Chat GPT for Construction - Asked It How to Use Revit and It Blew My Mind

ChatGPT is showing promise as a tool to boost productivity for construction industry professionals. Recent examples showcase how it can be used to streamline common workflows by quickly generating draft documents, checklists, and models. For instance, a marketing professional prompted ChatGPT to outline health and safety regulations for UK roofing contractors. It then created a risk assessment framework, demonstrating how ChatGPT can draft standard templates. An architect asked how to use specific features within construction design software Revit. ChatGPT provided clear, step-by-step instructions, acting as an on-demand user manual. These kinds of use cases allow subject matter experts to focus on higher-level review and the decision making processes rather than building deliverables from scratch.

Here are some of the ways ChatGPT can be useful in the construction industry.

• It can help ensure health and safety compliance by providing guidance on regulations.

• ChatGPT can also create customized tutorials to teach construction professionals how to use complicated software platforms.

• For managing costs, ChatGPT can develop detailed breakdowns of expenses.

• It can even generate task dependency models to assist with project scheduling.

• And since ChatGPT can integrate with existing tools via APIs, it can optimize workflows by connecting platforms.

So in summary, ChatGPT can streamline many processes for construction companies and professionals through its versatile capabilities. This post will now look at some real-world examples for each of the uses cases mentioned along with the actual prompts used in each scenario.

Danny Mitchell, the Head of Content Marketing at ArchDesk, a company that offers training to construction experts, decided to see if ChatGPT and AI technology could assist with health and safety training data and regulations.

Danny had some questions about health and safety regulations in the construction sector in the UK roofing sector.

• Input Prompt: I'm a UK specialist contractor in the roofing sector - what health & safety regulations do I need to look out for on new jobs?

Happy with ChatGPTs knowledge of local laws, he asked it to create a risk assessment framework, and then take a shot at fill it out.

• Input Prompt: can you create a risk assessment for working at height?

• Input Prompt: Can you, just as an example, complete the template please

Obviously, getting ChatGPT to fill out risk assessments is not a good idea, but the idea here was more about creating a first draft with all the boilerplate for routine formal documents. Then he could go in and update the specifics.

Murillo Piazzi, an architect specializing in Building Information Modelling, experimented with chat gpt to learn Revit, one of the best construction management software solutions.

Murillo wanted to know how to select elements in Revit using their unique IDs. So he prompted:

• Input Prompt: Good morning! I am an architect trying to find information about a functionality in Revit 2022. I have received a list with elements IDs. How can I select elements in Revit 2022 through their ID?

ChatGPT gave a quick, step-by-step explanation for how to do this in Revit.

According to Murillo, ChatGPT provides faster answers compared to searching forums or the web. It can be used to quickly learn software features and other technologies without lengthy tutorials.

As a software engineer myself, ChatGPt doesn’t always know about obscure plugins and tools I need to use, so what I do is just copy the entire manual or help documentation into the prompts and then ask it specific questions. This is now possible with the massive context windows we have with Claude 2 and GPT4.

PMWeb, a construction project management software company, tested using ChatGPT to generate cost breakdown structures for construction sites and construction projects.

• Input Prompt: I need the cost breakdown structure for a building project

• Input Prompt: For the site preparation of a building project, what details it should include?

• Input Prompt: What are the items that need to be covered in the Contingency cost of a building project?

And they got line items to budget for risks and unknowns.

With iterative prompting, ChatGPT can create detailed multi-level cost models. The key was prompting for an initial structure, and then asking for more details on each section. These can then be brought into tools like PMWeb to build project estimates and budgets.

This approach of prepping documents for other tools applies to more than just cost models, the idea is to use ChatGPT to create or format complicated inputs for software that then goes to do more complicated stuff. For example, creating checklists for tools that create Work Inspection Requests (WIRs).

Waqas Ahmad, a project management consultant, demonstrated using ChatGPT to generate task dependency models for the construction site scheduling.

• Input Prompt: I want Building Construction Project Task dependency model

ChatGPT provided a properly sequenced and categorized list of tasks.

According to Waqas, this information can be used in scheduling tools like Primavera to build dependency links between tasks. The key benefit is quickly getting a draft model from ChatGPT, rather than building from scratch. This saves time and reduces the chance of missing dependencies. As with the first example, ChatGPT's results needs review by project planners to catch inconsistencies. But it provides a strong starting point for building comprehensive schedules.

In summary, these examples showcase some of the ways that construction management professionals are using ChatGPT to streamline workflows and boost productivity. The key benefits seem to be:

• Quickly generating drafts of documents, checklists, and models that would otherwise require extensive manual work. This saves significant time and effort.

• Providing accurate, detailed responses tailored to the specifics of construction projects and tools. ChatGPT can easily incorporate constraints and requirements into its outputs.

• Allowing subject matter experts to focus on higher-level review and analysis rather than building deliverables from scratch. They can validate and refine ChatGPT's work instead of creating entirely new.

• Integrating smoothly with existing construction software platforms via templates and APIs. ChatGPT acts as a rapid front-end to augment human expertise and specialized tools.

Of course ChatGPT still requires oversight and its outputs shouldn't be used without review. But it appears constructing the right prompts can make it a hugely useful asset for boosted efficiency across many construction roles.

• If you'd like to go through through some of the results for some of the prompts you can go through the entire article here https://daisychainai.com/blog/construction

• Also if you do decide to try some of these prompts out, there has been a huge jump the communities understanding of writing prompts since this was written. This article is my latest summary of how to tweak these prompts for your specific use case https://daisychainai.com/blog/cheatsheet