Cut Through the AI Noise With This Builder Checklist

Where AI is actually worth pointing in a building company, and how to tell which tools are worth your time.

Another AI tool gets announced every week, and the pressure to do something about it never lets up.

If your experience of AI so far is typing into a chat window, you have seen almost nothing of what it does inside a building company.

Russ Stephens and Ruhaab Markas spend 60 minutes on exactly that, and you leave with the six question checklist they build live.

60 minutes, live panel 8am AEST / 10am NZST · Thu 24 Sep 5pm CT / 3pm PT · Wed 23 Sep Via Zoom

Hosted live by APB Co-Founder Russ Stephens and Buildertrend VP of Product for AI Ruhaab Markas

Free Training for Residential Builders

Takes 20 seconds. We'll email you the Zoom link and a reminder before we go live.

What you'll walk away with in 60 minutes

The Builder's AI Checklist

The six questions the panel works through live, from whether a tool actually does the work to where the check sits when it gets something wrong. Sent to you after the session.

The Test Any New System Has To Pass

The test to run before any new system goes into the business. Does it fix a broken process or improve a good one, does it talk to the rest of the operation, does it actually take work off someone's plate.

Where Generic AI Falls Short In Construction

Why tools built for general business use cannot read your job history, your schedule or your financials, and what that failure costs you in time and money.

Where AI Is Worth Pointing First

Which parts of a building company AI belongs in right now, which parts are not ready for it, and what Buildertrend's approach means if you are already using ChatGPT or Claude.

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Free · 60 minutes · Live via Zoom

The real problem

What's really holding you back

The pressure to do something with AI is coming from every direction. Your competitors are talking about it, the software you already pay for keeps adding it, and most of the advice you can find was written for businesses that look nothing like yours.

The hard part is working out where it belongs. A chat window will answer anything you ask it, which makes AI feel either miraculous or useless depending on the day, and neither reading tells you which part of your operation it should touch first.

Dead end 1

Opening ChatGPT and hoping. You have it open, you have asked it a few things, and you still have no idea which of your jobs it should be anywhere near.

Dead end 2

Pointing it at a process nobody wrote down. If the way a job gets estimated only exists in someone's head, AI will automate whatever it finds there, at speed.

Russ and Ruhaab spend the session on where AI belongs in a building company and how to judge anything that gets put in front of you. One checklist, six questions, built live on the call and sent to you afterwards.

What changes for you

How this helps you

Leave knowing where AI belongs in your business, and able to judge anything that gets put in front of you without a technical background.

Know where to point AI first

And which parts of your operation are not ready for it.

Tell talking from doing

Whether a tool actually does the work, or just gives you an answer back.

Write the process down first

Including what a good result looks like, before any AI goes near it.

Keep the system you pay for

Whether a tool reaches into your system of record, or asks you to replace it.

Know where the check sits

So you find out when AI has got something wrong.

Set your proof criteria

What a tool has to prove before you let it run unsupervised.

I want in →

Your hosts for this session

Meet the Experts

Russ Stephens

APB's Co-Founder

Russ Stephens is Co-founder of the Association of Professional Builders (APB), a leading business coaching service for home builders in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Russ is a data analysis expert who has introduced data-driven decision-making to the residential construction industry and co-authored the Amazon #1 International Best-Selling Book Professional Builders Secrets.

Ruhaab Markas

Buildertrend's VP of Product, AI

Ruhaab Markas is Buildertrend's VP of Product for AI and the co-founder and CEO of BizJet AI, the construction AI company Buildertrend acquired in 2026.

Drawing on his experience leading AI product at Google and Amazon, and on what he learned investing in a residential construction company, he creates practical tools that help residential building companies automate estimating, scheduling and project management, so their teams spend less time on back office admin.