You're a contractor, you're busy, and you're tired of LinkedIn consultants telling you that you'll be left behind if you don't embrace AI right now. Smart move to tune out the hype — but here's the catch: while you're waiting for the noise to die down, a few of your competitors are quietly using these tools to save hours every week. Not on flashy stuff. On the boring stuff. Meeting minutes, SOPs, pulling scope language out of a 200-page addendum.

Dimitri Sidiropoulos is the Vice President of Delphi Plumbing and Heating, a heavy mechanical self-performing public works contractor in New York City. He's not a tech bro — he's a working contractor who decided to actually try ChatGPT for a year inside his construction company. In this conversation, Eric and Dimitri get into what works, what doesn't, where it saves him hours, where the proposal bot he tried to build had to be abandoned, and where that last 20% will nail you if you're not paying attention.

If you've been waiting for someone to give you a no-hype, on-the-ground answer to "should I actually be using ChatGPT?" — grab a notepad. This is the conversation.

What you'll learn:

• Why the first move with AI isn't asking it to do work — it's letting it interview you

• How Dimitri spent three days in back-and-forth with ChatGPT to give it real context about his business

• The "Jarvis to Iron Man" framework: AI enhances the operator, it doesn't replace the brain

• Where ChatGPT shines: meeting minutes, SOPs, pulling scope from addenda, three/five/ten-year strategic planning

• Where it falls down: custom proposal bots, takeoffs of pipe and fittings, anything that depends on means and methods

• Why "80% of the way there in five minutes" beats "80% of the way there in a day and a half"

• How to ask AI for its sources so you can spot hallucinations early

• Why writing emails with AI can hurt the relationships you've built

• The first move on Monday morning if you're an AI-skeptic contractor

• Delphi Plumbing & Heating: www.delphiph.com

• Dimitri on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dimitri-sidiropoulos-b4485190

• Delphi on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/delphiph

A superintendent's wife wakes up at 2 a.m. to find him pacing the bedroom for the third night straight. She tells him, "This isn't going to work. For anybody." That superintendent was Scott Borroughs, and the project was Deep Space, Epic Systems Systems850,000 square foot auditorium, built 80 feet down through limestone.

Scott Borroughs is the Vice President of Field Operations at JP Cullen, a fifth-generation Wisconsin contractor. As general superintendent on Deep Space, he became the decision-making funnel that choked the project, then rebuilt the way he led. In this episode, we walk through how he did it, and how you can do the same without losing control of the work.

• How to recognize when you've become the bottleneck on your own project

• The "banks of the river" framework: define the banks, let people flow between them

• How to step back from the weeds without feeling like you've stopped working

• What to do when your team solves a problem differently than you would

• How JP Cullen turned one project's lessons into ten company-wide SOPs

• Why you should never confuse activity with accomplishment

Connect with Scott Borroughs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-borroughs-63999a19

JP Cullen: https://jpcullen.com

The Epic Systems Deep Space Auditorium project: https://jpcullen.com/portfolio/epic-deep-space-auditorium

Ryan Englin, founder of Core Matters and creator of the FieldCon software platform, returns to talk about the two things most construction leaders dodge: accountability and performance reviews. Ryan and Eric get practical about why these conversations feel so hard and how to make them routine.

The short version. Accountability starts with a commitment the employee actually agreed to. The longer you wait to address a problem, the more painful it gets. And the annual review is the worst way to give feedback.

In this episode: - Why you can't hold someone accountable to something they never committed to - The foreman story that shows how delay turns a small issue into a confrontation - Why focusing on the agreed outcome beats focusing on the person - How to redesign reviews around the gap between self-rating and manager-rating - Running reviews monthly or quarterly so nothing is ever a surprise

Connect with Ryan Englin:

Core Matters: corematters.com

FieldCon: fieldcon.io

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ryanenglin

Core Matters on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/corematters