John Holland joins Microsoft 365 Copilot early access program

A 2023 trial of ChatGPT convinced construction heavyweight John Holland Group that it could find a place in its business for AI and led to it signing on to trial Microsoft’s Copilot.

John Holland said its early AI experiences had saved uses between 30 and 60 minutes a day, or as much as 10 hours per month.

The private version of ChatGPT build in conjunction with Microsoft now has 200 unique daily users, transacting more than 1000 queries daily, mostly to accelerate writing and summarising documents.

Its popularity led the company to join the Copilot for Microsoft 365 early access program in September 2023, with 300 licences.

The Copilot deployment began with John Holland’s IT team, but quickly spread to its building, infrastructure, rail and transport, and major projects teams.

In a blog post, Microsoft said 260 of the Copilot licences at John Holland have been deployed, with some more for John Holland’s executives and senior leaders.

The rollout has been accompanied by training, for example in “scenario discovery sessions”, John Holland’s general manager of applications and emerging technologies Gregory Koteras said.

Industry-specific use cases

While it’s early days, John Holland’s chief digital and information officer Bastian Uber said the company is exploring ways to use Copilot to help collaborate with engineering and design partners.

The company is working with GHD to explore how the AI can help make designs more environmentally friendly, by using less concrete or steel without compromising structural integrity,

“Even a three percent reduction across multiple assets could significantly lower their carbon footprint,” Uber said.

He added that as Copilot in Excel becomes more advanced, it could help in tender preparation by extracting information from spreadsheets in previous bids.

“If we can take time and cost out of that process, that will be a real game changer”, Uber said.