AI is the word-of-the-day for construction managers.
If you haven’t been given an explicit mandate to bring AI to your operations, then you have at least been told you need to “do more with less” — and you know AI can help you do it.
Unfortunately, while AI-driven automation and streamlining promises to reduce costs and timelines of construction projects, it is not always clear where to apply this technology to create the biggest impact on your day-to-date work.
We wrote this piece to solve that problem.
In it, we’ll explore:
Collecting property data is labor-intensive and error-prone. It requires physically walking the site, counting items, taking notes, and reconciling as-builts. This slow, inaccurate data collection process often creates delayed projects, increased costs, reduced IRR, and blind spots in capital planning.
AI can transform property data collection and modeling from manual to automatic. Using public and owner-provided data, AI can create a detailed and accurate property record, and use that data to automatically generate accurate 3D models.
With AI-driven property data collection and modeling, you gain faster projects, lower costs, increased IRR, and capital planning that takes into account all near-term and long-term CAPEX requirements.
Identifying property issues to remedy with capital projects is a difficult process. Notetaking during site visits is fallible, it’s often performed without the full context of the property’s condition and history, and the same property may be inspected by multiple teams and specialists.
The result? Different teams can have different opinions about what needs to be done to repair, maintain, or improve a property — and what a complete and accurate project scope looks like.
AI can take the guesswork out of issue identification and scoping. It can provide a robust, up-to-date, and accurate single source of truth for each property, and then parse PCA reports, inspection notes, images, and other unstructured documents to provide context. AI can then identify, collect, and curate a list of property issues to create a project scope everyone can agree upon.
Understanding when appliances, systems, and equipment within a property need replacement is challenging. Most multifamily owners do not have an accurate, up-to-date catalogue of these items, their expected useful life (EUL), when they were installed, and their remaining useful life (RUL).
To get this information, they either need to perform sidewalks, or rely on hiring and retaining diligent property managers. When this doesn’t happen, appliances, systems, and equipment either get replaced too soon (resulting in unnecessary expenses) or too late (resulting in tenant issues).
AI can solve this problem. With just a photo of an appliance, system, or equipment’s plate, AI can read its serial number, collect manufacturer data, and automatically calculate its EUL and RUL.
Setting accurate estimates is downstream of the above activities. If you don’t have accurate property data and measurements, and accurate project scope, then you can’t accurately estimate a project, then you can’t receive accurate bids, and landing on a final budget will be challenging.
At best, you and your vendors will reach an accurate project budget, but the process will be slow, with a lot of back-and-forth. At worst, you will reach an inaccurate project budget that either hogs too much of your annual spend, or is set too low and ultimately runs over budget.
AI can automatically turn property measurements into precise price x quantity takeoffs, that give vendors everything they need to send accurate hard bids as soon as you solicit them.
Most construction managers would not say “writing documentation” is their favorite part of the job. It takes time and effort that often feels it should be allocated more visibly productive activities.
Yet documenting project scope — at multiple stages of planning, estimating, bidding, and contracting — can’t be avoided. These documents are a key part of the process, and if they aren’t done properly you open yourself to legal risks and projects delivered against the wrong scope.
Today, AI can write most of this for you. It can turn property and project data into full scopes of work, generate final contracts with standard or custom legal terms, and overall eliminate hours of paperwork per project — generating documentation by just clicking a button.
New AI tools for construction pop up everyday, yet most of them focus on two things:
These tools are useful, and are actively improving how construction projects are performed.
Yet the five truly transformative applications of AI that we listed above start away from the job site — before anyone swings a hammer — and they are deployed by the Construction Managers at large multifamily owners who scope, plan, and oversee projects.
We built Tailorbird to serve these Construction Managers, so they could bring AI to the use cases that make the biggest impact on construction project success rates.
Tailorbird is an AI-driven platform that automates, simplifies, and streamlines every stage of collecting property data, planning capital projects, and tracking them from launch to close-out.
Tailorbird brings AI to all five of the biggest levers for construction management.
Tailorbird’s AI collects 300,000+ data points at 98%+ accuracy for any property — with just an address. It then turns this data into a 3D model of exteriors and unit interiors, and a standardized property record that includes site plans, takeoffs, roof plans, and more.
Tailorbird’s AI analyzes hundreds of pages of PCA reports, handwritten inspection notes, images, and other unstructured documents for any property. It then turns this information into a summarized list of key issues and prioritized, scheduled tasks.
Tailorbird’s AI can read an appliance, system, or piece of equipment’s serial plate and turn that into an accurate and complete database of EUL and RUL dates. It can also analyze a photo of a system, appliance, or piece of equipment and analyze its condition and needs.
Tailorbird’s AI automatically collects property data and measurements, and generates accurate price x quantity takeoffs. These takeoffs feed directly into embedded workflows for estimating budgets, soliciting bids from vendors, and negotiating down to final budgets.
Tailorbird’s AI automatically writes exhibit As, exhibit Cs, and contracts that are distributed to vendors. Tailorbird drafts these documents using the same property and project data sets, creating a single source of truth and action for every step of capital project planning.
With Tailorbird’s AI, you can easily bring the 5 highest-impact use cases to your construction management processes. By doing so, you will:
Tailorbird shifts the industry’s embrace of AI — away from a pure focus on GCs, and onto helping construction managers get capital planning and projects right before boots hit the ground.
