Human Accountability: How Construction Leaders Can Scale AI Ethically

Steve Cangiano is the Chief Product Officer at CMiC, a global leader in construction management software.

​By now, many construction firms have tried to incorporate AI into their operations; however, fewer use it daily.

As a marketing leader at a construction ERP software company, I’ve watched a familiar pattern emerge across the industry: A firm loads every corporate document into a database, uses a chatbot to get responses to questions and expects results to follow. While some employees find value in that process, most are not there yet.

The gap between pilot and practice is rarely about technology. It is about how AI is introduced, where it is applied and whether people trust what it produces. Here is what I have learned about closing that gap.

Identify the problems you are trying to solve before providing general access.

In recent years, the most common mistake I see is companies deploying AI without identifying the problem they’re trying to solve or the goal they’re trying to achieve. General-purpose tools ask users to discover their own use cases, and most busy professionals will not take the time to do so.

Instead, start with dedicated agents built for the tasks people already perform manually. These are often routine job-cost and project-accounting activities that consume hours each week. Some examples include importing a long spreadsheet of customer records, simulating how an accounting batch will affect the general ledger before posting it or previewing the impact of a transaction on a project budget. When an agent performs these tasks reliably, adoption often follows because the value is obvious. Dedicated agents can also help newer employees complete tasks in screens they have never used or cannot remember how to find.