ChatGPT for Construction

ChatGPT and similar general-purpose large language models can be useful for construction tasks like drafting emails, summarizing meeting notes, and brainstorming — but they have fundamental limitations for technical construction work that practitioners need to understand before relying on them.

The core limitation is that ChatGPT does not have access to your project documents. It cannot search your specifications, read your drawings, or reference your submittals. When you ask it a question about your project, it generates a plausible-sounding answer based on its training data — which may or may not match your actual project documents. In construction, where the answer depends on the specific specifications, codes, and drawings for this project, a generic answer is not useful and can be dangerous.

Domain-specific AI platforms solve this by connecting to your actual project documents through RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). When you ask about the specified concrete strength, the AI searches your project specs and structural drawings and gives you the answer with a citation. ChatGPT gives you the typical concrete strength for that type of construction — which might or might not match what is actually specified on your project. For project-specific questions, there is no substitute for AI that reads your documents.