Micah Rodman, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Kojo Technologies

We are in the very early innings of an incredible period of innovation for the construction industry. With what feels like daily advancement in the development of large language models, it’s difficult to imagine how the incredible advances in artificial intelligence will deliver on its potential to transform how we build the physical world. Contractors across the country are asking how can they take advantage of this potential.

Kojo believes that industry-specific software companies have the greatest opportunity to apply these technological advances to solve real-world problems. Kojo builds software for trade contractors, which have unique workflows for planning projects, managing labor and assets and buying materials that differ from any other industry and from other stakeholders on a construction project. The software-as-a-service companies that are already supporting these workflows are best positioned to insert AI into them and further unlock productivity gains.

This is why Kojo is building Kojo Intelligence, which infuses advancements in LLMs and machine learning directly into the workflows contractors use to plan for, source, purchase, warehouse and pay for their materials and assets.

AI at the Core of Construction Workflows

Over the past five years, trade contractors have noticed more software on the market targeted at them. Processes that were previously analog are rapidly digitizing.

This digitization is a hard-won first step toward transformation. Contractors have historically been slower to adopt these new technologies, mostly because there haven’t been good solutions on the market to handle their industry-specific workflows. But if a product meets the unique needs of the industry—for instance, it might support industry slang or have features that conform to the day-to-day realities of a complex jobsite—it can be easily adopted by users who can now use it to run a digital version of their preexisting process.

With LLMs and AI, there’s exponentially more value to unlock. With digitization, data which was previously unstructured—in spreadsheets, on paper, in texts and in emails—can now be structured and consolidated in the digital platform itself. This data can be analyzed and processed to determine patterns, which then leads to optimization and automation.

Kojo’s mission is to make it cheaper, easier and more sustainable to build the world around us by transforming the way contractors manage their materials. Kojo sees no better opportunity than in procurement for contractors to take advantage of these benefits.

Kojo's AI-Driven Approach to Procurement

Contractors could be spending a lot less time and money on procurement. The savings are sitting in the data. By connecting disjointed datasets, contractors could save over 10% of their spending on commodity materials, while eliminating nearly all the overhead that exists in procurement processes today.

Recent advances in LLMs and machine learning can help contractors answer some of the core questions that hold them back from savings on materials purchases. For example: 

• "How much wire have we purchased so far this year?"
• "Are we paying more for copper pipe compared to similar-sized companies, and why?"
• "What should the cost of a four-inch-square box be?”
• “What did we pay when we bought a similar part from a different manufacturer?”
• "What is the optimal procurement strategy for a bill of materials, optimized for cost and availability risk?"

These questions are hard to answer because good, structured data is so hard to come by in procurement today. Field teams use a completely different vocabulary to order parts than what any given vendor or manufacturer uses: There are hundreds of ways to refer to the same four-inch-square outlet box. When parts are ordered, the data might be trapped in “unstructured” formats like pen and paper, emails, spreadsheets and PDFs. LLMs can extract and structure this data, while helping workers on jobsites, procurement professionals and suppliers speak the same language. This will make it much easier to understand procurement volumes across the company, which help drive bulk price discounts.

Additionally, project plans aren’t well integrated into day-to-day procurement activities, making it hard to relate the why behind why a contractor needs a certain part on site at a certain time. By collecting procurement data in context, machine learning methods can be applied to make suggestions that enhance project management, for instance, predicting the volume of sheet metal that is likely needed to complete a project and getting the best bulk price. This procurement co-pilot can help contractors source and procure materials in the best possible way.

Kojo’s software supports many organization-specific workflows across a number of trades. As Kojo has become an industry leader, it has collected troves of data. A unique combination of proprietary data, engineering expertise and industry knowledge puts Kojo in the position to apply these technologies thoughtfully to unlock a huge opportunity for contractors.

The Road Ahead: New Features and Insights

Looking forward, Kojo will introduce new features that will progressively save time for field, warehouse and office users while delivering critical metrics and insights to aid in cost-saving. The initial phase will involve a redesign of Kojo’s underlying software infrastructure to support these capabilities. These advances will radically improve a contractor’s ability to understand their procurement operations and source items from their warehouses and suppliers in a data-driven way, making it easier for contractors to make the best decisions around who to buy from.

Soon, contractors will be able to easily track procurement volumes, source from the right vendors for optimal pricing and availability and even have a procurement co-pilot making recommendations for how best to procure materials. The potential for new features in this area is nearly endless!

Intelligent, AI-powered solutions will transform traditional procurement into a more efficient, cost-effective process. The role of AI in construction SaaS will undoubtedly expand, driving a new era of productivity and innovation in an industry ready for change. Kojo is excited to help lead this change.