The Preconstruction Podcast

Wharton Smith Senior Estimator Zackery Batt joined Gareth McGlynn at Advancing Preconstruction 2026 in Phoenix. A carpenter by trade, Zackery went from using no AI at all to running a custom preconstruction AI system built inside Claude Cowork, all in the space of nine months.

Discussion Highlights:

• From Carpenter to AI Builder: How spotting a LinkedIn post from Turner Construction's head of AI development pushed him to teach himself AI through YouTube and six months of trial and error.
• Bid Leveling, Almost Automatic: Saving every subcontractor's exclusions and assumptions so the system flags anything outside their normal boilerplate.
• Scope Generation at 95% Accuracy: The trickier workflow to crack, from early chats that hallucinated scope to a system that now finds almost everything he looks for.
• Knowledge Retention in MD Files: Years of carpentry, flooring, and millwork knowledge written into files Claude reads before generating scope, picking up items that are technically there but not actually on the drawings.
• Client Proposals in Two Minutes: How AI pulls awarded subcontractor proposals and generated scope into a 10 to 15 page client-facing proposal that used to take five hours.
• Where It's Heading: One estimator managing multiple AI workflows instead of five or six, the adoption hurdles that will hold AI back in construction, and why the companies that own their data will thrive.
• And much, much more.

You can connect with Zackery via his Linkedin.

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