When West Shore Home hired Eppie Vojt as its first Chief Data and AI Officer, the home remodeling company's operations were already highly technical. The company skillfully used lidar scanning at job sites and generated detailed models of future projects through 3D visualization software.

But Vojt said automation opened the door to operational improvements. Vojt, who held several executive roles at self-storage software company Storable, including Chief AI Officer, joined West Shore Home in 2024.

"Artificial intelligence is not a label we forced on ourselves to check a box or show investors that we're doing AI," Vojt said in an interview with CIO Dive. "The only reason we engage in AI-related initiatives is because it helps us achieve the core goals of the business more effectively."

The company, headquartered in central Pennsylvania—where Vojt grew up—focuses on quick-turnaround projects such as flooring installation and bathroom renovations, operating across more than 20 states and generating nearly $1 billion in revenue last year.

As the company looked for areas to improve through automation, providing customers with accurate estimates of project completion times became a priority.

"One of the biggest pain points in the traditional home remodeling process is that there's a lot of room for uncertainty," Vojt said. The company developed a proprietary system called Sapos, which stands for "Sales Point Scheduling," that uses AI to analyze factors affecting completion times—from how long it takes certain suppliers to deliver materials to local permitting requirements.

"Ultimately, this means we can give a firm installation date within seconds of committing to a project," Vojt said. According to Vojt, the tool helped create completion estimates for 25,000 jobs last year, accounting for nearly half of all the company's projects.

Boosting adoption

Although the construction industry is widely seen as a technology laggard, the sector has actively embraced AI in pursuit of operational efficiency.

Last year, a majority of contractors surveyed by Dodge Construction Network believed AI would have a profound impact on the industry. More than four-fifths of respondents expected the technology to reduce repetitive tasks, while three-quarters expected it to help them gain insights from past projects.

But another survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors found that adoption plans are lagging. Of more than 2,200 global participants, nearly half said their companies had no ongoing AI implementation efforts, and 34% were still in early pilot stages.

To succeed in AI deployment, Vojt advised technology executives to clearly focus on what the tools can do for employees—and which tedious, unrewarding processes they can remove from to-do lists.

"Expressing everything in terms of business impact and customer focus is very effective in generating engagement and building buy-in within the organization," Vojt said.

Cross-functional collaboration is also crucial to winning employee trust.

"The future Chief AI Officer needs to be better integrated into the organizational structure," Vojt said. "Building strong relationships with the heads of departments they work with is more critical than ever."