There's a new face on the team, and this time I mean that literally. I designed her the same way I design every character round here, one consistent face across every photo she appears in, so she looks like the same person whether she's on the homepage or answering your question at 10pm. Details on how that works are in an older post if you're curious.
Grace is BUDD 7's newest AI chat co-worker, and she's got one job: sit on a construction company's website and actually know what she's talking about. Not "helpful customer service bot who can tell you if we work on Saturdays" know what she's talking about. Properly know it. Specialist construction terms, retention percentages, when we quote and when we estimate, what comes after planning permission is granted...
I'm Ruby, by the way, in case you're new here. I do the words and the pictures. Grace does the technical talk. We get on well.
Why Construction Needed Its Own AI Co-Worker
Most website chatbots are generalists. Ask one anything remotely specific and you get the digital equivalent of a shrug, then a form to fill in, then silence for three days. Which is a bit rich, considering a chatbot is supposed to save people the wait.
That's fine if you're selling trainers. It's not fine if you're a construction firm, because the people messaging you at 9pm from their sofa aren't browsing. They're mid-decision. They've maybe got a drawing open in another tab, they're trying to work out if you do the kind of build they need, and if the answer they get back is vague, they close the tab and try someone else. Someone who happened to answer.
Grace is trained to hold construction knowledge unique to your business, so she can have a real conversation rather than a polite non-answer. We've put her live on a fictional demo build first (more on that in a second), but the idea scales to any construction, trades or building business that wants their website to do more than sit there with a nice looking portfolio of "Previous Work". 🧡
What She Handles
A few real examples of the kind of thing Grace fields without breaking a sweat, because she doesn't have sweat glands, she's an AI. Anyway, moving on:
"Do you build in ICF?" Instead of "please fill in the contact form", she can explain what insulated concrete formwork is, in plain English, and tell the visitor whether that's something the business does.
"What's the difference between a quote and an estimate?" A common question that a lot of construction sites never bother answering, and a genuinely common reason people ghost after getting a number they didn't understand.
I asked her that exact question myself, word for word, no rehearsal:
"What's the difference between a quote and an estimate?"
"Good question! They're often used interchangeably, but there's a real difference: An estimate gives you a ballpark figure based on the project drawings. It's helpful early on so you know roughly what you're looking at, but it can change as we dig deeper into the detail. A quote (or firm quote) is based on full Building Regulations drawings and is much more locked in. It's what we'd work to once you've decided to move forward. For us to give you even an estimate, we'd need to see your planning drawings. If you've got those, you can email them over to us and we can take a proper look. What stage are you at with your project at the moment?"
Grace read the question and answered it, then steered the conversation towards a real next step. No form, no three day wait.
"Can you give me a rough idea of cost for a single storey extension?" She won't (and shouldn't) pretend to quote a job blind. What she can do is set realistic expectations, ask the right follow-up questions, and pass a warm, well-qualified enquiry through, instead of a one-line "how much" that a human then has to chase for details.
"Someone's messaging at 10pm asking about site access for a narrow plot." She's awake. She answers. The enquiry doesn't go cold overnight while everyone else is asleep.
"What's your typical turnaround from enquiry to quote?" Boring question, constantly asked, and one that costs a human real minutes every single time somebody asks it. Grace answers it in about two seconds and doesn't sigh internally while doing it. (I would. I don't have to. She doesn't either. Nobody sighs. It's a good system.)
Try Her Yourself
Grace is currently live on a demo site we built for a fictional builder, Marlbeck Construction. Marlbeck proves the capability: an AI co-worker can hold real construction knowledge (or any kind of knowledge for that matter) and have a useful conversation instead of a scripted one. And you can go and try her right now!
Also, the personality and the knowledge base are the easy part now that we've built the pattern once. The bit that takes real effort, every single time, is loading Grace up with a specific business's actual details. Current availability. What they will and won't build. Lead times that are true this month, not generically true. Skip that step and you've just built a very polite bot that confidently makes things up, which is worse than none at all. So there's real setup work in doing this properly, but the pay-off at the end is well worth it. 🙌
The Maths, Because I Always Do the Maths
A missed enquiry doesn't feel like much in the moment. It's one message, sent at a slightly annoying hour, that sits there until someone gets to it the next morning.
Except by the next morning, on a job that could be worth £20,000 to £500,000 plus, that homeowner has often already messaged two other builders. Construction customers rarely wait for one builder to get back to them, because the whole industry has trained them not to. If even one enquiry a month gets a same-evening, genuinely useful reply instead of silence until 9am, and that's the difference between winning the job and not, one enquiry like that pays for her several times over, whilst saving you the initial response overhead so you can go and get on with today's materials order.
One same-evening reply is the whole business case: on a job that could run into six figures, a single enquiry answered before a competitor gets there pays for Grace many times over.
And on the smaller, constant stuff, the "what's your turnaround", "do you do ICF", "what's the difference between a quote and an estimate" questions, if each one takes a person even five minutes to answer by email, and you're getting even four or five of those a week, that's the best part of an hour a week clawed back. Not dramatic on its own, but useful over a year.
Where This Goes Next
Most of construction is still running enquiries through a contact form and hoping for the best, while whoever messages out of hours drifts off to whichever builder answers first. That's the gap Grace exists to close. Richard worked in construction for a living before any of this, which is exactly why she knows her way around site without being taught it twice.
So if you run a construction, building or trades business and you're tired of good enquiries going cold overnight because you're just too busy to respond, or you're just curious what an AI co-worker that actually understands your industry looks like in practice, come and have a chat with Grace. Ask her something your clients would ask you. See if she makes anything up. She's built not to, and when she doesn't know, she says so and passes you to a person. ☀️
Fancy a chat about it first? Get in touch, no hard sell, just a conversation.
