I had the pleasure of talking with Kurt Brinkman, CEO, and Daniel Tate, vice president of design and construction, from Intrepid Electronic Systems Inc., an electrical contractor based in the Bay Area in Crockett, Calif. The work they are doing in the fire alarm industry using new technology is impressive. From Revit-based fire alarm design, to artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools and automated riser creation, they are using these digital tools to streamline everyday processes to improve and optimize office and field personnel time.

Their journey was not an easy one—there were failures, and there were successes that came from those failures—but their persistence can be an inspiration to a company just starting its technology journey.

One of the pivot points was how they handled submittals. Contractors wanted answers quicker, and any delays slowed projects before work even started. Rather than accept this as the norm, Intrepid decided to change it. The company’s goal was simple: deliver submittals the same day so that the contractor would be able to keep to tight schedules.

Running the submittals through an A.I., they where able to extract, organize and format the data rather needing to manually using the search function and then copying and pasting each piece of information. This helped with one of the most common bottlenecks in any construction project: documentation review and delivery.

Another process that caused delays for Intrepid was field technicians often needing answers from manufacturer manuals while on-site, stopping work and adding unneeded delays. Their solution, create a retrieval augmented generation (RAG) A.I. workflow to help with technical support for the field. The field technician’s phone, even with minimal service, is able to access an A.I. RAG system trained on hundreds of manufacturers’ fire alarm manuals. Along with the manufacturers’ documentation, they added transcribed recordings of past meeting to add to their knowledge base. This added technical tips and tricks, lessons learned and installation means and methods. Using a RAG system, they are able to minimize hallucinations (false information generated by the A.I.) and have the ability to access the data on mobile devices in the field.

Of course, trusting this tool was a concern. Intrepid’s solution was to include links to where the data was pulled from so that a field technician is able to validate the information provided by the A.I. and confirm the delivered data was correct. This is a step that most companies using A.I. overlook, and can be a costly mistake.

The design team also followed a similar path. Jeff Lam, an experienced VDC designer, stepped in early and championed the EC’s Revit and BIM (building information modeling) workflows. This was long before fire alarm design adopted BIM widely. In integrating Revit early on, it put them ahead of the curve. Building off of that knowledge, the team is able to build complete fire alarm designs, including automated riser diagrams. Diagram creation that once took hours now takes seconds using automated work flows.

Looking forward, the next step is to integrate machine learning into those models, prepopulating devices and allowing designers to refine and edit instead of starting from scratch. Intrepid is also working towards integrating estimating and preconstruction to make one single source of truth from the start.

Another important step in their technology journey was investing in local youth by hiring interns while they were still in high school and exposing them to the technology used in construction, potentially piquing their interest in the industry. For example, Tiffany Nguyen was hired as an intern while she was still in high school, eventually leaving to attend college. Upon graduating with a mathematics degree with a focus on machine learning, she returned to Intrepid and is currently the A.I. construction coordinator and is responsible for the company’s A.I. roadmap. She was instrumental in the creation and deployment of their A.I. workflows. This is a prime example of investing in the future of the youth and their interest in the industry.

Other contractors from the industry that are at the beginning of their journey can use Intrepid as an example to build a roadmap of technology and implementation Getting leadership to support innovation and build a culture of advancing technology where trying and failing is encouraged. Hiring a dedicated technology leader with a strong technical background and knowledge of the company can accelerate that progress, but only if the company already believes in the direction of the technology. These improvements will not come easy. These tools may not work on the first try, or even the second. It can take multiple versions to reach a reliable baseline. Early failures can be uncomfortable, with demos that fail at the most inopportune times. Instead of throwing in the towel, treat each failure as a lesson learned to build on. This mindset can be applied to companies of any size, and is what is needed to really fast-track technology in this rapidly changing industry.