AI platform for construction procurement Field Materials, processing over $2B in material purchases annually and co-founded by Stanford serial entrepreneurs with a previous exit to PayPal, has launched AI automation agents that act as office employees working 24/7.
Image Courtesy of: Field Materials
With 41% of the current construction employees retiring by 2031, construction is facing a major demographic crisis. AI agents can solve this issue by storing contractors’ operational know-how in their logic. Contractors can now preserve their knowledge indefinitely and simplify succession planning and training.
Contractors instruct Field Materials AI agents to process incoming orders and invoices by explaining business logic in plain English. While doing its work, an agent can message staff with questions or collaborate with other agents.
“For the first time, AI can actually do the work we used to assign to employees, not assist with work but own it end to end,” Field Materials co-founder and CEO Eldar Sadikov says. “If an invoice checks out, why should a specialist spend time on it? Let the agent handle it and flag it only when something’s off. This way, employees can spend more time on value-adding tasks,” he says.
The agents can sort invoices into “overhead,” “rentals” or “subcontracts”; handle material orders from field crews by routing them to suppliers or warehouses; approve or flag invoices; place replenishment orders when inventory runs low.
Field Materials automation agents are fundamentally different from the agents built on foundational models (e.g., Claude) that construction ERPs and project management suites recently launched. First, they don’t hallucinate and are deterministic. Second, they have construction procurement skills to do quote analysis, process order deliveries and supplier invoices, as well as perform prefabrication and inventory workflows. Third, they are seamlessly integrated with 11 major construction ERPs and have skills to read relevant data like project budgets and write data like POs and AP invoices.
Finally, the new automation agents have the skills to read and interpret supplier paperwork. This is possible because of the data extraction agents that Field Materials developed over the past 4 years. These agents were trained on documents from over 25,000 suppliers and are experts at reading a wide variety of procurement document types such as concrete delivery tickets or electrical switchgear quotes.
The company works with contractors across 32 U.S. states, Australia, Canada, Ireland and the U.K. Some of the largest Field Materials’ customers include Swinerton, Teichert, Dynamic Systems, Superior Group, and Big-D. Randy Smith, the Director of Accounting Systems and Training at Dynamic Systems, sees the agents as “transformative for the whole construction industry.”
“The scale of our current healthcare, semiconductor and data center projects puts a lot of pressure on hiring and training new staff, especially in our Purchasing and Operations teams,” Randy continues. “The Field Materials automation agents could alleviate staffing challenges in the back office by delegating the mundane tasks to the agents.”
