Matt Lonergan is Commercial Director at JSM, a qualified Quantity Surveyor with over 35 years’ experience in the utility sector, predominantly in Power. He leads high-performing commercial teams on some of the UK’s largest renewables and data centre connection projects, delivering major net zero programmes through both traditional and collaborative contracting arrangements.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the JSM Quantity Surveyor
The role of the Quantity Surveyor (QS) is evolving rapidly, driven in part by the construction industry’s adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI). At JSM, our work is especially rewarding because we design and build the infrastructure that enables AI to grow, scale, and deliver its benefits.
At JSM, we design and build electricity substations and high-voltage cable routes that bring power from the National Grid or renewable sources, such as wind and solar, to data centres, often through highly congested urban environments. We also deliver the digital infrastructure that connects data centres to high-speed fibre networks and, ultimately, to end users.
How Main Contractor Quantity Surveyors Are Using AI
The type of AI most commonly used in this space is the Large Language Model (LLM). Built around text analysis, summarisation, and drafting, LLMs are a natural fit for the document-heavy work of a QS. Artificial intelligence is beginning to make a practical difference for main contractor quantity surveyors, not by replacing commercial judgement, but by helping teams process information faster and manage risk more consistently. It is important to reinforce that AI is a tool. It supports the QS, but does not make commercial decisions on their behalf. On live projects, AI is being used to support tender analysis, subcontract procurement, cost reporting, change control, and document review. The biggest value is often in reducing repetitive admin so QSs can spend more time on decision-making, negotiation, and protecting margin.
Practical Examples on Main Contractor Projects
One of the most useful applications is tender analysis. AI can review several subcontractor quotations and quickly highlight pricing gaps, exclusions, qualifications, and areas where returns are not directly comparable, making it easier for the QS to focus on the real commercial differences rather than manually aligning every line. It can also help with cost reporting by turning project data into a first draft of Cost Value Reconciliation (CVR) commentary, identifying unusual movements in forecast cost, value, or margin for further review. In change control, AI can compare drawing revisions, scan email trails and instructions, and help build a clearer record of how a change arose and where the cost impact sits. It is also proving useful in subcontract management, where it can summarise contract clauses, draft commercial correspondence, and flag risks around payment, contra charges, delay, and final account exposure.
Why It Matters
For main contractors, the benefit of AI is speed, consistency, and earlier visibility of risk. It can cut down the time spent reviewing packages, searching through documents, and drafting routine reports, while helping commercial teams spot issues sooner. That said, AI still needs careful oversight. Main contractor QSs remain responsible for interpreting subcontract terms, checking entitlement, validating records, and making sound commercial decisions based on the project context.
Used properly, AI becomes an assistant for the main contractor QS: speeding up analysis, improving reporting, and helping teams stay closer to cost, value, and risk throughout the life of the project.
In many ways, this feels like a similar wave of excitement to the arrival of Excel in the 1990s, when many in the industry were reluctant to go digital and change the way they worked. AI is not going anywhere, and the QSs who embrace it as a tool, and take the time to learn how to work with it, will be the ones who benefit most.
As JSM continues to grow, we are actively recruiting Quantity Surveyors to support our expanding project portfolio. If you are a QS looking for your next opportunity, we encourage you to explore current roles at JSM.