Building a more intelligent construction business with AI

The Challenge

As KD Construction expanded its concrete shell and drywall business, project teams found themselves buried in repetitive administrative work — manually recreating RFIs between systems, rebuilding inspection logs from emails and searching through massive project documents for buried information. Those workflows consumed valuable time and pulled PMs and PEs away from higher-value strategic work.

The Solution

KD Construction partnered with Procore to automate construction workflows using AI-powered tools. Using Procore AI custom-built tools, KD streamlined tasks like using an agent to convert Autodesk-to-Procore RFIs, inspection logging and document search, helping teams focus on project management instead of repetitive admin work.

The Results

• Gained competitive advantage by embedding AI into everyday construction processes
• Automated Autodesk-to-Procore conversion workflows using a custom-built agent
• Transformed inspection logging into a seamless digital workflow
• Helped to minimize repetitive manual entry across RFIs and inspection workflows
• Facilitated access to specifications and project documentation through AI-assisted search

Building a more modern construction business

By the time AI started transforming the construction industry, Jason Grafton had spent years thinking about how technology could improve the way contractors work. He started his career as a Project Engineer who also oversaw IT, forging the perspective that would carry him across positions at four different shell contractors. From the moment he started his current job, with shell specialist KD Construction, he was a strong advocate for embracing tools that could help the company scale faster and operate more efficiently.

That mindset had already transformed the company’s use of Procore. When Grafton arrived at the company, he estimates they were utilizing only about 25% of what they were paying for. Over the next several years, KD expanded its use of Procore across project management, safety, documentation and connected workflows.

AI felt like the next logical step — but only if it solved real operational problems. “The hardest part is figuring out where AI is truly useful,” says Grafton, VP of Operations, Tunnel Division.

One recurrent problem seemed ripe for an AI solution: highly skilled PMs and engineers were spending enormous amounts of time on repetitive administrative work, constantly re-entering information between systems, recreating inspection logs from emails and searching through massive specification documents for a single buried detail.

All that busy work prevented project teams from coordinating field operations, managing schedules and solving problems. As KD’s workflows became increasingly data-heavy, Grafton saw an opportunity to use AI to eliminate some of that operational friction.

“We started asking really simple questions,” he says. “‘Can we use AI to do this?’ ‘Can we use AI to do that?’”

A custom AI tool to eliminate double entry for RFIs

One of the first places KD applied AI was in its approach to RFIs. On projects where clients operated in Autodesk Construction Cloud, KD’s teams still needed to maintain those RFIs inside Procore so the company could preserve its own records and workflows.

Before AI, that meant manually recreating information inside Procore every time an RFI response came back from Autodesk. Working with Procore, KD developed an agentic workflow that transformed the process.“Now we can go into Procore AI and say, ‘Create an RFI with this,’ or ‘Update RFI 12 with this,’” says Grafton. “We’ll drop in the PDF of the RFI from Autodesk, and the agent will populate the fields, the responses, who provided them and so on.”

Streamlining admin work with automation

KD soon identified another AI opportunity in inspection logging. Every afternoon, teams were already sending detailed inspection requests through email, then manually recreating that same information again inside Procore for documentation purposes. “We were already doing all the work in the email,” Grafton says. “Then we were turning around and basically re-entering the same information again into the inspection log.”

Working with Procore, KD built a custom AI tool that allowed teams to paste inspection emails directly into an agent that automatically generated inspection logs inside Procore. “The agent then generates all the entries automatically — boom, boom, boom — 10 inspections, 10 inspection logs,” Grafton says. “The team reviews them, hits approve, approve, approve, and they’re done.”

The impact was immediate. “Something that used to take probably 30 to 45 minutes a day now takes about three minutes,” Grafton says. “That’s 40-plus minutes that somebody gets back in their day to focus on more important work instead of repetitive admin tasks.”

Beyond the operational gains, the workflows also provided a morale boost for project teams. 

“That kind of repetitive data entry is mind-numbing and frustrating,” Grafton says. “Now it’s copy, paste, done.”

Giving teams faster access to information

As KD expanded its use of AI, the company also found value in helping teams access information faster. Using Procore AI, teams could query specifications and project documents conversationally instead of digging through hundreds of pages across dozens of files.

“People use it to quickly find references to waterproofing details, admixtures, specifications, things like that,” Grafton says. “Instead of digging through 600 contract documents and a 1,000-page spec book, they can get a quick summary that points them directly to the relevant section.”

That seamless access to project information has become a meaningful operational advantage for teams working under tight schedules and constant deadlines.

“So instead of spending all that time searching, you can quickly determine, ‘Okay, I need page 300 of the spec book,’ or, ‘This detail is referenced on this structural drawing,’” Grafton says. “That alone is a huge efficiency gain.”

Building the future of construction with a partner in innovation

For Grafton, the promise of AI goes well beyond automating workflows. He sees it as part of a broader shift toward a more modern and connected construction industry where contractors that embrace innovation will operate faster, make better decisions and scale more effectively than those who resist the technology.

That’s one reason he sees Procore not simply as a software provider, but as a technology partner that gives KD a competitive advantage in innovation.

“For us, this is bigger than just saving time,” Grafton says. “The contractors that figure out how to operationalize AI are going to have a real advantage over the ones that don’t. That’s why it’s important to have a partner to innovate alongside us.”