Sustainability Management
Carbon, climate, biodiversity, environmental impact and sustainability due diligence.
Confidence: low-medium for measured productivity gains; medium for strategic importance.
AI workflows
Start with the work, not the tool.
Fourteen workflow areas help you explore where AI might be useful and what to test. The charts elsewhere use ten broader groups, so the numbers will not match exactly.
A starting point, not a recommendation
Three workflows to look at first.
This sorts the 14 workflows against your perspective and objective. It cannot see your data, your baseline or your people, so treat it as a way into the argument rather than an answer.
The workflow directory
Browse the 14 workflows.
Confidence readings are deliberately conservative: they reflect what public sources support today, not what the technology may do. Construction progress is the first written up in full.
BIM Optimisation
Structured project data, model enrichment, content reuse and information standardisation.
Confidence: low-medium; the evidence often shows firms getting their data ready, not finished work getting faster.
Digital Twins & Simulation
Asset twins, system models, scenario testing, forecasting and earlier operational decisions.
Confidence: medium for speeding up the process; lower for results actually achieved.
Asset Operation & Optimisation
Energy, water, maintenance, networks and live control systems connected to mature telemetry.
Confidence: medium-high where good sensor data already exists and the task is well defined.
Asset Inspection & Defect Detection
Roads, rail, bridges, utilities and built assets: detection, review, triage and intervention.
Confidence: medium-high for spotting and sorting defects with people checking the results; weaker for decisions where mistakes could affect safety.
Site Safety & Compliance
Near-miss detection, access control, monitoring and evidence for intervention. Some accounts report lower incident rates or quicker intervention; missing details, such as hours worked, time periods and other safety changes, make it hard to credit AI.
Confidence: medium for relevance; low-medium for measured productivity gains.
Construction Progress & Reality Capture
Site capture, progress tracking, BIM comparison, QA, reporting and rework visibility.
Confidence: medium; use is repeated, but most of the figures come from suppliers.
Schedule & Project Controls
Risk forecasting, sequencing, optioneering, delay recovery and programme trade-offs.
Confidence: medium; strategically important, but few clients have confirmed the results themselves.
Design Automation & Engineering Apps
Option generation, calculations, CAD/BIM assistance and reusable engineering tools.
Confidence: medium for what the tools can do on specific tasks; low-medium for work that professionals accept and for financial value at scale.
Planning, Permitting & Consultation
Application triage, validation, consultation analysis and officer decision support.
Confidence: medium for support on specific tasks; lower for statutory decisions.
Technical Reports & Due Diligence
First drafts, document review, evidence extraction and expert workflow triage.
Confidence: medium for specific document tasks with human sign-off.
Enterprise Knowledge & Workflow Assistants
Internal search, project memory, governed assistance and reusable workflow tools.
Confidence: medium for adoption; low-medium for economic value.
CRM & Commercial Intelligence
Relationship visibility, bids, proposals, client intelligence and pipeline support.
Confidence: medium for direction; low for measured productivity gains.
Robotics & Autonomous Field Execution
Robot-assisted inspection, excavation, welding and other defined physical tasks, with human supervision and exception handling.
Confidence: medium for narrow tasks; lower for broad construction economics.
A worked example
What a workflow looks like up close.
Construction progress and reality capture has some of the clearest evidence of repeated use. The write-up shows who reports what, and what the evidence still cannot tell you.
How to use this
Choose, baseline, test and measure.
- Choose a workflow with a real problem, a result you can see and someone able to act on it.
- Compare the current process, the AI-assisted version and the best realistic alternative. Consider whether the task can be simplified or removed.
- Agree the baseline, accepted output, accountable owner and test threshold before starting.
- Test ordinary and difficult inputs. Measure omissions, false alarms, checking, correction and downstream use.
- Scale only when the benefit still holds once you count the cost of setting it up, connecting it, training, support and checking, as well as the tool.
Agree who keeps the benefit and how it will be measured. The 38thMove methods connect these tests to investment decisions.