M-01 / transmission

// SURFACE READ
you design and engineer high-end woodworking jobs. then you push them through drawings, schedules, vendor back-and-forth, and client changes.
the real machine is project coordination across time zones, with excel holding the whole thing together.
AI-readiness: 6/10

// WIRE-IN POINTS
1. quote-to-scope intake — a model that turns client notes, PDFs, and markup emails into a clean job brief and risk list — the unsexy data it eats: past briefs, change requests, RFIs, estimate notes.
2. drawing review triage — an agent that flags missing dimensions, spec clashes, and revision drift before a lead opens the file — the unsexy data it eats: annotated drawings, revision logs, issue tags, redlines.
3. project status collation — a model that pulls updates from email, excel, teams, and task lists into one daily project pulse — the unsexy data it eats: status cells, meeting notes, blockers, due dates.
4. closeout and lessons capture — an agent that turns completed jobs into reusable standards, checklists, and gotchas — the unsexy data it eats: punch lists, site issues, field fixes, as-built notes, final client comments.

// DO NOT AUTOMATE
1. design judgment on custom details should stay with team leads because dumb automation here will make bad wood and expensive rework.
2. client-facing change negotiation should stay human because trust dies fast when a machine prices or explains scope creep.
3. final approval on engineering outputs should stay with named leads because removing accountability is not automation, it is a mess.

// THE 30-DAY MOVE
stand up a single teams + sharepoint intake bot for new jobs and revisions. tool: m365 copilot studio plus power automate. owner: the admin/project manager. metric: time from incoming email to clean job brief under 10 minutes.
wire it to one standard form, one shared folder, and one excel tracker. have it auto-tag job type, client, lead, revision, due date, and missing inputs.
use it on every new project for 30 days. measure how many briefs arrive complete on the first pass and how many follow-up emails disappear.
what to delete: duplicate status meetings, manual copy-paste into excel, and the extra “where is the latest version” email chain.

// THE LIE THEY'RE TELLING THEMSELVES
*we need to clean up the operations system before we can touch AI.*