How to get your construction team actually using AI
87% of contractors expect AI to transform construction. Only 19% have changed how their teams work. What closes that gap isn't a new tool.
Kelly Stephens
Most contractors already believe AI matters. A recent Dodge Construction Network survey found that 87% of contractors expect AI to transform the industry, and only 19% have actually changed how their teams work.
That gap is where most construction and real estate operators are sitting right now. You know it's coming. You've probably paid for a few ChatGPT or Copilot seats already. And when you look around the office, almost nobody is using them for real work. Or maybe a couple of people are quietly using AI on their own, nobody's talking about it, and there's no standard for how anyone does anything with it.
Why "where do we start" sends you the wrong direction
The instinct at that point is to ask "where do we start." It feels like the practical question. It usually sends you the wrong direction though, because it turns into a tool hunt. You go looking for the AI product that will fix adoption, you buy it, and three months later things look about the same as before. The tool was never the missing piece.
Figure out where your team actually is
The better first move is figuring out where your team actually is today. With the tools you already pay for and the work they already do. That sounds slower. It's the thing that makes everything after it faster.
Think of it as a forward-looking readiness check. Before you buy anything, you want to know whether your team and your systems are ready to adopt AI, and what's in the way if they aren't. Most operators asking how to get their people using AI have nothing real in production yet, so this is the part that's missing, and it's the part that saves money.
What a readiness check usually turns up
When we run that kind of readiness check, a few things usually surface. Sometimes the team needs basic upskilling before any tool gets introduced, because handing Copilot to someone who has never prompted anything just produces frustration and a license nobody opens. A lot of times there's no AI policy in place, which means people are pasting bid numbers or client contracts into a public model without knowing where that data goes or who can see it later. And there's usually a workflow or two that are the obvious place to begin, where AI saves real hours instead of adding a step.
I had a big commercial general contractor come to me and tell me what they thought they wanted, but after we dug in and surveyed the team, there were different problems that completely resurfaced. As I was going through her workflow with her, she even found things that she didn't even think about because she just does her work on autopilot that we could automate and make easier. Sometimes it's just digging in with the team to really understand what they're doing, because sometimes the owners don't have that insight.
The order that actually works
None of that requires a big platform decision on day one. It requires knowing your starting point. Once you have that, "getting the team using AI" stops being a vague goal and turns into a short list you can actually work through. Train the people who need training. Put a simple policy in place so the team knows what's safe to use and what isn't. Pick the first workflow. Then bring in the tool that fits that workflow, instead of forcing the workflow around a tool you already bought.
That order matters because adoption is a people problem before it's a software problem. A team that understands what AI is good at and has permission to use it, with one clear win in front of them, will start using it on their own. A team that gets handed a login and left to figure it out mostly won't.
Where to start
If you're sitting in that 87%, wanting this and unsure how to move, the honest first step is a readiness assessment. We built a free one you can take in about two minutes. Ten questions about how your operation actually runs today, and you get back a readiness tier, a breakdown of where you're strong and where you're exposed, and a clear sense of where automation would pay off first. And if you'd rather just talk it through, book a free 30-minute audit.
Kelly Stephens is the CEO of EyeOn Automations, a custom software and AI company for construction and real estate operators. She spent 14 years in construction operations at PulteGroup before building software for the industry. Based in Southern California.
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