Advelocity Success Story
How AdVelocity Reduced Passive Fire Protection Quotation Times From Months to Minutes
Client
GRJ Contracting
Type
Passive Fire Protection / Construction
Services
AI Automation
Months to Minutes
Turnaround time transformed. What once ranged from three weeks to three months now completes in a single session.
Three Phases
Knowledge capture, AI quotation automation, and decision intelligence, a connected system built around how GRJ’s experts actually think.
Faster wins
Speed of response became a commercial advantage, enabling GRJ to outpace competitors and accelerate client decision-making.
The Client
About GRJ Contracting
GRJ is a specialist passive fire protection business operating within one of the most technically complex sectors in construction.
Passive fire protection is not a commodity service. Every building is different. Every specification is different. Every fire stopping requirement must be assessed individually against wall construction, service penetrations, compartmentation design, product compatibility, installation method and regulatory compliance.
It is precisely the kind of sector where experience matters enormously and where that experience is difficult to scale.
The Challenge
Producing an accurate quotation for a passive fire protection project is not a simple exercise. Estimators must review large volumes of documentation, while technical specialists are required to interpret complex specifications. Producing an accurate quote also relies on years of accumulated knowledge, which is often concentrated among a small number of highly experienced individuals.
For GRJ, this process was thorough, accurate and respected by clients. The problem in this case was that it was a slow process.
Quotation turnaround times ranged from three weeks to three months depending on complexity. Senior technical personnel, the people best placed to develop client relationships, were spending large portions of their time producing estimates.
As the business looked to grow, this became an increasingly visible constraint. Growth opportunities existed. The ability to respond to them quickly did not. The questions the business needed to answer were ones that many specialist contractors across construction are wrestling with right now.
1. How do you increase quotation capacity without simply recruiting more estimators?
2. How do you respond faster without sacrificing accuracy?
3. How do you preserve and scale the technical knowledge that lives inside your most experienced people?
4. How do you turn quotation speed into a commercial advantage rather than a bottleneck?
The Common Misconception With AI in Construction Businesses
One of the biggest assumptions that holds construction businesses back from exploring AI is the belief that their sector is too technically complex for it to be useful.
Passive fire protection, on the surface, appears to be exactly the kind of area where that assumption would be correct. The technical depth required, the regulatory complexity and the reliance on experienced judgement is what steers decision makers away from AI solutions.
AdVelocity proves this assumption is wrong. AI is particularly effective in knowledge-intensive industries because it can rapidly organise, retrieve and apply accumulated expertise, historical data and decision-making logic.
The objective was never to replace GRJ’s technical expertise. It was to make that expertise scalable. That distinction is what separates a successful AI implementation from one that misses the point entirely.
The solution
One product, transformed one business.
AdVelocity worked with GRJ across three connected phases to build an AI-powered quotation and decision-support system that reflected how their most experienced people actually think.
Phase 1
Building the Technical Knowledge Base
Before any automation could be built, GRJ’s expertise needed to be captured and structured.
Years of historical quotations, project documentation and technical knowledge were analysed. The patterns within them were identified. The decision-making processes that experienced estimators followed were mapped out and documented.
Reference points were established, edge cases were accounted for and regulatory requirements were embedded throughout. The result was a structured knowledge environment that captured GRJ’s accumulated expertise in a form that could be consistently accessed, applied and scaled.
This knowledge base is not simply a static repository of information. It is the intelligence layer that underpins everything else, enabling expertise to be retrieved, interpreted and deployed whenever it is needed.
Phase 2
AI Quotation Automation
With the knowledge framework in place, AdVelocity developed an AI-powered quotation engine built specifically around GRJ’s processes, products and technical requirements.
The system reviews incoming project information such as drawings, specifications and scope documents, then applies the structured decision-making framework developed during the knowledge capture phase. Historical quotations provide context and technical requirements provide guidance. The output is a detailed draft quotation, produced in approximately just fifteen minutes.
Crucially, the system is designed to support GRJ’s experts rather than bypass them. Every draft quotation is reviewed by experienced technical personnel before it is issued. Quality and compliance remain central to the process.
The AI handles the volume and the initial analysis. The humans handle the judgement, the refinement and the final sign-off.
Phase 3
Decision Intelligence
The most powerful element of the solution is not the automation itself. It is the decision intelligence that sits behind it. Traditionally, technical experts spend a significant proportion of their time gathering, organising and cross-referencing information before they can begin making decisions. AdVelocity’s system dramatically reduces the effort required to reach that decision-making point.
The AI performs the initial analysis, surfaces the relevant information and then identifies the variables that need human attention. Experts can then focus their time on verification and the nuanced decisions that genuinely require their expertise, rather than on the preparatory work that surrounds them.
The effect is a step-change in productive capacity without any reduction in the quality of the output. Intelligent, right?
Results
Quotation Time Reduced From Months to Minutes
The headline outcome is a dramatic reduction in quotation preparation time. A process that previously took anywhere from three weeks to three months can now produce an accurate draft in approximately fifteen minutes!
That is not just a mere incremental improvement. It is a full fundamental change to how the business operates. Some other key results are explained below:
Increased Capacity Without Increased Headcount – By automating significant parts of the quotation process, GRJ can handle substantially more work without proportionate increases in staffing, improving scalability while controlling costs.
Better Use of Senior Expertise – Automation has reduced the time senior specialists spend on quotation preparation, allowing them to focus on business development, technical leadership, client relationships and strategic growth.
Speed as a Competitive Advantage – Faster quotation delivery enables GRJ to respond more quickly than many competitors, accelerating client decision-making and improving win potential.
Knowledge Preserved as a Business Asset – One of the less visible but equally significant outcomes is the preservation of institutional knowledge. When technical expertise resides primarily within individuals, it is vulnerable. People move on. Capacity changes.
Knowledge that took years to accumulate can be difficult to transfer.
By capturing GRJ’s decision-making frameworks, technical knowledge and historical experience within a structured AI system, that expertise has become a business asset.
3 Weeks→15 mins
Quotation turnaround time reduced from as long as three months to a draft in approximately fifteen minutes. Not an incremental improvement, a fundamental change to how the business operates.
3 Months
The longest a quotation previously took to produce. Senior technical specialists, the people best placed to win and develop client relationships, were spending that time on estimates instead.
Zero
Additional estimators hired to increase quotation capacity. AI automation allows GRJ to handle substantially more work without proportionate increases in headcount or cost.
Preserved
Years of accumulated technical knowledge captured, structured and embedded into an AI system. Expertise that once lived inside individuals is now a permanent, scalable business asset.
Faster
Than competitors. Rapid quotation delivery accelerates client decision-making and improves win potential in a sector where response speed is rarely a strength.
100%
Of draft quotations reviewed by GRJ’s technical team before issue. AI handles the volume and initial analysis. Humans retain full control of judgement, compliance and final sign-off.
FAQs
Got a question that isn’t answered here? Contact our team.
Can AI actually generate accurate construction quotations?
Yes, AI is fully capable of generating accurate construction quotations when supported by structured technical knowledge and historical project data. AI can generate highly accurate draft quotations that significantly reduce preparation time. The key is building the knowledge foundation correctly first.
Will this replace our estimators?
No. Our objective is not to replace estimators with AI automation, it is to allow them to focus on validation, expertise and commercial judgement rather than repetitive analysis and document review. For example, GRJ’s technical team remains central to every quotation that leaves the business.
Our sector is very technical. Can AI really handle that?
Yes, AI can handle automation processes in a technical business sector, you’d be surprised. Some of the strongest AI use cases exist within complex, knowledge-intensive sectors precisely because AI can organise, retrieve and apply large amounts of technical information quickly. The more structured the knowledge, the more effective the system.
Looking to Automate Complex Business Processes?
If your business relies on specialist knowledge, technical expertise, manual quotation processes, estimating workflows or decision-heavy operations, AdVelocity can identify where AI can create measurable improvements.
The first step is understanding where the bottlenecks are and what the opportunity looks like.
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