certain project in the area? What are other considerations? And you, it'll just instantly pull off the best list of things that you really need to know before you go into that job. That's just one crazy example. The most exciting thing that you put on the list was that using AI to predict potential change orders.

That's, that's crazy exciting. And, and, you asked me what I thought and I said, absolutely, you can predict change orders when they're going to occur, especially based on the personality of the customer that you're working with. But you're working with a customer that doesn't have a good budget to start, but wants more, and might have the ability to get more funds to finish that, or you're able to value engineer and bring that job, bring it under. Offer that owner a little bit of bait in the form of savings and then turn that into a big change order. So change orders can absolutely be predicted. What other elements are in place that would predict a change order on a project?

So I'm just going to stop right there. Cause there's a lot, I think.

[00:17:16] wade: Yeah, there is. And actually you sort of reminded me one thing that I actually helped a contractor build. Sometimes these contractors that work outside, the weather can play a part and trying to prove that, okay, we had X number of rain days or whatever. But you know, that used to be like, Hey, you got your foreman like, okay, we're going to send a report every now and then.

Well, AI now can pull the weather history and record it automatically on, this is where we were and okay, this is the temperature, this is what rained and all that stuff, automatically. And I know this is a simple example,

[00:17:49] stephen: I know, but it's instantaneous. You simply ask AI, where's the nearest, NOAA measuring weather station, and then you give them the address of the job site. And it tells you, and then you say, during, from this period to this period, how many rain days were over x number of inches, or whatever the contract says that allows you to get rain days. And it just pops up immediately and you print it off and it matches anything they need as proof of your rain days. That's a great point, Wade.

[00:18:19] wade: Well, the thing is, you don't even have, you just tell it, with these automations, you set it and forget it, and it does it automatically and you've got protected yourself. I'm thinking about some of the other ways where, you know, we, we've got some workflows. Well, we're so briefly talking about receipts and AI can manage those receipts and extract those.

And we built some apps where our contractors will, instead of like everybody trying to send them in or email them in, those kind of things, you can build yourself now. You don't have to pay for one of these expensive services to do it. 

The other thing is , and this is really for a simpler contractor, but you know, I've got some workflows where, say you've got a very simple, I want to send a bill. Well, okay, I can show you how to call on your phone and say, you got like QuickBooks online or something like that. Send a bill for 25, 000 on this project. And it can actually pop up on your phone, approve it, and send it without you typing a single thing. 

I mean, obviously you want to check that. You probably wouldn't want to do AI type bills or something like that, but it's possible. It's very possible now.

[00:19:34] stephen: Absolutely.

[00:19:35] wade: I don't know about you, but it's like, I get an idea for something and then I'll walk away five minutes ago. I didn't write it down. I forget all that idea. Well, I've got an app on my phone. That I just, that same assistant is doing my calendar and my email.

And I didn't talk about the email classification. That's huge too. But, , I say, well, okay, remind me for the team meeting that we want to talk about this. Well, it dumps it all into a group of notes that I can go back to and then create an agenda. I think about all the time that's like, okay, I should do this. But then, it's in the middle of the night or something. Okay, well, I forget it by the next day.

It just takes a lot of stress off of you, doesn't it? I get so excited when I think about just this comment about having the inside track on a job that you're bidding. Every contractor gets excited when they think they have the inside track on a job. And how much more can you predict that you'll be on that inside track with the help of AI?

[00:20:36] stephen: And how do you see things going in the future, Wade, with this?

[00:20:40] wade: Well, AI is actually finally getting to a point where it can actually take some work off our plate. I guess from my standpoint and where we are, we've used it to leverage the technology. And, I've always said it's like, okay, well, now we can take care of a contractor all over the country.

But now we are able to, to get a lot of these things and streamline so many of these things. Again, I've told some stories about how fast, I mean, in one particular case, I took out two and a half people spending four days a month trying to get their billing out to where we can send them the information with the backup for their bills in five minutes.

 It's just something that we've baked into what we're doing, and I feel like, that's what allowed me to offer a service to contractors that, they can get their accounting back office done so much faster and easier, as well as, I hate to say, usually a lot more cost effective than hiring somebody in house.

[00:21:44] stephen: Absolutely. Not to mention how much, we briefly talked about how much it can help you in sales and your ability to communicate more professionally with your clients. What else do you see AI doing in the future? Like, I know you had mentioned like, procuring materials, that sort of thing.

[00:22:03] wade: Oh, it definitely is doing some of that now. Without getting into the, the infancy of that, but it's, it's really starting to where it can take over your computer and say, send me some bids and spit that out. A lot of call for that.

[00:22:16] stephen: You're just able to give better service with it, right?

[00:22:20] wade: Yeah. And actually I saw a stat, I'm trying to remember the statistic, but now they're saying like, I want to say it was over 60 percent of the companies now are having some kind of like chatbot or automated customer service. 

And there's a lot of, I mean, you can actually have a virtual reception, not just, where you don't have to pay a person to do it, but a AI automated voice can converse with this person or prospect, and actually respond to them. Or having these chatbots on your website or, they put in a support ticket. you know, maybe it was an HVAC contractor or somebody like that. It doesn't take as many people to do that, or at least you can manage it better with fewer people.

[00:23:09] stephen: Yeah, no, it's funny you should say that because I signed up for a service that the saleswoman that I dealt with was so engaging, friendly, informative. She made the whole process so exciting, and I accused her of being AI. I said, I said, you're, you're doing such a great job, and she was generally thrilled that she was doing such a good job.

And being a salesperson myself, you appreciate other salespeople, right? But I mean to tell you, AI can just smooth out those rough edges. And that's incorporated into what all the sales forces do and how they communicate. And how they promote themselves and also how it affects the bottom line, because it's, it's all about being more productive.

And we always preach the use of AI for maximizing your cashflow. And we talked about that. We talked about everything from project management to getting the bills in the system, making sure that your payables are driving your receivables. We talked about that. We talked about how you use it in just team management and how much you use it to just speed up repetitive tasks over and over and over again.

And I believe our listeners have used it for lots of other ways. We're probably barely touching the tip of this iceberg.

[00:24:32] wade: I agree. And I, I'd love for our listeners to maybe put in the comments below ways that we haven't even talked about today that you're actually using this, and it's helping you. Because I know they're out there that there are definitely ways that people are inventing new things every day that it can do for you.

[00:24:51] stephen: Yeah, let us know what you want to talk about and we will do our best to engage someone really good that we can help drill them and get some information out there to you.

[00:25:02] wade: Okay. I feel like I totally geeked out on this episode, but that's just me. I don't know.

[00:25:08] stephen: I don't think we did. I think we're just kind of touching the surface a little bit. And the fact is, Wade, is AI is here. It's useful. And if you're not using it, you're going to be left out pretty soon. And the reason you will be is because it's a game changer, isn't it? 

[00:25:26] wade: And one of the messages I guess I also would say is like, a lot of these automations, there's templates out there. Or if you don't feel like you can learn it, a lot of it's not as hard as you think, you can get on YouTube and watch some of these videos and figure out how to. But even if you're not, there's plenty of people out there now that want to do this for you. It may cost you some money to do it, to pay somebody to do it, but sometimes to get that automated and take that off your plate, you don't know how much that could save you down the road.

[00:25:57] stephen: Ask AI to help you find that person, huh?

[00:26:00] wade: We can do that. Well, again, I've enjoyed talking about this, even though I've geeked out on it. But, if our listeners do have any thoughts, feedback, please drop them in the comments below. Happy to answer any questions. Wanted to thank you for listening to the Contractor Success Forum. If you would, please consider like, share, subscribe.

We love talking about stuff like this, as well as ways to increase your bottom line and help your cash flow. Follow us every week as we post a new episode, and we will see you on the next show.