I run The Dom Construction Group here in Albany. We do masonry, EIFS and stucco, coatings, concrete and restoration. Like most contractors I know, the field work was never the hard part. The hard part was everything after 6 PM: the takeoff for a bid due Thursday, the supplier prices I forgot to ask for, the certificate a GC needs before we start Monday, and the receipts sliding around on the dash of the truck.
I’ve moved a lot of that work onto AI. Not one magic app. A handful of small systems, each doing one boring job, each checked by me before anything goes out the door. Here are the seven I’d tell another contractor to look at.
1. Takeoffs from the PDF drawing set
Takeoffs used to eat my evenings. Now the AI reads the drawing set, finds the elevations and the scale notes, and measures quantities: square feet of stucco, linear feet of sealant joints, the count of openings. Three different AI models each do the takeoff on their own, and the results are compared. Where they agree, I spot-check. Where they don’t, I look hard, because that’s usually a scale note, a hidden wall return or a detail on a sheet nobody expected.
What comes out is an estimate workbook, a draft proposal and a marked-up set of drawings showing exactly what was measured. Anything it couldn’t measure is listed in red instead of guessed.
The honest part: AI still misreads drawings, and one wrong scale makes every number on that sheet wrong. I never send a price I haven’t checked against the plans. See how ours is built and what we can set up for your shop.
2. Finding bids before the pre-bid walkthrough
Public work in New York is spread across a lot of places. State agencies and public authorities have to advertise most contracts of $50,000 or more in the New York State Contract Reporter, which Empire State Development runs, under Economic Development Law §142. An account is free, and you can pick categories to get alerts.
That’s only the start. OGS Design & Construction puts its bid documents on Bid Express. DASNY lists construction bids on its own page with a separate sign-up. The City of Albany posts on its own bid page. Saratoga County posts through BidNet, as part of the Empire State Purchasing Group. And GC invites come by email, mixed in with everything else.
Nobody has time to check all of that every morning, so our Bid Radar does it. Early each day it checks the sources and my inbox, reads each notice, pulls out the scope, dates, bonding and wage rules, and scores the job against our trades, area and size. I get a short ranked list with the reasons, and a log of what we bid, what we passed on and why.
It also flags prevailing wage jobs. The NYS Department of Labor publishes a new wage schedule every July 1, and contractors on covered jobs file certified payroll through its online portal. Better to know on day one. See the Bid Radar case study, try the Bid Radar demo, or read about bid finding & tracking.
3. Supplier and sub pricing requests
Every bid needs prices: block, sealant, the EIFS system, scaffolding, a roofing sub. Writing the same request over and over is the job that gets put off until it’s too late.
Now AI drafts a personal request for every supplier and sub on the list: their contact name, only the scope that applies to them, the drawing links and the date I need the number. They land as drafts in my Gmail. I read them, fix what needs fixing, and they go out on a schedule.
When prices come back, I still read every quote myself. AI can line the numbers up side by side, but the exclusions in the fine print are where the money is. More in supplier pricing requests and supplier & sub pricing requests.
4. Proposals, schedules of values and submittals
Once the takeoff and prices are in, a proposal is mostly assembly: scope, inclusions, exclusions, alternates, price and schedule. AI drafts it in our format from my notes and the estimate, with our standard exclusions already in.
Schedules of values work the same way. A lot of the GCs we work for want pay applications on the AIA forms, where the schedule of values lives on the G703 continuation sheet that goes with the G702. AI breaks the contract into the line items the GC asked for, and I check that it adds up. Submittals are mostly collecting product data, color charts and warranty letters, and AI builds that package for me to check against the spec. See proposals, SOVs & submittals.
5. COIs, prequals and vendor forms
Every new GC, owner or agency wants the same facts on a new form: legal name, licenses, insurance, safety program, references. We keep our company facts in one place, AI fills each new questionnaire or prequal packet from it, and I review and sign.
The certificate of insurance itself comes from your insurance agent, usually on the ACORD 25 form. AI doesn’t issue it. It writes the request to the agent with the exact certificate holder, additional insured and waiver wording the contract asks for, and tracks which jobs are still waiting on one.
One New York catch: when you apply for a permit, license or contract with a government entity, the Workers’ Compensation Board says ACORD forms are not acceptable proof of workers’ comp or disability and Paid Family Leave coverage. You need the state’s own forms, usually the C-105.2 and the DB-120.1, which your carrier sends. A checklist that knows this saves a second trip to the building department. See paperwork on autopilot and compliance paperwork.
6. Job photo reports
Crews take good photos, and then the photos sit in somebody’s phone. The fix is simple: the day’s photos go into a shared folder, and AI writes the daily report with the date, where on the building, what got done, what’s in the way, and the photos in order with captions. The foreman adds a line. The GC gets a clean report instead of a string of texts.
The same idea works for repair quotes. A homeowner sends photos of cracked brick, and AI drafts what it sees and a likely scope. A final price still needs someone to look at the wall in person. Try it with sample photos in the photo to estimate demo.
7. Bookkeeping from bank statements and receipts
I keep books for more than one company, plus rental properties. AI reads the bank statements, sorts every transaction into a category, checks each month against the statement balance, and builds a workbook my accountant can work from: income statement, balance sheet, ledger, reconciliations and notes. If it can’t tell what a charge was, it goes on a question list for me. It doesn’t guess.
Receipts too. Snap a photo in the truck, and AI reads the vendor, date, amount and job, then logs it. The IRS says supporting documents like receipts should show who you paid, how much, when, and what for, and a photo log makes them easy to find later. My accountant still does the taxes. AI does the sorting. See books from bank statements, the paperwork demo and our guide to automating small-business bookkeeping.
What AI still can’t do on a job
It can’t walk the site, smell the wet wall or tell you the owner is going to be trouble. It also makes mistakes and sounds sure of itself while making them. NIST, the federal standards agency, calls this confabulation: AI confidently presenting false content. That’s why every system above has a person approving the work before it goes to a customer, a GC or a supplier.
Watch where your data goes, too. Bids and prices belong in business accounts with the right settings, not a free personal login. Here’s how to keep business data safe in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
Where to start
Pick the one that hurts most. For a lot of subs, that’s takeoffs or bids. If you do the books on Sunday night, it’s the receipts. Start with one, get it working on real jobs, then add the next. Our AI for contractors page shows the whole set, and your first AI project walks through picking one and finishing it.
If this sounds like your Tuesday night, book a free visit. I’ll come to your shop or job trailer and tell you plainly which one or two of these would pay off first, or if the honest answer is “not yet.”
