When we were playing a round of golf with Seen Service’s Founder and Managing Director, Bradley Lucas, one thing we wanted to hear was his no-bullshit take on the real potential for using AI to really move your business forward.
What Brad had to say is worth anyone’s time: wisely invest a few minutes now and reap the savings time and again. Which, ironically, is just Brad’s approach to all things digital in construction.
Because in an industry as traditional as construction, the most common competitive advantage you can have is often thought to be having the most experienced team on-site or the most sophisticated heavy machinery.
Let’s be honest: technical skill, trade experience and having the boots-on-the-ground are always going to be the foundation of everything you do in construction. But a major shift is occurring in the most profitable firms today.
Real competitive advantage is no longer just what happens on the building site. It’s also the level of efficiency you can bring to your back office. If you’re still old-school in how you handle your admin you’re likely drowning in paperwork. And this is going to severely limit your capacity for growth.
Which means leaving money on the table every single month.
So what should you be doing then?
To scale effectively, you must first recognise that not all tasks are created equal.
A helpful way to look at your business operations is to categorise every activity into one of three buckets: £10 tasks, £100 tasks and £1,000 tasks. Your £1,000 tasks are the high-value activities, stuff like strategy, building client relationships, closing sales and other leadership work. These are the things that only you, the business owner, can do effectively because it’s you who sets the vision for the company.
At the other end of the scale there’s your £10 tasks. These are basically your dog work. We’re thinking of stuff like manual data entry, chasing missing invoices, generating repetitive site reports or formatting documents for compliance. The exciting stuff like that.
These are the tasks that eat up your evenings and leave you exhausted before the next day even begins. And the real digital revolution in construction is basically about identifying these £10 tasks and using the right technology to automate them.
If you can use a tool to complete in ten minutes what currently takes you three hours, why wouldn’t you? You’re not just saving time: you’re reclaiming the space to focus on the high-value work that actually builds the value and reputation of your company.
A massive risk in the industry is relying on our old friend, gut feeling, to drive your important decisions. But as your business grows, basing decisions off intuition becomes more and more of a liability. To scale properly you’ve got to know you’ve always got the numbers right at your fingertips. Your decision-making has got to be data-driven. It’s as simple as that. If you want to change a system or implement a new piece of software, don’t just act because you reckon it might be a good idea. Ask to see the data that shows it is.
Any technology, especially emerging AI models, can only be effective if you have a solid baseline to work from. This means having well-integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and accurate, up-to-date financial records. Your Profit and Loss (P&L) statement is your rearview mirror: you need to be looking at it every single month, not just waiting for your accountant to hand you a summary at the end of the year.
By maintaining granular control over your financials and sales data, you know for sure that you aren’t just getting busier: you’re actually getting more profitable.
So what’s the biggest mistake contractors make with technology? It’s trying to overhaul your entire business overnight. This often ends up with unnecessary complexity and simple processes getting accidentally turned into multi-step, never-ending bureaucratic nightmares.
Instead, start small. Identify one weekly administrative task that is causing you the most friction and find a tool to streamline it. You could start with payments: modern platforms can now handle hundreds of subcontractor payments with a single click, automatically calculating tax and pushing invoices directly into your accounting software. That’s moments of your time, not hours each month.
But once you implement a new tool, give it a fair go. Monitor the results over a few months.
If it works, adopt it; if it doesn’t, drop it.
You don’t need to be a tech genius to do any of this. You just need to be willing to keep on refining your processes until they are as slick as possible.
Technology will never replace the relationship-based nature of the construction industry. People buy into people, and trust remains the most valuable currency you have.
But by automating the small stuff you free yourself to be the person your clients want to work with. And can actually reach. A reliable, responsive leader who delivers on time, on budget, and with a back-office as slick as your site-work. This will help get your firm noticed as a real player in a crowded market.