The Real Benefit of AI in Construction: Not a Replacement, but a Useful Tool

The construction industry has also embraced AI, and it can save a lot of time on projects. But can you just sit back and let AI solve everything for you? Definitely not, says Roy Welink, Customer Success Manager at IT company 12Build. “With AI, there’s a greater need than ever for people with knowledge and experience.”

According to Welink, the use of AI doesn’t so much change “the output” of what you do, but rather changes the way you arrive at that result. He’s happy to explain this using an illuminating example. “I recently spoke with one of our developers. He told me he hadn’t touched any programming code in three weeks. All he had to do was review the code that AI had generated for him. So his output is still the same, because he was building a function in our application just as he always does. It’s just that his path to reaching that result has become completely different thanks to AI.”

AI in Construction

Although the construction industry isn’t traditionally the fastest-moving or most transformative market, Welink believes that applications enhanced with AI features will play a major role in making all kinds of business processes and construction activities faster, smarter, and more efficient. The main challenge here, Welink emphasizes, is ensuring that AI is applied correctly. “As an IT company, we look specifically at where our users spend a lot of time and where they still do a lot of repetitive work. We then ask ourselves how we can support them in these areas—always in a way that ensures users retain control over their own data and the output at all times.”

Using AI as an extension

After all, you always have to be careful with AI, because it’s highly susceptible to interpretation. “If you use a good AI model, AI will get it right about seventy percent of the time,” Welink explains. “That also means that thirty percent of the time, AI won’t get it right.” The average margin on construction projects in the Netherlands, just like in the rest of Europe, is around ten percent. This means that if you rely entirely on AI and don’t check anything yourself, you’ll lose a lot of money. Then you’ll end up running projects at a loss. That’s why you should always view AI as an extension of your work and not as a complete replacement for what you do.”

All relevant information out in the open

According to Welink, what’s the best way to use AI? “Take a contractor’s request for proposals, or the evaluation and comparison of received bids. A first step is to have AI effectively summarize these often voluminous documents, so you can quickly see exactly the right information.” By having the AI model analyze only these documents—and, most importantly, not perform any internet searches—you prevent it from making its own interpretations. This ensures the highest possible reliability of the results.

AI can also help contractors prepare their bids, providing a clearer picture of potential issues and any additional documents that still need to be included. Welink: “This allows you to issue a higher-quality request for proposals, and it will also make comparing bids and evaluating them against the request for proposals much easier.”

Source Citation

In addition to having documents automatically summarized for you, you can also interact with an AI model yourself and ask specific questions. “This allows you to look up specific information in a bid document, proposal, or other document,” says Welink, “just as you can, for example, compare proposals side by side to evaluate them effectively.”

It’s essential that you not only see a summary or the information you’re looking for, but that there’s always a reference to the source. Welink: “If the specific locations where the information relevant to you was found are clearly indicated, you can still look up the document yourself and read it thoroughly. That is and remains essential, because otherwise you’ll become too detached from the project and won’t be sufficiently up to speed.”

More targeted data collection and time savings thanks to AI

“The essence of this approach is that you still have to read through things like a request for proposals or a bid,” Welink explains. “But now you can do this in a much more targeted and selective way. This prevents you from wasting a lot of valuable time in the preliminary phase assessing documents. You can assess much more quickly whether a project is even a good fit for you, and focus all your attention on only the truly well-qualified bid requests.”

You can use the time you save to focus on the project itself. “Time that you’ll soon need to implement all kinds of innovative solutions—solutions where your specific knowledge and experience as a construction specialist will really come in handy. That’s exactly the real benefit of using AI in a targeted way.”

Ultimately responsible yourself

No matter how you use AI in construction, always view it as an extension—a tool to optimize your processes and work—and certainly not as a replacement. “In the past, you’d ask yourself all these questions and had to search for the answers on your own,” says Welink. “Now you can ask AI a question, and it will search for the answer for you, so you get it much faster. So it’s mainly an easier way to quickly arrive at the right answer. Of course, you still have to verify that answer yourself afterward. So humans will always be needed. In fact, you’re even more essential than before, because only you can assess whether the answer is correct.”

That’s how you truly collaborate with AI, and according to Welink, that’s exactly what AI is meant to do. “AI is never a replacement. AI is meant to support you in your daily work. It increases efficiency and saves a lot of time—in projects, we’re not talking about hours, but days. But you must always think for yourself, and you’re responsible for the final check. It can’t be any other way. Only you have that knowledge and experience. AI doesn’t. You won’t be able to blame AI later if a building is leaning.”