AI Technology Built for Builders

Home builders are approaching 2025 with both hope and concern. Although the nation’s economy remains strong, the housing market continues to be challenged by nagging high costs for mortgage lending, labor and construction materials.

To be competitive in this challenging market, builders need to make the most of every project opportunity. Very often that means bidding more jobs in less time, and doing that successfully by bidding accurately to maximize profits.

For more than a decade, construction management software continuously has improved the way home builders bid jobs. Takeoffs, estimating and scheduling jobs has become more accurate with the help of digitally integrated tools. Gone are the days of rulers, calculators and even clunky spreadsheets.

The widening adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology into job management and estimating is rapidly changing the competitive landscape of home building.

The right construction management AI software can keep builders on top of all these changes. Let’s walk through it.

AI can free builders from doing some things by hand or getting lost in over complicated software that requires too many steps. Many common construction estimating mistakes happen because people tend to overlook certain details or lose focus after doing the same thing repeatedly.

AI technology solves for this by doing the smaller, repetitive tasks for the builder. Take the new AI Estimator tool recently launched by construction management software, Buildxact, for example. It starts with a simple prompt from the builder in which they describe their project requirements and associated units of measure using common, everyday language. Using that prompt, the AI estimator quickly generates an initial category-level estimation in as little as 30 seconds. The estimation contains relevant material quantities, pricing and SKUs from trusted dealers doing business in an area convenient to the builder’s project.

Buildxact’s AI estimator can quickly and easily generate an assembly based on the builder’s unit of measure and preferred material dealer pricing. Top performing software is transparent, shows how calculations are made and gives the builder the flexibility to estimate as needed, via additional AI prompts, manual calculations and adjustments, or by digitally scaling their plans with a digital takeoff tool.

This way, the estimate is not only generated quickly but it is also thorough and accurate, accounting for live material pricing and local market conditions.

It’s important that the precision within the AI-populated estimate is built solely on projects specific to custom and common residential builds and remodels. The key lies in training the AI to be more granular than common large language models (LLMs) that understand human prompts and pull from generic data across all construction types.

Top performing construction management software has specific, labeled data sets that can fully define all the variables, such as common tasks, required labor, and material quantities and pricing that go into the construction or remodel of a home. AI that is trained on this data offers the most accurate results for the home builder.

Additionally, AI estimating improves with time as data sets become larger and more comprehensive.

The Bottom Line

The use of AI digital assistants can speed up the entire process of writing estimates and winning more business. Construction estimating software enhanced by today’s AI technology is an affordable solution that brings even greater accuracy to construction estimating.

With AI-enabled software, the construction industry now has an effective estimating process that’s repeatable and predictable. It allows builders and remodelers to quickly estimate a home construction project using the latest material pricing based on local market conditions—all with minimal effort.