Where the £23k actually comes from

The Houzz figure is built from time saved per person multiplied by typical UK construction salaries. Roughly: three hours per week, per AI-enabled employee, of work that no longer happens manually.

For a 20-person business with five AI-enabled roles, that's 15 hours a week of recovered time. At a UK construction-sector average of around £35/hour fully loaded for skilled roles, that's about £27,000 a year. The £23k average is, if anything, conservative.

And that's only the direct productivity gain. The Houzz figure doesn't include the value of work won because of faster turnaround, or the value of compliance issues avoided.

The three roles where AI quietly recovers cost

The QS is the most common starting point. Quote drafting, takeoff assistance, document chasing — typically 5–8 hours a week of recovered time per QS.

The bid manager is next. Assembling tender responses, copy-pasting compliance documents, writing pre-quals — 4–6 hours a week.

The office admin is the third. Booking, scheduling, invoice chasing, customer follow-up — 6–10 hours a week, often more.

Together, in a typical mid-sized company, that's the £23k.

Why the average understates the upside

Productivity gain is the easiest number to count, so it's the one the Houzz report leads with. But it's usually the smallest of three benefits.

The bigger numbers are around revenue: faster quotes win more work. AI-supported tender responses convert better. Compliance-ready companies qualify for tenders they used to miss.

A company that wins one extra £80k contract a year because its quote cycle dropped from seven days to two has captured five times the £23k from a single workflow.

The pound that doesn't show up in the report

The hardest benefit to count is the one senior leadership teams care about most: their own time.

AI takes the work that wakes you at 11pm — the proposal that has to go out tomorrow, the compliance form that needs signing by Friday, the customer follow-up that didn't happen yet — and shifts it. Not all of it, but a meaningful fraction.

That benefit doesn't appear in productivity reports. It shows up in how often you take the weekend.