How Skelly Build is converting 365 completed projects into a single AI estimating model — turning years of historical data into a preconstruction weapon that cuts bid timelines from two weeks to same-week.
Sean Skelly built a 40-person, fixed-price operation with 365 completed projects. Now he's feeding every cost code, sub bid, and timeline into one AI model to make preconstruction his biggest competitive weapon. Sean Skelly is the CEO of Skelly Build, an award-winning custom home and renovation firm in Austin, TX. Most builders treat their historical project data like dead weight sitting in a CRM. Sean sees it as fuel. In this conversation, he breaks down his crawl-walk-run AI roadmap, why preconstruction is where money is made and lost, and how 365 jobs of real data could turn estimating from a 2-week bottleneck into a same-week advantage.
Preconstruction is one of the most overlooked pieces of construction. That planning stage—the subs, the price, the timeline, expectations—that's where money is made and lost. We've got 365 jobs we've done. We can upload all the plan sets, all the data, the cost codes, the sub bids into one model. That's our run project this year.— Sean Skellenger, CEO, Skelly Build
Most builders don't know their preconstruction cost per estimate, their bid-to-win ratio, or how much unbilled scope creep walks out the door every quarter. The GO First AI Diagnostic maps your #1 bottleneck in under 45 minutes — before your competitor figures it out first.
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