The firm’s most senior people were spending their time on drafting and review
The firm’s technical staff had more than doubled in a few years while several long-tenured surveyors retired, and the same few senior people carried review and client work. Each proposal took four to eight hours to draft. The president personally reviewed every client contract, 15 to 20 a year, and a large one could take 8 to 12 hours across several rounds. On small jobs, contract review alone could cost more than a third of the fee.
The firm had tried to get started with AI on its own and made no progress. Some employees used ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini on their own terms, the only AI policy was a template kept on file for the insurer, and insurance applications had started asking how the firm used AI.
Leadership put its AI rules in writing before choosing any tools
Leadership set clear goals for AI, starting with time saved on real work, and the president took on the role of AI Leader. Together we wrote a safe use policy that keeps client and financial data out of public tools, requires a person to review every output, and makes clear that AI never signs or seals work. Every employee signs it.
The people who do the work built the assistants around the firm’s own documents
The proposal coordinator and the president mapped how they already work, and we set up two assistants in Claude around the firm’s own proposals, checklists and standards. The proposal assistant asks a few intake questions, confirms the scope, and drafts in the firm’s structure and voice. The contract assistant reviews a contract section by section against the firm’s checklist and preferred clause language, quotes each problem clause and proposes replacement language, with the final decision left to the reviewer. The team tested every tool on live projects and kept only the ones that earned their place.
Proposal drafting is down 75 percent, and contract review takes half the time
A proposal draft that took four to eight hours now takes one to two. The president spends half the time he used to on contract review, which matters most on the small jobs where review could eat a third of the fee. The coordinator started using the proposal assistant on live work before testing was even finished, and both assistants remain in regular use. When clients and insurers ask how the firm uses AI, it now has a written answer.