Chatting about Dykstra’s Construction Project Management textbook

In addition to our forthcoming courseware built with Fullglass.ai, Kirshner Books has built an AI chatbot we are using internally to test different ways to use and expand our course materials. Using Google’s NotebookLM, we can generate videos, audio, and slides based on our textbooks. We are carefully reviewing this AI-generated multimedia and will be presenting it here after identifying and dealing with the inevitable problems that can occur even in otherwise-excellent AI output.

We have been having question-and-answer exchanges with the NotebookLM chatbot based on Alison Dykstra’s Construction Project Management textbook. The answers are quite reasonable, and in some cases very good. It is fascinating having a textbook that one can “chat” with. Once it gets going, NotebookLM starts suggesting follow-up questions, such as:

• How does fast-tracking affect a contractor’s financial risk?
• How do different construction contracts shift risk on a job?
• What is the role of an architect in a GMP contract?
• What are specific steps an architect takes to review and approve a contractor’s payment application?
• How are change orders handled when a dispute arises?
• What specific documentation must a contractor include in their payment application?
• What is the formal dispute resolution process when negotiation fails?
• Explain the different types of lien waivers used during the payment process, and dive deeper into how to structure the Schedule of Values (SOV).

We started off with “Tell me four or five surprising or unusual things about construction project management discussed here.” Here is how this AI responded:

Here are five surprising or unusual facts about construction project management and the construction industry discussed in the text:

1. The earliest building codes carried the death penalty. While modern building codes dictate things like ceiling heights and stair widths, the earliest known codes—part of the Code of Hammurabi in Babylonia nearly 4,000 years ago—were entirely focused on retribution. The law stated that if a builder constructed a house improperly and it collapsed and killed the owner, the builder would be put to death.
2. Construction can begin before a building is even fully designed. In an effort to save time and money, a project can be “fast-tracked,” meaning the design and construction phases are overlapped. Instead of waiting for the entire design to be completed, the contractor submits plans to the building department in segments. This allows crews to begin pouring the foundation or digging the excavation while the architects are still figuring out the details of the rest of the structure.
3. Sci-fi technology is actively entering the jobsite. Contractors are beginning to use highly futuristic tools, including exoskeletons—exterior body frames that workers strap into to lift and carry extremely heavy, bulky materials without strain. The industry is also deploying four-legged robot “dogs” to photograph and capture jobsite data, robots that automatically finish drywall, and drones that replace humans on swing stages to conduct visual inspections of tall-building facades.
4. A one-dollar contract is legally binding, but a free favor is not. For a construction contract to be valid, there must be “consideration,” which means both parties must exchange something of value. If a contractor promises to build a fence for a local church for free, but does a terrible job, the church has no legal recourse because the lack of payment means there was no enforceable contract. However, if the church pays the contractor even a single dollar for the work, the law considers it a legally binding contract and the contractor can be held liable.
5. Projects are being built with highly unconventional materials. Driven by the need for sustainability and technological advancement, project managers are having to learn how to price and install incredibly unusual new materials. These include concrete that traps carbon dioxide, panels made from fast-growing grasses or sorghum stalks, carbon-neutral hemp blocks, translucent wood, microbial cellulose, and even spider silk. Contractors are also 3D-printing entire houses out of cementitious slurry or excess wood fiber in just a matter of days.

Would you like to explore any of these topics further, such as how fast-tracking affects a contractor’s financial risk, or how these futuristic technologies are impacting the construction labor force?

In interesting fact #3, the AI has over-extrapolated from Chapter 3 of the textbook (“Construction and Technology”), which indeed covers futuristic-sounding technology that is making its way onto construction jobsites, but with more nuance than one might expect from the AI summary. Similar exaggeration about sci-fi construction also made its way into the audio and video that AI generated.

Here is the detailed table of contents for Chapter 3:

Comparison of broad AI summaries on the one hand, with the full text of the book, might provide interesting classroom discussion. Generally, we’ve been finding that such comparisons (between what our textbook author wrote, and how AI slightly misinterpreted that writing) can actually help engage with the material: “The textbook book says this. The AI-generated audio says this. Is there an important distinction?”