This audio is automatically generated. Please let us know if you have any comments.
Dive brief:
- Construction Turner, la largest contractor in the country by revenuehas embarked on a deal with OpenAI to give all Turner employees access to ChatGPT Enterprise, according to an announcement Tuesday.
- The two-year partnership came together when the company made a decision over the summer to go “wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling” with ChatGPT, OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence product, according to Jim Barrett, the New York City-based contractor’s head of global innovation.
- Turner already uses technology in his work, from AI assistants and photo analysis tools to digital tracking systems and autonomous drones, according to the release. Barrett told Construction Dive that AI is reaching “literally every function of the business.”
Diving knowledge:
The announcement came amid the Turner Innovation Summit in Nashville, Tenn., which took place Oct. 21-23, where attendees participated in AI learning sessions led by OpenAI experts, according to the release.
Attendees put these lessons to the test at Turner’s largest AI agent creation session, a collaborative hackathon, where teams built more than 100 custom AI agents, according to the press release. Participants designed these tools to address current project challenges on the ground, from streamlining contract reviews to improving security protocols.
The work builds on a vision the company shared for 2025. The New York City-based contractor has at least tripled or quadrupled its investment in AI over the past two years, Barrett told Construction Dive in January.
Barrett emphasized that there will be built-in experts throughout the company that he called “AI champions” to help employees get up to speed with the technology. Barrett also mentioned the importance of rails for emerging uses and making sure what the tools generate is accurate and free of hallucinations.
“We’ll probably have 20 to 30 people dedicated to helping train our people. We want to make sure we’re helping everyone on that learning journey and really taking advantage of the capabilities of ChatGPT and other tools,” Barrett said.
Because the deal is for two years, it allows Turner flexibility going forward, Barrett said. While the company considers ChatGPT to be the strongest enterprise solution for the entity at this time, it is still early in the AI arms race.
“We’re always exploring the different solutions out there,” Barrett said. “It’s a constantly changing landscape and we want to be at the forefront of that.”
With that in mind, Turner is being selective about his investment. The arrival of AI in the enterprise and the ability of its employees to build their own agents is changing the buy-versus-build calculus, Barrett said.
Procurement agents, Barrett said, are building tools to review and level bids, while estimators are construction agents to read construction specifications and cross-reference them with changes in drawings.
Turner is also training its employees to build their own agents, he added.
As AI providers knock on Turner’s door, “startups in particular, the question now is if we can build something ourselves in a weekend,” Barrett said, “then why should we necessarily pay for someone to build it for us?”
