A plumbing company owner who also builds software for the trades listed the AI workflows running in his shop: email triage, job booking by text and email (he still doesn't trust voice agents), truck and warehouse restocking, fleet maintenance reminders, reviewing sold-job notes for missed opportunities, drafting quotes from tech notes and photos, job routing, review requests and missed-call texting. In replies he says job booking saves the most time, and that quotes over $5K, price negotiation and truck restock orders over $1K still go to a human.
UK contractor Bojen Electrical uploads tender drawings and builds its takeoff with automatic symbol recognition, keeping a permanent, editable count list for each job. The estimator says that working through the drawings this way also gives him a clearer picture of how the job will actually run. He priced a roughly £2.5 million lighting refurbishment of an Oxford research building entirely in the tool, splitting each floor into zones.
Owner Richie Kleti's team built a custom GPT, tied to historical job data and manufacturer specs, that turns a short voice prompt into an itemized, code-compliant Florida repair estimate. New hires can produce accurate estimates without waiting for senior staff to price every job. The team also uses an AI sales coach in role-play "sales cage match" sessions, where reps are mic'd up and get feedback on tone, objection handling and what to do better.
ChatGPTArticle / interviewContractor Marketing Pros · Dec 2025
The roughly 20 plumbers at Oak Creek Plumbing & Remodeling near Milwaukee carry tablets with ChatGPT. They photograph a broken water heater or type up what they see, and use it to draft work proposals and invoices and to brainstorm fixes for tricky problems. President Dan Callies told CNN that even older techs have learned to ask it the right questions and that it has helped the company "lower our overhead and provide better services or better value."
New York City installer Mpower Solar uses AI-assisted design to build proposals for tricky canopy and tilt-mounted rooftops and adjust them live in meetings. Aurora reports proposal creation went from about 30 minutes to under 10, the change-order rate dropped from 50% to under 10%, and site surveys went from 2 hours to 30-60 minutes. The case study also says consistent design documentation led to fewer questions on submissions to state agencies and utilities.
Aurora SolarVendor case studyAurora Solar · Aug 2025
Intermountain Electric's estimators run drawings through AI for first-pass lighting, power and receptacle counts, branch routing, panel and lighting schedules, and drawing stitching, then review and correct it before anything goes into the estimating system. The case study says one high-volume takeoff that used to take several 15-hour days was done in a few hours, and that the AI gets branch measurements about 95% of the way before human QA.
New Day Solar's reps use Aurora AI to generate roof models and system designs in seconds, sometimes live on a customer call, so the conversation keeps moving. Aurora reports sales design time fell from about 30 minutes to about 30 seconds, complex proposals went from a day or more to under an hour, close rates rose 15%, and cleaner designs saved up to six hours of rework per project.
Aurora SolarVendor case studyAurora Solar · Jul 2025
US residential solar company Sunnova built OpenSolar's AI design engine into Catalyst, the app its authorized dealers use to sell systems. Sunnova SVP Jake Wachman told PV Tech that AI took design turnaround from about 15 minutes at best to 30 seconds, removed the back-and-forth with a central design team, and often catches trees, pipes and vents a salesperson might miss. He said many AI designs go from proposal to the field without changes, but a human still reviews each one in the proposal process. Context: Sunnova filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2025, and Solaris acquired its assets and operations that September.
Remodeler Jimmy McKinney subscribed to OpenAI's service and trained his own version of ChatGPT on his company's past scopes of work for kitchen and bath projects. He gives it a written or spoken prompt about a new job and gets a draft SOW quickly, built on his own templates. Qualified Remodeler's editor says this one shortcut is already making the company more efficient.
ChatGPTTrade publicationQualified Remodeler · Mar 2025
Family-owned WTC Electric in Charlotte, NC faced rising bid volume, driven partly by data-center demand, and couldn't find another estimator. It moved takeoffs to AI device detection and automated branch routing, with the vendor's human concierge team handling peaks and poor-quality drawing sets. Drawer AI reports a 70% reduction in takeoff time on large projects and device detection accuracy above 95%.
Simply Solar's salespeople use Aurora AI to auto-generate the 3D roof model and first design. According to the case study, design time for sales went from 15 minutes to 15 seconds, experienced designers went from 3-5 minutes to 15 seconds for an initial design, and one designer can now handle the work of two to three people during peak periods.
Remodeler Trevor Young uses ChatGPT to write pricing formulas inside JobTread, such as one for pricing dirt haul-off. He first had to teach it how JobTread's formula logic differs from Excel. Now he gives it the context, parameters and output he needs, and it returns formulas that fit his setup, saving hours of spreadsheet work. The video's advice: always double-check the math.
After 5.5 years of generating work by door knocking, Houston's TrueWorks Roofing added Roofle's RoofQuote PRO to its website in September 2023, so homeowners can get an instant quote based on aerial measurements of their own roof (Roofle says its instant measurements are AI-enhanced). Owner Joel Patzke uses it mainly as a lead magnet and to forecast cash flow. Roofle's case study reports 15 to 20 extra leads a month, a few more closed jobs a month from those leads (the page says both 2 to 4 and 2 to 5), and revenue rising from $2.9M to $4.3M, while noting Houston storms also played a role. These are vendor-reported figures that haven't been independently audited.
At RL Electric, the person who prepares proposals used to count symbols by hand with PDF markup tools across dozens of sheets per bid, where one missed symbol could throw off the price. The team switched to AI symbol recognition and counting directly on the electrical plans, then verifies and adjusts the counts. Less repetitive counting left more time for bid strategy.
High-ticket remodeler KHB Construction (jobs typically $200K-$1.5M) records client sales meetings so reps can go back and check exactly what material or color a client asked for, which heads off scope disputes weeks later. Managers use the recordings and AI metrics to coach without going on ride-alongs. One rep's close rate went from about 17% to 25% in under a year, and the CEO says the company's success rate is up 10%.
German electrical contractor Rudolf Fritz (about 650 employees) uses automated quantity takeoff from PDF plans for bids. In the first five months after its March 2026 rollout, it processed 364 plans across 18 projects, detecting 71,073 elements and measuring 85 km of cable tray. Takeoffs now take hours instead of weeks, and the team says it can price more inquiries instead of passing on projects for lack of capacity.
Brett Tesson of Tesson Roofing & Exteriors in St. Louis uses EagleView Assess, an autonomous roof-inspection drone whose software uses AI to flag hail and wind damage and generates automated reports with measurements and 3D models. In a testimonial on EagleView's site, Tesson says the company had a $500,000 roof claim denied, and that after flying the Assess drone and giving the insurer the report, which proved what they were saying, the insurance company paid for the roof. The account is vendor-published; the claim details haven't been independently verified.