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1 contribution to Construction Contractors Hub
How do you use Excel? Weekly Newsletter
I’ve seen $200m+ projects run on Excel. And it works Hey everybody, I’ve been ignoring my email newsletter, and I wanted to put some time and effort into restructuring and improving it. It had become secondary to my YouTube videos. So I’ve decided to give it a big reboot. Each week I want to deliver three things: 1. News - keep you up to date with the latest developments in AI and construction 2. Inform - share some insightful stat, insight or study that changes the way you think 3. Work - deliver one perspective, process or demonstration that improves the way you work I have two goals for this: 1. Encourage people to use the massive amount of free resources in Contractors Hub. I’ve added tons of sample projects, tutorials, templates, guidebooks, and I’d love to encourage people to use it. 2. Build a newsletter that distils everything I’m learning I'll try to keep everything very short and to the point. Obviously, if you don’t want to receive them, just click unsubscribe below And if you want to comment or follow the discussion, you can comment along on the accompanying post each week: News: What happened this week 1. Lots of new models (as always). Sonnet 5.5 appears to be the standout. Topping our drawing analysis and take-off benchmark, and it’s really cheap to run. Seems like a great model. 2. ChatGPT Dots dropped. From my testing, it is a worse version of GrokBot. GrokBot is great btw; I have been using it every day. 3. A construction contractor’s AI roll-out exposed huge document-control problems. The biggest challenge to the roll-out was conflicting file names, duplicate documents and unclear revisions. I have had the exact same experience experimenting with ChatGPT/Claude co-work. File names and folder structures matter. Quite an interesting article: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/ai-doesnt-fix-data-problem-construction-need-unified-language/831774/
1 like • 22d
Totally agree that the Excel develops over time. Claims are where I see it most. A claims workbook starts as a page or two. By the end it's the evidence, the team's collective thinking, and the strategy for which items to claim and how to claim them. I've priced claims from $1M to $500M+, covering variations, delay costs, and acceleration. The summary shows the answer and the detail sits behind it. Every level of management is comfortable with that, because they watched it grow from nothing into the full claim. Claims are also so contextual that a standard template doesn't hold up, and Excel's flexibility lets the file take the shape of the matter. SharePoint's collaboration feature is a big part of why I love working this way. Nothing beats it. That's why your point about the most effective spreadsheets being developed collaboratively landed for me. Could you share the study you mentioned ? I recently worked with someone who was seriously worried about people messing up the data, in an industry that relies on collaboration across so many moving parts. It should seriously be an eye-opener. Cheers, Paudan
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Paudan Jain
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@paudan-jain-6248
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Active 8h ago
Joined Oct 1, 2026
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