Whatever you might think of it, it’s here and embracing what it can do to help your business is not just a second thought, but will become necessary. The next five years will revolutionize a lot of industries – including AEC Consulting!
1 – AI Based Email.
I likely receive somewhere between 60-100 emails a day. I have cleaned them out, unsubsrcibed to everything I can, it’s still a challenge to sort through. I probably miss an email that I shouldn’t have missed once every two weeks. Unfortunately, I DON’T have an answer for you. I have tried a few AI clients that will auto-sort and some even auto-reply, but not one that does what I am comfortable with… but it’s coming – quickly.
2 – Employee Training.
I don’t go all-in on having AI create anything without review or rewriting. That said, I have thoroughly enjoyed the help with organizing thoughts and really getting things going. I will give a detailed prompt to give me a presentation outline for a training session or process. This helps immediately break down thoughts and I can rearrange and add the details I want to make sure get prioritized.
3 – Scheduling.
Depending on what platform is used, AI can utilize past performance to pretty accurately predict and organize scheduling. This (like everything else in AI) is not perfect and needs to be reviewed, but if I have four past similar sized projects in the same municipality, AI can easily create a working schedule based on these paste experiences – including permitting.
4 – AI CAD.
Yup… its here. Okay – not really, but it’s getting there. Within AutoCAD there are tools that utilize AI to determine and separate blocks, anticipate next commands, and even some site-optimization. There are also tools that allow consultants and contractors to identify and pull information (quantities, for example) and provide a quick review of potential issues for a design. Again – not to be trusted to be the end all be all, but another tool to use. I believe we are not too far off from designing by prompt – allowing the engineer to still be responsible for the design, but with the assistance and ‘learning’ of AI.
5 – Marketing
If you’re not already using AI tools in Canva, Adobe, and others to help both create and review your proposals, reports, social media posts, graphics, etc., then you’re behind. AI can compare what you are doing to other (more successful) platforms and associates.