The State of AI in the Trades: Top 5 Insights

AI is no longer a question of if, it's a question of how.

That was the key takeaway from our AI for Trades event, hosted in partnership with Brick and Mortar Ventures, United Rentals, Ferguson, Fieldwire by Hilti, Egnyte and Heavy Metal Summer Experience.

Attended by trade contractors, technology leaders and industry experts, the event surfaced how AI is being adopted across the trades including the experiences, priorities and challenges practitioners are navigating right now. Before it kicked off, we surveyed participants. 55% said they use AI multiple times a day. Asked how much they trust it with their work? 4.2 out of 10.

That's the adoption gap, and it's growing. Individual users are already finding ways to streamline their work and save time, but organizations are yet to take the leap; still building trust and figuring out how to integrate AI into their workflows.

Here's a taste of what we found.

Want the full picture, including the rest of the survey numbers and how firms are turning AI into a competitive advantage? Read the full report here.

1. It's a question of how, not if

The debate is over. Very few people at the event were still arguing about whether AI belongs in construction. The conversation has moved on to where to start, how to roll it out responsibly, and how to make it part of everyday work.

As one BIM manager at a mechanical subcontractor put it:

"You cannot just stop AI from coming into your company, no matter what you allow, people are using it. Instead of blocking it, you figure out a standard process everybody follows."

Or, as a VP at an electrical subcontractor said:

"Five years from now, if you're not on board with it, you're ancient, getting left behind by some 22-year-old that just graduated."

That shift, from resisting AI to operationalizing it, is where most of the industry now sits.

2. How do you build trust with AI?

There was broad consensus that AI leads to a competitive advantage. The challenge is trust, which attendees ranked, alongside accuracy, as the biggest barrier to adoption.

But that hasn't stopped people from using AI or finding value. Instead, they're being deliberate about how it's introduced, putting trust first. Dan Stokes, Director of MEP Estimating at Southland Industries, summed up the mindset in eight words:

"I don't trust AI. I verify AI."

To see how he's rolling that out to his team, check out the full report.

3. Focus on use cases, not ambition

The most successful AI applications weren't the most ambitious. They just solved one frustrating task really well.

That's changing how companies approach AI. Instead of asking "Where can we use AI?" they ask "Where do our people lose time every day?" and build from there. Dan Stokes put it best:

"We didn't ask, 'What can AI do?' We asked, 'What's slowing our people down?' Don't start with AI. Start with frustration."

The goal isn't to replace expert judgment; it's to free experienced people from repetitive work so they can spend more time on what matters. That's exactly what Southland built on top of the Pelles Platform: focused capabilities for spec reviews, schedule analysis and contract reviews. All tasks that were already slowing their team down. And that's what Pelles makes easy: turning the experience your people already have into AI that genuinely assists their work.

4. Implementing AI at the organization level

The best companies aren't just handing AI to their people, they're thinking structurally about organizational intelligence.

The question they keep asking: How do we capture what our best people know before they retire?

The question comes easy. The answer is hard.

If you want to hear what the industry actually said, and exactly how firms are preserving decades of tribal knowledge inside their organizations, it's all in the full report. Read it here.

5. The winners won't have better AI, they'll have better organizations

Here's the insight that reframed the whole event. Over the next few years, the biggest differentiator won't be access to better AI models. Those will be available to everyone. The companies that pull ahead will be the ones that best reshape their business to use them: capturing lessons learned, preserving expert knowledge, standardizing best practices, and making decades of experience available across every project.

AI is a power tool, not a magic wand. The future of AI in the trades isn't about replacing expertise. It's about scaling, amplifying and democratizing it across the organization. And for smaller firms, that's a genuine shot at a level playing field they've never had before.

Dan Stokes closed his presentation with the line that summed it all up: the one about why the companies that win won't be the ones with the best AI. We'll leave that one for the full report.

But here's the part you can act on today. Before your next AI initiative, ask your team one question: "What's slowing us down?" That's usually where the highest-value use cases are hiding. Not in the newest model, in the oldest friction.

→ Read The State of AI in the Trades