Where does your team stand on AI?
Your team's AI maturity level, what unlocks the next one, and the workflow to start with.
FreeNo loginArchitects, engineers, contractors, owners, firm leaders
Your level and your next move
AI changes one department at a time. Answer for one.
Six levels. Each one has to be unlocked.
Every level says what has to be true before you use it, what you gain, what breaks, and who signs. Nobody in AEC runs Level 6 yet.
One decision and nine steps
The process we run inside firms and teach in Mastering AI in AEC. Policy and education come before tools. Each step produces one artifact.
How AI fits a workflow: the Fit Ladder
Every workflow sits on one rung. The rung says what the human still does and how much checking the output needs. Examples for Architecture.
| Rung | Example | Best for |
|---|
Verify, then sign: what the person who sends it checks, Architecture
If the assistant cannot say where a claim came from, the claim does not ship.
Write the policy first
Clients ask for it before they sign. Your people already use AI. One page covers both. It is the step firms skip on the way to buying licences.
Approved tools, on which accounts
Business or enterprise accounts with model training off. No personal free accounts for client work. Anything not on the list needs approval before first use.
What never goes in
Client-confidential material, anything under NDA, government or restricted project data, personal data of staff or clients, unpublished financials. Structure without identity when the work is sensitive.
Verify, then sign
AI output is a draft. A qualified person checks every number, standard reference and contract clause against the source before it leaves the firm. The sender owns it.
Disclosure
Where AI materially produced client-facing work, you disclose when asked and always answer honestly. Label AI-generated imagery in presentations.
Who approves new tools
One named person, after a sandbox test on non-client material, with a response time you write down. Not a committee.
Review
Quarterly. Tools change monthly; a policy that stands still is already wrong. Name the next review date today.
The eight questions (answer them out loud)
- Which AI tools do your people already use for work, officially or not?
- Which of those will the firm pay for and stand behind, on proper business accounts?
- What data never leaves your network?
- Who checks AI-assisted work before it goes to a client, and do they know it is their job?
- Your position on AI-generated imagery in client presentations: allowed, labelled, or banned?
- Who is the one person who approves a new tool, and how fast must they answer?
- What happens when someone breaks the policy the first time? Retraining beats punishment; scared people hide their AI use.
- When will you review this policy next? Name the date now.
Get the Policy Kit
Template, our filled example, the eight questions and the drafting prompt. One PDF. Firms over fifty people add the long form: tool register, data classes, sign-off table, incident handling. Not legal advice; your counsel reviews before adoption.
The process does not change with size. The artifacts do.
What changes: who owns each step, which assistant tier is safe, how learning runs and how long rollout takes. It still moves one department at a time.
What we see in firms of 5 to 5,000
Firms want to start at the demo. The demo is Step 6. The firms that move start with a sentence about why, and a page about what is allowed.
Publishing a one-page policy increases AI use. People were holding back because nobody had said what was allowed.
One owner beats a committee. A single gatekeeper through whom every request routes is the near-death pattern.
Meaningful adoption takes one to three years. Department by department works. Everyone at once does not.
Do one thing this week
Where this comes from
Everything on this page comes from implementation work inside architecture, engineering, interiors, modular and construction firms, and from teaching it to more than a thousand professionals.
Know where you stand. Know what is next.
Find your level. Start the right workflow. Write the policy this week.