Claude for long specs and contracts, ChatGPT for everyday questions and drafting, Gemini for drawings and photos. Keep all of them away from final quantities.
Togal.AI for takeoffs, Procore or Autodesk for project management, ALICE for schedule optimization, OpenSpace or CompanyCam for jobsite capture, Document Crunch for contract review.
For the seat-specific admin work between the tools: vendor onboarding, COI tracking, work order coordination, bid assembly. Built with a person approving everything that leaves.
Buy anything a vendor has spent years on. Build only what is specific to how your company runs.
General models: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini
These are the models behind the chat apps. Every office already has someone using one. They are good at language, decent at reading documents, and unreliable at counting.
| Model | Best for on a construction job | Weak at |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | Reading long specs, contracts, and submittal packages in one pass; drafting scope narratives, RFIs, and correspondence in your voice; long multi-document questions | Anything that needs a count from a drawing |
| ChatGPT | Everyday questions, quick rewrites, meeting notes, first drafts of safety plans and toolbox talks | Long documents, consistency across many files |
| Gemini | Reading drawings and jobsite photos, describing what is in a plan sheet, video | Precise quantities; still not a takeoff tool |
Can ChatGPT read construction plans? It can describe them. Can it do takeoffs? Not to bid on. Treat all three as fast readers and drafters, and keep a person between them and any number that goes out under your name.
Category tools: buy these
A category tool is one a vendor has spent years building for one job, with a customer base that has already found its edge cases. Custom work here is a waste of your money, and Keystone's assessments say so.
- Estimating and takeoffs: Togal.AI is the AI takeoff tool most often cited by both contractors and search engines. Bluebeam remains the manual standard. Your estimating platform likely has AI features arriving too.
- Project management and documents: Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud. Their AI features (risk scoring, document search) improve every quarter and are included in what you already pay.
- Contract review: Document Crunch reads contracts for risk clauses. Useful for a mid-size GC without in-house counsel.
- Scheduling: ALICE Technologies optimizes schedules against constraints. Specialist math.
- Jobsite capture: OpenSpace for 360 walks, CompanyCam for field photos with tagging. Both are products, not projects.
- Phones: AI receptionists (Smith.ai, Jobber's, others) for small contractors who miss calls. A product category with $50 to $200 a month pricing.
Custom desks: build these
Between the tools sits the office work that is specific to your company: how you onboard a sub, what your COI requirements are per scope, how you match a work order to a crew, what goes in your bid package. No vendor covers it, because every contractor does it differently. That is what a desk is for.
A desk sits under one seat. It connects read-only to your email, your project platform, and your files. It collects, extracts, assembles, and drafts. The person in the seat decides. It cannot send, submit, or sign. In production today at a Chicago-area commercial and facilities contractor: a vendor onboarding desk and a work order coordination desk, with a signal engine reading Northern Illinois public records for funded work. Details at AI for construction companies.
How to decide, in three questions
- Does a vendor already sell this? If yes, buy it. Takeoffs, scheduling, capture, contract review, phones.
- Is the work specific to how we run? If yes, and it eats hours every week, it is a desk candidate. Vendor onboarding, work orders, bid assembly, month-end.
- Does it need a count or a signature? If yes, a person stays in the loop, whatever tool you use.
What to keep AI away from
- Final quantities on a bid.
- Anything sent to an owner, a sub, or a carrier without a person reading it first.
- Safety decisions in the field.
- Vendors promising autonomous agents that act without approval. Ask for the approval log and the override. If they cannot show you one, walk.