Every job, every quote, one brain the crew can ask
The AI second brain we built for a 15-person electrical contractor. It knows every customer, site and price, and the crew can ask it anything from the van.
01 At a glance
The short version
An electrical contractor where the owner was the answer to everything. We built them an AI second brain that holds the whole business, so the crew and the office ask it first.
15-person electrical contractor
The owner, an office manager, an admin, ten electricians and two apprentices. Residential and light commercial work across one metro area.
The owner's phone never stopped
Site history, prices, which supplier, what the customer was told. The crew rang the owner because nobody else knew.
A second brain for the whole business
Every customer, site, job, price and process in one place. The team asks it questions in plain words and gets answers with the source.
82 team hours back a month
About 13 hours a week of the owner's time by month 3, plus office hours. Delivered around $8,100 a month in reclaimed capacity.
The shift
Before: the electrician rings the owner, waits for a call back, then guesses. After: they ask the second brain from the van and get the answer, with the job it came from, in seconds.
02 The pain
A good crew.
One person who knew everything.
The work was solid. The trouble was that the business only remembered things through its owner.
About 40 calls a week to the owner
Where's the meter box at this address? What did we charge last time? Is this customer on a payment plan? Most of it had been answered before.
Quotes ate the owner's evenings
Around 20 quotes a week, about 30 minutes each, built from memory and an old spreadsheet price list. Ten hours a week, mostly after dinner.
Job notes lived in five places
Texts, photos on phones, scribbles on job sheets, emails and the job software. The office spent hours a week piecing them together.
Quotes went out and nobody followed up
No one owned the follow-up. Good jobs went quiet because a customer never heard back.
New starters took months to get useful
Apprentices and new hires learned the business by asking. That meant more calls, and more of the owner's day.
03 What we built
One second brain that
knows the business
An AI second brain (one shared memory the AI reads before it answers). It holds the business in plain text files, linked to the job software, inbox, calendar and shared drive. The office uses it on the desktop. The crew asks it from their phones.
Three things it does
Every job, photo note and voice memo gets filed against the customer and the address. Nothing lives only in someone's phone.
Ask in plain words, get a straight answer and the job or file it came from. If it doesn't know, it says so.
Quotes, follow-ups, job sheets and reminders. It writes them and a person checks them before anything goes out.
Human review stayed in
The second brain never sends anything to a customer by itself. Prices come only from the price book. Compliance certificates are always filled in and signed by the licensed electrician who did the work.
04 What's inside
Seven rooms,
one front door
The second brain is split into seven sections. The team never has to know which one to open. They just ask, and it looks in the right place.
| Section | What's in it | A question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Customers | Contact details, preferences, payment history, what they were promised | "Is Mrs Lee on the pensioner rate?" |
| Sites | Every address worked on: switchboard, meter box location, access, dog, gate code | "Where's the meter at the Hill Rd job?" |
| Job history | What was done, what was fitted, photos and notes, by date | "What RCD did we put in there in 2024?" |
| Price book | Labour rates, standard jobs, supplier prices, call-out fees | "What do we charge for a downlight swap?" |
| How we work | Step-by-step processes for quoting, invoicing, safety checks and handovers | "What's the checklist for a switchboard upgrade?" |
| Compliance | Licence and insurance dates, test and tag due dates, certificate steps | "Whose licence renews next month?" |
| Suppliers | Accounts, reps, lead times, who stocks what | "Who has solar isolators in stock this week?" |
Filed as the work happens
At the end of a job, the electrician sends a voice memo and photos. The second brain writes them up and files them under the site.
The business owns it
It's all readable text the owner can open. It works with Claude Code or Codex, so it isn't tied to one AI company.
05 In use
What asking it
looks like
Three real-world style questions from one Tuesday. Each answer points back to where it came from, so the crew can trust it.
Electrician, on site, 9:10am
Office manager, 11:30am
Apprentice, 2:45pm
06 On its own
The jobs it does
before anyone asks
Some work runs on a schedule. The second brain does it, then puts it in front of the right person to check.
A job sheet for every electrician
Each morning, every electrician gets the day's addresses, site notes, customer history and the parts to bring. No more ringing the office from the driveway.
Quote follow-ups
Three days after a quote goes out with no reply, it drafts a friendly follow-up. The office reads it and sends it in one click.
Job notes written up
Voice memos and photos from the day become tidy job notes, filed under the site and ready for invoicing.
The owner's week ahead
Quotes waiting on a reply, unpaid invoices over 30 days, jobs with missing notes, and anything due for compliance.
Compliance reminders
Licence, insurance and test and tag dates coming up in the next 60 days, so nothing lapses by surprise.
It drafts. People decide.
Nothing on this page reaches a customer without someone in the office reading it first. The second brain does the remembering and the typing. The team keeps the judgement.
07 Delivered outcome
Delivered operational impact
at 90 days
Live implementation reduced interruptions to the owner, accelerated quote drafting, and streamlined on-site troubleshooting across 90 days.
| Area | Before | Delivered after 90 days |
|---|---|---|
| Calls to the owner | About 40 a week | About 15 a week |
| Time per quote | 30 minutes from memory | 10 minutes to check a draft |
| Job notes | Pieced together by the office | Written up and filed the same day |
| Quote follow-ups | When someone remembers | Every quote, on day 3 |
| New starter questions | Asked the owner | Asked the second brain first |
The 90-day rollout
Loaded customers, sites, the price book and core processes. The office adopted search routines.
Electricians queried from phones and submitted voice memos. Quote drafts ran for standard jobs.
Morning job sheets, quote follow-ups and Monday scheduling previews ran automatically.
Verified operational impact
Measured from contractor job logs and weekly call tallies across 90 days of live use. Over 82 hours returned to project management, field work, and client quotes each month.
08 The numbers
Delivered time back
worth $8,100 a month
Delivered metrics measure three live areas: calls the owner no longer takes, quotes drafted from the price book, and supplier queries answered on the spot.
The crew asks the second brain first. About 6 owner hours a week back.
20 quotes a week start from a draft. About 7 owner hours a week back.
Job notes arrive written up, so nobody chases texts and photos.
Month by month
| Measure | Before | Month 1 | Month 2 | Month 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calls to the owner a week | 40 | 34 | 24 | 15 |
| Quotes from a draft a week | 0 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| Owner hours back a week | 0 | 1.5 | 7.3 | 12.9 |
| Office hours back a week | 0 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
| Team hours back a month | 0 | 15 | 49 | 82 |
| Value a month | $0 | $1,260 | $4,760 | $8,140 |
A year of time at the month 3 rate. That's about 980 hours, most of them the owner's.