ChatGPT in Construction: A Working Contractor on What Works, What Fails, and What to Do First

0:00Construction Genius: You're a contractor, you're busy, you're skeptical of the AI hype, and every consultant on LinkedIn is telling you that if you don't embrace AI right now, you're going to get left behind. So you tune a lot of that junk out, and that's a smart move. But here's a problem with that approach. While you're waiting for the noise to die down, a few of your competitors are quietly using these tools to save hours every week. Not on flashy stuff, but on boring stuff. Meeting minutes, SOPs, pulling scope language out of a 200-page addendum. And that's where my guest today comes in. Dimitri Citiopoulos is the vice president of Delphi Plumbing and Heating.

0:42Construction Genius: They're a heavy mechanical, self-performing public works contractor in New York City. Dimitri is not a tech bro. He's a working contractor who decided to actually try AI, specifically chat GPT, for himself. Not for a year of theory, but for a year of real use on estimates, proposals, day-to-day operations inside his construction company. What you're going to hear from him today is the most useful thing you can hear from any contractor talking about AI right now. and that is real talk. What works and what doesn't work. Where it saved him hours, where he tried to build a custom proposal bot and had to walk away, where it gets you 80 % of the way there, and where that last 20 % will nail you if you're not paying attention.

1:38Construction Genius: We cover the interview process he used to onboard the AI into his business. We cover his three to five to ten year planning conversations with it. We cover meeting minutes, SOPs, estimating, and the email problem. And we get into where he sees this whole thing going. If you've been waiting for someone to give you a no-hype, on-the-ground answer to the question, should I actually be using ChatGPT and other AI? This is the conversation. Grab a notepad. Let's dive into it with Dimitri. This is Eric Anderton, and you're listening to Construction Genius, a leadership masterclass. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration.

2:26Construction Genius: If you're a construction leader, you know all about the perspiration, and this show is all about the 1 % inspiration that you can add to your hard work to help you to improve your leadership.

2:43Construction Genius: Dimitri, welcome to Construction Genius. Thanks for having me, Eric. When did AI first show up on your radar as something that should matter or could impact your business? It should have showed up earlier, but it showed up about a year ago. And what was the first couple of things that you did that you were like, hmm, this is cool, this has potential? Kind of just talking to it and letting it talk back to me. What can you do for me? I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. The first time you use AI, that's like a wow moment. that something's talking back to you in such a way. Eventually, I had it interview me.

3:17What I do, my business, what do I do inside the business, what I want the business to look like, etc. And kind of laid out a game plan through it. Some of what it was giving me in the beginning was not useful, meaning it was not true information. So I had to parse through that. But in the end of that interview process, which took about three days or so, me and the AI came to the conclusion that it is Jarvis to Iron Man, right? It is there to enhance the person using it, not to replace the brain of the person using it. Okay.

3:52Construction Genius: So a couple of things here that I think are really important that you brought up. The first thing, I really like this. What can you do for me? Did Did you then explain who you are to the AI? How much detail did you give it, the AI? And which tool were you using at this point? So this was chat. Chat GPT was started with the, I forget what it's called then, but it was the$20 version. Right? They changed the names. I just, it asked me 20 questions. Answered these 20 questions. I answered them. Asked me another 20 questions. More detail, more detail. Right? And just went back and forth with that for, like I said, two, three days.

4:30it got to a point where I'm going to say it knew me. It's a program, right? It's a computer program, but it understood what I was doing and my intent. Okay.

4:40Construction Genius: You made a note of having to figure out what the responses it was giving you that were incorrect or not true, or sort of one of those hallucinations that people are very concerned with. Can you speak to that a little bit more? How easy was that for you to notice and how much of the information that it gave you was not correct? So in the beginning, it's not easy because you're just so amazed at what the software can do, right? The program can do. As you started getting into it, I mean, we're talking about my industry, my business, my everything. So, hey, that's not what we do, right? That's not correct.

5:14Can you show me where you got that information from?

5:17Construction Genius: One of the important things that I learned about it, if something looks off as you're going through it, where are you getting this information from? And you ask it directly and it might pull something from the internet. It might not. It might tell you, I just figured based on X, Y, Z, that that is what the answer was. That's really interesting. When you do push the AI for sources, it often self-corrects itself. That's what I've seen in using it. What was the initial game plan that the AI gave you? What was it focusing on? Sort of a three, five, 10-year plan, right? On the growth strategy. And then, you know, as we got deeper into it, the different aspects of a construction business, pre-construction, estimating, operations, project management, accounting, finance, right?

6:01And laying out those plans in each leg of a construction company. So how do we get from, let's say, a$10 million construction company? What does a$20 million construction company look like? What does the structure of that company look like? Who is sitting on top of each division, right? How many people do we need? What traits do those people need to have? And those are good questions to ask you because it can pull the resources from the internet, right? It's like a super fast Google search that searches everything. And that's the best way to use it is to compare, ask you very specific questions and go pull the information so that you can do the comparison and then tell it what you want it to tell you.

6:41Construction Genius: Okay, so it sounds like when you were beginning, you were using it as a almost like a strategic partner, having dialogue back and forth about a strategic approach to your business in terms of that three, five, and 10-year plan. Is that right? As you compare the sort of big picture strategic capabilities of chat in terms of the usefulness of the information that it gives you back and forth with the more technical specific, write me a change order, do an RFI, something like that. As you compare the strategic with sort of the tactical, what are the strengths and weaknesses in those areas? Once you get through the interview process and you keep feeding it information, it is better as a strategic analyst, let's say, right?

7:23A high level, broad picture, strategic partner. As long as you understand that you need to be smarter than what it's telling you. You need to take the information, disseminate it, pick it apart, and then use it accordingly, right? It's lost in the tactical, write me this RFI. If you do not tell it exactly how to write the RFI, write the prompt correctly, you're going to spend more time trying to get it to do that tactical stuff than doing it yourself.

7:55Construction Genius: All right, quick break to talk about my book, Construction Genius. This is what I want you to do. Go to Amazon, search for the book, read all of the five-star reviews, because there's a ton of them. over 50 to be precise. And the reason I want you to read them is because real people wrote those reviews who've actually read the book. And it'll give you an idea of why you should go and buy a copy right now on Amazon. And here's the deal. If you purchase 10 or more copies for your company, and then send me an email, ericatconstructiongenius.com, I'll come in via Zoom and do a one-hour Q &A and a bonus training session with your team at no charge.

8:35Construction Genius: I normally charge$4 ,500 for an hour of my time. And again, for you, I'll do it at no charge if you buy 10 or more copies of my book. And the reason you should buy it is all in the title. It's effective, hands-on, practical, simple, no BS, leadership, strategy, sales, and marketing advice for construction companies. So if you're in the construction industry, this book is for you. So you can get it on Amazon. You can also get it on Audible in the audio version as well, narrated by yours truly. And I know you'll really enjoy it. So go out and get the book. And now back to the interview. A couple of things here then, which I think is really important, just to summarize so far, using it as a strategic sounding board can be useful.

9:18Construction Genius: Having it interview you is vital in terms of giving it context, because context is vital. And then thinking through the particular tactical usages of it, in some places, it's going to be strong, in other places, it's going to be weak. Correct. So what I found to be the strongest use tactically is if you tie it to the strategy. So for example, let's say you're building out your pre-construction division, estimating biz dev, whatever that looks like. The strategy is talk through it. This is what it needs to look like in three years, five years, 10 years. Give me feedback. What do other companies do?

9:59What are the roles of each position that are in that tier? Now let's take this and create the SOP for that department. They'll get you 80 % of the way there, which is good.

10:09Construction Genius: Yes. So that's an important number, 80 % because obviously there's a gap, but it's not a massive gap. It's not one that's insurmountable then. Right. And the reason that's a good number is it's going to get you 80 % of the way there in five minutes instead of 80 % of the way there in a day and a half. And giving it the context upfront, as much detailed information upfront helps you to get to that 80 % figure, as opposed to just saying, Hey, write me an SOP for something general. I don't know how deep you want to get into that context, but as you go, you set up your projects in chat and speaking, I can only speak to chat.

10:45You can put in the projects, the sources that it reads from. So for example, if you have a prior SOP with a format that you want to use, reference this source, follow this format, spit out SOP X based on SOP Y.

11:00Construction Genius: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. So yeah, again, you know, using chat GPT, it has the ability for you to set up projects. And in those projects, you can put instructions so that you can put a repetitive task in there and it uses those same instructions every time and it gives you a consistent output. Okay, so tell us where you had high hopes for AI for using chat and despite your efforts, you found out it didn't work. So we do a lot of, it's called job order contracting, where we need to constantly pump out proposals to the client. So one of the bots that we were trying to make was a, let's say, proposal bot where you feed it all the contract documents, scope of work, RFP, et cetera, et cetera.

11:45Based on the scope of work, it would pump out the proposal or at least the basics of the proposal. So if it's concrete work, it's going to tell you QBR is a concrete, aggregate, rebar, et cetera, right? It got lost in the weeds the deeper and the more specific we tried to get it to go. and eventually we just abandoned it because it was taking more time to try and get there through it than if we just asked it, hey, look at this scope of work, pull me out all the information on a one sheet so I can take that information and then build a proposal.

12:17Construction Genius: Okay. When you asked it to do that, that simple task, how accurate was it taking the information out? 85, 90%. How concerning is the gap there then? I would still say you need a final read yourself, right? But it kickstarted the process. And so would you say that it was worth using it for that, for the time savings it gave you? So think of it as you have an assistant read it and give you a first draft proposal. And then you have to do the final, which means you got to get into the weeds a little bit, make sure everything's accurate and push it through. As people are listening to this, they might be saying, I'm just going to wait.

12:53Construction Genius: It's cool that it can interview me and all that kind of stuff. But the stuff that Dimitri is talking about, I'm just focused on my business doing today or tomorrow or maybe next week. What is your argument to someone for not waiting to use it, but to start to begin to sort of play with it and experiment and see where it works and where it doesn't? It is valuable enough right now as a time saver to do it now versus waiting until it's perfect, right? If it gets you 80 % of the way there in 5, 10 minutes, you just saved how many hours of doing it yourself to 80%, right? I can feed it. If I'm running through an estimate and they just issued an addendum, I can throw an addendum into chat and ask it to pull out any reference to, I'm going to say, plumbing pipe, right?

13:38And it will spit everything out. 85 % of the way. The time savings is invaluable.

13:44Construction Genius: What is the one thing that you do with chat GPT that is more than 80 % effective? That's a good question. I know you're using it for like meeting minutes and stuff like that. Yeah. So we are using it for meeting minutes. We'll take a recording of two hour meeting, throw it into chat and let it break out action items, to do's, et cetera, right. And summarize everything. It could break it down to summarize one page, summarize it by category, summarize it by division. If there's, if it's multiple divisions, right. That gets you over 85%. But what I will say, creating the SOPs through it, maybe it's not a direct contribution of chat GPT or the AI, but it allows the rest of the organization the benefit of the AI because now they're following the SOP, which you created.

14:34Construction Genius: Right. So using it for SOPs was useful. The meeting minutes is useful as well. Correct. Are you using it for writing emails and things like that? Not really. I mean, you know, when somebody uses AI to write something, it writes in a very specific way. Do you think that's a problem? Is that like a lack of customer service? You still want a personal relationship with whoever you're writing the email to, and they're going to read it as you talk or as you speak, if they know you personally. Yes. They're going to know you didn't write it. One thing that I've done for that is I have a book. And so I uploaded my book to chat and I said, this is my voice.

15:11Construction Genius: I want you to create my voice based on the way the book is written. And that has helped me to produce emails that don't sound like chat. They sound more like me. I can see that. Yeah. So everybody's trying to put AI into everything. Where it's not going is it's not going to replace the thought leaders and people who must use their brains, right? And things strategically for what they do at work. It's going to take over data entry. It's going to take over mundane tasks. That's what I'm using it for now. Get through the mundane tasks, get through the monotony. And that is going to do very well. It will not replace your brain and it will only enhance people that use their brain for what they do.

15:54Construction Genius: Yeah, and that's really well said. Let me just pivot back to the estimating real quick, because I know that's like a wish dream for a lot of us, right? Is that it'll do a flawless takeoff and make estimating way more efficient. Where are you seeing the gaps in its capability with estimating at the moment? I know they have like, it can estimate painting and take off door box and stuff like that, right? So it was already in the estimating programs where it can recognize shapes and count how many shapes there are. So if you tell it this is a door, it's going to count how many doors. It's okay at doing square footage of rooms because it's a box.

16:26It's easy for it to recognize. Can't do pipe yet. It can't do fittings yet. But even if it could, even if it gives you the perfect takeoff, it's not going to figure out your means and methods. So if you have difficult piping installation inside a tunnel, inside a wastewater treatment plant where there's... pipe on pipe on conduit on conduit, it's not going to know that. All it's going to tell you is that you have a thousand feet of a 24 inch duct iron flange by flange pipe, right? So you still need the person with the brain to take the takeoff. Okay. Thank you. You did that for me. That saved me a lot of time instead of me doing it.

17:01This takeoff now means this because of my means and methods.

17:04Construction Genius: Yeah. I'm going to get that. Okay. So if a contractor is listening right now and they would say, hey, I'm AI skeptic, but I know I need to start getting into it a little bit. What's their first move on Monday morning? What would you encourage them to do? Go through the interview process with it. Ask them what it could do for you. That was the first eye-opening thing I had with it. Yeah. So let's say if I'm the president and I've got, let's say, an ops guy, I've got someone on estimating, someone on the financial side, maybe I would have them do the same thing as well. So once you've gotten comfortable with it, I would go through that process, yes.

17:38because you need to kind of guide them through it as well.

17:41Construction Genius: Yeah. Okay. And in terms of the security of your information, the safety of the information, what are your concerns as far as that point? I mean, it's the same concerns everybody has. They tell you that the paid versions are contained, the information, the free versions are not. So I would not be using a free version. What version of chat are you using? Or what level, what paid level are you using? So I told you I started with the$20 one, whatever it was. Now it's a little bit more. So I have that as like my personal before we got the, I don't know if it's called business or enterprise version, right?

18:12I use my personal more because all the information, all the time's in it. And I don't want to switch it over and lose anything.

18:19Construction Genius: So I'm using that. Okay. And how many of your people are using chat regularly in your organization? Two or three. Okay. Are you getting a lot of resistance from people or is it just not necessary for them to use it? A little bit of both. I mean, there's not going to be resistance if I tell somebody this is going to help you do your job better, but there's time in using it. Again, understanding what it's telling you might not be true or might be 80 % true. You need to still figure out that 20%. So it's more the person using it than what it's going to give you. Dimitri, I appreciate you coming on and just giving us some real talk on AI.

18:52Construction Genius: I know it's going to be useful for people to hear it from someone who's using it. And we're not here to hype it, but we're here to talk about it as a tool and see how it can help and then how it can't help. So I appreciate your straightforwardness here. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. All right. Real talk on AI from someone actually using it. A few things I want you to take away from the conversation. Number one, don't wait. Dimitri said it clearly. If it gets you 80 % of the way there in five minutes instead of a day and a half, the time savings alone are worth it. You don't need it to be perfect.

19:23Construction Genius: You just need it to be useful and chat GPT and the other tools are already useful for specific applications and in specific contexts. Number two, interview yourself. And this is where the context part comes in. That's the unlock. Get the GPT to interview you about who you are, what you do, how you do it, who works with you. and if you don't do that and you skip that, then you're going to give it some input. It'll give you a generic answer and you'll say, man, this sucks. I'm not going to use it. Three days of back and forth with GPT over time is worth it because again, context is everything. Number three, use your brain.

20:08Construction Genius: The AI is Jarvis. You are Iron Man. It's not going to replace your judgment, your creativity, your means and methods, your relationships. it's going to take grunt work off your plate so you can focus on the work that actually grows your company something to keep in mind i run a chat gpt course built specifically for construction company owners and their leadership teams it walks you through exactly the kind of work dimitri described in this episode setting up projects capturing your voice using it for sops meeting minutes, estimating support, strategic planning. No theory, no hype, just the practical moves that save you hours every week.

20:52Construction Genius: Dimitri has been through the course. So have leaders from other construction companies across the country. The next session is starting to fill up and the waiting list is open right now. There's a link in the show notes. If you want to get on the waiting list, just sign up with your name and your email on that. So big thanks to Dimitri for coming on the show and giving it to us straight. Thank you for listening. And I'll catch you on the next episode of Construction Genius. Thank you for listening to this episode of Construction Genius. Hope you found that 1 % of inspiration to help you in the next few days.

21:28Construction Genius: If you like the show, please give us a five-star review on iTunes, share it with other construction leaders who you think would benefit. And always remember that the show is brought to you by Kick-Ass Meetings. I've been working with construction leaders since 2004, teaching them how to run extremely effective problem-solving meetings that gets their people collaborating, taps into their creativity. And to get yourself a free copy of the Kick-Ass Meeting Report, go to www.ericanderton.com slash kickassmeetings. Grab yourself that free report, read it, use it in your business. You'll find it extremely useful.

22:08Construction Genius: And thanks again for listening. Thank you.