New Way Now: How BuilderPal uses Gemini to reduce construction admin from hours to minutes

*Featured in this video:* Paul Cottrell, Cofounder, CEO, and CTO, BuilderPal

*Executive summary:* The construction industry remains one of the world's least digitized sectors, with 80% of businesses still relying on paper, phone calls, and fragmented text threads. This leads to disconnected data and hours of unpaid administrative work for contractors. BuilderPal works with Google Cloud to build a unified operating system for construction. By leveraging Gemini and the Enterprise Agent Platform, BuilderPal created an intelligent assistant that automates complex tasks like project estimating and budget management. The company has helped reduce administrative timelines from several hours to just a few minutes. This AI-first approach eliminates manual paperwork, giving contractors their nights and weekends back to spend with their families.

*Challenge:* The construction industry remains heavily reliant on traditional, manual workflows, with approximately 80% of the sector running entirely on paper, phone calls, and text messages. This reliance on disconnected islands of data leads to communication breakdowns and hours of unpaid admin time for contractors. For the average contractor, these manual tasks—like replicating data across multiple spreadsheets or chasing lost text threads—can represent roughly $30k a year in lost labor. BuilderPal recognized that to solve this, contractors and construction companies needed more than just another software tool, they needed a scalable, AI-driven way to unify data and automate complex administrative tasks like project estimating and budget management.

*Solution:* BuilderPal addresses this fragmentation by building a unified operating system for construction, powered by Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly known as Vertex AI). BuilderPal used Agent Platform to create an intelligent digital assistant that manages importing contacts or creating punch lists using natural language. By leveraging Google Cloud Run for scalable compute, BuilderPal built a system that handles the heavy lifting of back-office administration. This AI-first approach ensures that even small contracting firms can easily manage projects without the overhead of complex software, allowing the technology to fade into the background while it automates the most time-consuming parts of the job.

*Result:* With Google Cloud, BuilderPal is helping contractors eliminate the tech burden of back-office administration. By automating tedious, manual tasks, the company has helped reduce the time required for complex project estimating and budgeting from several hours to just a few minutes. This gain streamlines business operations and addresses the industry's pervasive problem with unpaid time. With their hours back, contractors can spend their nights and weekends with their families and friends. By consolidating its customers’ business data in a single, intelligent interface, BuilderPal ensures that technology works for the builder, allowing them to focus on their craft while the AI handles the paperwork.

*Highlights and key takeaways from our interview with Paul Cottrell, Cofounder, CEO, and CTO at BuilderPal:*

→ “A lot of our users are AI skeptics, but when I show them what BuilderPal can do for them, they’re suddenly excited to use it.”

→ “I'm not selling software, I'm just trying to reduce unpaid time. I try to drive my customers toward Google Workspace when they need to consolidate their tech stack.”

→ “Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform allows for speed. So before a contractor’s done with their cup of coffee, they have a BuilderPal profile. They don’t need to worry about anything. It just builds for them.”

*Google Cloud products used:* BigQuery, Cloud Run, Gemini, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Redis Memorystore

*Learn more:*
→ BigQuery: From data warehouse to autonomous data and AI platform
https://cloud.google.com/bigquery

→ Cloud Run: Build apps or websites quickly on a fully managed platform https://cloud.google.com/run