Can you use AI to find the right contractor for your next project? You sure can! However, the prompting process may not be what you expect. Sure, you can ask ChatGPT or Gemini to generate a list of contractors for a given service, but there’s a better way to refine that list and find exactly what you need.
Building renewal and restoration projects are nuanced. Do you need painting or waterproofing? Sealant and caulking work? Concrete repair or membrane work? Perhaps your bricks need re-pointing? Or maybe you’re not entirely sure what your project requires. More importantly, you may not know what to look for in a good contractor or where to begin. How do you separate the great from the average?
AI is an exceptional tool to help with all of this. Let’s explore how to use AI to save time, boost productivity, and—most importantly—find the right contractor for your specific project.
How to Get Started
The first step is to ask generic questions about building renewal and painting contractors to help your AI agent build knowledge about your project and requirements. A good initial prompt might be:
“You are a Property Manager for an 80-unit townhouse complex in Vancouver. The strata is looking for a contractor for building renewal and maintenance. What would you look for in a contractor? What aspects of a contractor’s business are important to consider?”
Here are the results we generated from a similar prompt—using ChatGPT.
You can see that AI suggested important factors to consider when researching contractors, such as experience, reputation, and references. Other items to consider when vetting a contractor include licensing and compliance, project management expertise, and of course, pricing. These are all excellent starting points and essential areas to explore when evaluating a contractor.
Asking AI How to Conduct Research to Find the Best Contractor
A good next step in continuing your research with AI would be to ask the AI agent what it would do, and where the agent would as opposed to asking it to look at a specific site or tool. Asking the AI for recommendations and best practices broadens the search and perhaps gives you results that are less biased and other areas to consider: You could ask:
“How would you source a contractor that matches these parameters? What is the best method to find a great contractor?”
Here are the results, once again using ChatGPT:
The results provide some great suggestions, with the most important being to leverage your network and professional associations before conducting further research. We agree—by far, the most effective way to find a contractor for your specific project is through referrals. Perhaps your colleagues or peers have a recommendation, or members of industry associations you belong to can point you in the right direction. Either way, it’s a great place to start.
We also queried Gemini (Google’s AI) to see what it recommended. The results were similar with a focus on referrals and networking for the best results:
Now that you have solid general guidelines and have begun educating your AI, you can take it a step further and refine your search. A great next step would be to ask your AI agent to determine what information is needed to get better, more accurate answers to your questions.
For example, you could ask:
“What information do you need from me to ensure we get the best results when researching contractors? What would you ask the strata to provide in order to get the most accurate results when searching for a contractor for a building renewal project?”
Here are some results from our queries
You can see that the AI agent made some great suggestions, highlighting the importance of budget, schedule, timeline, payment structure, and contractor references. We call this a project outline.
A project outline lays out the basic requirements for a building renewal, painting, or construction project. We have put together a basic project outline, which you can download here, along with a scoring tool, click here, to help evaluate and compare the contractors you research.
Continuing Our Queries and asking for Contractor Recommendations
Now that we have fully educated AI about our project and specific needs, we can refine our search even further.
At this stage, we can get more specific for our unique project with a prompt like this:
“I’m looking for a painting and building renewal contractor to repaint an 80-unit residential townhouse complex. The complex has not been painted for 12 years. The building envelope is wood siding. What specifics should I look for in a potential contractor?”
Here’s a sampling of our results:
Now, the AI agent has an exceptional amount of data for our project and it can recommend contractors for us to reach out to. You can do so knowing that you have conducted substantial research with AI—all from your desk in minutes. This saves you time, increases your productivity, and gives you a great chance of choosing the right contractor when it comes time to tender the project.
Here’s an example of a prompt you could use and a sampling of the results:
“Based on our conversation. Recommend contractors would offer both commercial painting and building renewal services that match our criteria”
These are just a few methods and prompts for using AI to conduct your research and find the best contractor for your strata customers and their projects. There are endless possibilities for prompting, but the key approach is to ask AI what it needs from you to generate the best results.
By doing this, you educate the AI agent with specific details about your project. In turn, you’ll find that your results become more intuitive and accurate, rather than simply asking for a generic list of the “best contractors.”
If you have questions about our services or need assistance with your next building renewal or painting project, please reach out to us at [email protected] or call us at 604-420-5552.
Our exterior services include waterproofing, painting, membrane sealants and caulking, and concrete repair. We also offer a full suite of interior services, including drywall and texture repair, painting, finish carpentry, and wall coverings.
