Opportunities for AI in the Sheet Metal and HVAC Industries

This gives it enormous power to handle real world inputs, without requiring expensive reformatting and collection. But it also means that outputs are not automatically reliable.

AI is still early in an evolution that will likely be a decade or longer. At the current stage of AI’s progress, there are some key areas where AI will give operational and strategic advantage to contractors, provided they treat AI as a human process problem as much as a technical one.

Document risk: Construction documents are famously inconsistent in quality and completeness. AI can flag these inconsistencies very quickly and do so repeatedly as documents evolve. For trade contractors who have many smaller projects, this is especially useful because it is not economic to have a lawyer review contracts and especially not scopes and specifications. AI cannot replace a lawyer but is much better than only relying on time-starved and stressed PMs alone. 

Labor shortage: AI cannot do what professionals do and will not be able to do so within a useful time frame. However, AI can automate supporting tasks, from document access, summary and generation to data entry, analysis and reporting. Think of AI as making time for professionals to do their best work. 

Everyday blockers: from poorly understood existing software to writing difficult emails to finding the right information when it is needed, countless hours are wasted in everyday work doing things that on their own do not add value to the project. By training field, fab and office teams on how to use AI, leaders put power into their hands to solve these blockers and get more work done with less frustration.

Pursuit: Collecting and analyzing documents for a bid is time consuming, leading some opportunities to be missed. AI tools can collect, analyze and summarize bid documents, flagging risks and giving estimators what they need for an early go/no-go decision, then preparing proposals for those projects that fit the contractor’s business.

Financial controls: AI will not replace human bookkeepers and accountants, but it can dramatically speed up their processing, reconciliation and other time intensive tasks, giving the professional time to make judgments where necessary. 

WHAT LEADERS SHOULD DO NOW

Three things all contractor leadership should do in 2026 to both mitigate the risks above, and position your business for a future where AI is everywhere:

Basic training for all: Training on how to write prompts, where AI can help, where AI should sit in a process and how to be critical of AI outputs is essential for virtually every employee. SMACNA has a rich series of webinars that are a free resource and can provide recommendations for in-person training options. 

AI champion: Somewhere in the business is a PM, a salesperson or a bookkeeper who is using AI tools way beyond what you’d expect. Find these people and empower them to learn and share what they know. In larger organizations, the IT team will already be looking at AI, so have them assign a mid-senior level team member to own AI progress and policy recommendations. Here again, SMACNA has resources, such as articles to webinars and AI “Office Hours” that can help.

Quarterly AI briefings: Whether these are internal or include external resources, meet to discuss the staffing, process, policy and investment implications of AI. The underlying capabilities are evolving fast enough that a quarterly cadence, even if the meetings are only an hour, is worth the time.