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And a live 60-minute session tomorrow where we tackle all of them

When we opened up the registration form for tomorrow's free AI webinar and asked attendees what they wanted to see addressed, I was expecting the usual.

Efficiency. Automation. ChatGPT. The future of construction. Generic stuff.

What we got was a lot more interesting.

The questions that came in were specific, honest, and in a couple of cases, genuinely surprising. One of them stopped me in my tracks. I will get to that one. But first, the reason I am sharing all of this the day before the session is not to give you a preview of the answers.

It is to show you that if any of these questions are living in your head, you are not alone. And tomorrow is the room to have this conversation.

The Questions You Actually Asked

I appreciate this one because it is so specific. And it is exactly the right kind of question, not "what is AI" but "what can AI do for my specific trade."

The honest answer is: more than most cabinet shops realize. AI is already being used to generate cut lists from design files, draft shop drawing summaries, catch dimensional errors before material is cut, and draft client communication from specs. None of it requires a software engineering degree. Most of it can be running this week.

But here is the bigger point: the word "cabinetry" could be replaced with electrical, concrete, glazing, plumbing, or drywall. The question underneath the question is: where does AI actually show up in the specific work I do every day? That is what tomorrow is designed to answer.

Fair and practical. The real answer might surprise you.

ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month. Claude Pro costs $20 a month. Microsoft Copilot is included in most M365 Business subscriptions you are likely already paying for. The tools most contractors need to start are either free or cheaper than a lunch order.

The cost of AI for small companies is not the software. The cost is the time it takes to learn how to use it well and the cost of the foundation it needs to run on (clean data, reliable systems, secure cloud environment). That is the investment worth thinking about. Not the subscription.

This is the one that really grabbed my attention.

Not because it is a technology question. Because it is a leadership question dressed up as a technology question. And it deserves a straight answer.

AI does not reduce the role of human judgment. It actually makes judgment more visible, because the tool itself has none. The value in an AI-assisted deliverable is the person who knew what to ask, what to include, what to verify, and what to push back on. That is experience. That is expertise. That is your employee.

The management behavior this person is describing, attributing outcomes to the tool rather than the person, is a recognition failure, not an AI failure. The senior leaders doing this are confusing the instrument with the musician.

If your team produces better work faster because they are using AI intelligently, that is a skill that should be recognized and rewarded. The alternative: discouraging AI use because the credit feels unclear, is how you fall behind while your competitors move ahead.

We will touch on this tomorrow because it is more common than anyone admits.

Good timing. Claude is Anthropic's AI model and in my opinion one of the strongest tools available right now for document-heavy work, which makes it particularly well suited for construction. Contract review, scope summaries, RFI drafting, meeting notes. It handles long, complex documents better than most.

Cowork is a newer desktop application from Anthropic that lets non-developers automate file and task management workflows without writing code. Think of it as giving Claude the ability to actually do things on your computer, not just answer questions. We will walk through the landscape of where tools like this fit tomorrow.

This is the question Rowan Steel-Hall was built to answer.

Rowan is COO of Smartbuild and has spent the last several years working directly with construction teams to understand where AI actually shows up in the daily work, not in theory, but in practice. He presented on this at the ABC National Convention in Salt Lake City last month to a standing-room-only crowd.

Tomorrow he walks through real use cases at every level of adoption, from cleaning up a daily site note (Level 1, anyone can do it Monday morning) to building a persistent email assistant that writes in your voice (Level 2) to automating submittal tracking and inbox triage (Level 4). Field to office. Installation to correspondence. The full range.

A few more questions we’ll address live tomorrow:

• How do I start without disrupting current projects?
• What is worth my team's time and what is not?
• How do I get my field team to actually use these tools?
• What does my IT environment need to look like before AI can deliver results?
• How do I protect sensitive project data when using AI tools?

If any of these are living in your head, that is the room to be in tomorrow.

Why Show Up Live vs. Just Watch the Recording

We are distributing the recording to all registrants after the session. So you could wait.

But two things happen live that do not happen in the recording:

First: Rowan does a live workflow demonstration. You watch it built in real time. That is not the same as watching a recording of it being built, the moment of realization lands differently when it is happening in front of you.

Second: We are selecting an Arizona contractor from the live audience to work with hands-on before Session 2. You submit a real workflow challenge, an RFI process, a daily reporting headache, a submittal nightmare and we build a custom AI solution live in the follow-up session. The volunteer ask happens in the room tomorrow. Not in the recording.

For over 20 years, Computer Dimensions has been the trusted IT partner for Arizona's architecture, engineering, and construction industry. We help AEC firms communicate better, collaborate smarter, and actually use the technology they've invested in. Because in construction, the tools only work if your team does.

IT Built For Builders.