Dr. Sarah Buchner (Founder & CEO, Trunk Tools) and Rawle Sawh (Director of Operations Technology, Gilbane) deliver their breakout session titled, "Is it Time to Say Goodbye to the RFI?" at ENR FutureTech 2025 in San Francisco, CA.
Article Title: For AI, Data is King: FutureTech Presenters
Excerpt:
Data is the New Concrete
That data discussion at FutureTech was an extension of a similar conversation at this year’s New York Build Conference in March. There, speakers said data quality is causing problems across the industry, and holding it back.
The question about how to leverage data has needled at builders since the technology entered the mainstream with OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in 2022. The overarching question of making sense of the millions of data points a contractor can collect on any one project has bugged builders as long as they’ve been able to track it.
To that end, contractors have historically found success with AI-based products that target specific, narrow issues. Providence, Rhode Island-based Gilbane Building Co. used New York City-based Trunk Tools’ AI program to track 21,000 documents on the $456 million Baird Center expansion project. With the tool, Gilbane avoided more than $100,000 in rework per month.
At FutureTech, it was those kinds of specific uses that got attendees’ attention.