AI consulting · Toronto
I help Canadian boutique residential construction firms grow with AI.
Focused on growth, not tools. I diagnose before I prescribe.
Book a 30-minute call →The problem
You didn't start a construction firm to spend your nights chasing vendors.
You’re running a 5-to-30-person residential firm. Margins are thinner than they used to be. Your PM is buried in RFIs and change orders. You can’t find a good estimator to hire. And every quarter Procore, Buildertrend, or another vendor pitches you a module that costs more than it would save.
You don't have a tool problem. You have a leverage problem.
What I do
I optimize the business systems and workflows that residential firms run on.
I help boutique residential builders identify the workflows costing their team the most time — and replace them with faster, sharper versions powered by AI. Fewer admin hours. Faster client communication. Better vendor follow-up. Less owner-bottleneck.
I’m not Procore. I’m not Buildertrend. I’m not going to tell you to “leverage AI.” I sit in your operations, find what’s actually slowing you down, and build the leverage you need — usually on top of the tools you already pay for.
Most of my work falls into three buckets:
Automate
Recurring admin work (RFIs, client updates, vendor follow-ups, change-order language) handled by AI instead of by your team.
Connect
Data moving between the tools you already use. No more retyping vendor invoices into QuickBooks or copy-pasting between Procore and your accounting.
Build
Custom software when no vendor product fits your business. Rare, but worth it when needed.
How I work
Diagnose before prescribe.
Every engagement starts with an AI Foundation — a two-week diagnostic and quick-win deployment.
I walk through your operations onsite. I sit in on a vendor call, a client approval, an estimate review. I find the three workflows costing you the most time. I deploy two working AI tools for your team in the first two weeks. And I leave you with a roadmap: what to build next, in what order, and what to ignore.
AI Foundation. Two weeks.
Every engagement starts here.
How the two weeks run
- Days 1–2 Onsite Walking your operations — a vendor call, a client approval, an estimate review.
- Days 3–7 Diagnose Identifying the three workflows costing your team the most time.
- Days 8–13 Deploy Building and deploying two working AI tools with your team.
- Day 14 Roadmap Delivering the written plan — what to build next, what to ignore.
What comes after Foundation depends on what we found. A focused automation. A library of them across your PMs and estimators. A custom integration. Sometimes a custom platform. Always sized to the problem we diagnosed — never bigger.
Case study
When a custom build is the right call.
A Toronto interior design firm transitioning to construction management needed software that didn’t exist on the market. Their business model paid subcontractors directly while the firm held the design relationship. Procore and Buildertrend assume the GC owns the money flow. Neither fit.
In ten working days, I shipped a complete custom CM platform: project portals, budget management, decision-of-record audit trails, OCR-powered invoice processing, client-facing approvals. 1,876-line spec. 50,000 lines of production TypeScript. Deployed and running.
Most engagements don’t look like this one. This is the ceiling of what’s possible when the business genuinely doesn’t fit any vendor product. Most of the time, your firm doesn’t need a custom platform. It needs the right skills, in the right hands, doing the work that’s currently eating your team.
About
I’m Gavin Berman — Master of Architecture, Toronto-based. I practiced as a registered architect with the OAA for over a decade (2010–2021) before moving into software.
I watched too many builders work nights and weekends fighting RFIs and vendor chases while their margins shrank. So I went looking for what actually moves the needle.
What I found: the firms breaking through aren’t the ones with the most software. They’re the ones with the sharpest specifications for what their tools should do.
Now I help Canadian boutique residential firms write those specs, deploy the right AI, and grow without breaking their operations.
Want to find out where AI would actually move the needle in your firm?
Book a 30-minute intro call. No pitch. We talk through your current operations, where you're stuck, and whether an AI Foundation makes sense for your firm.
Book a call →