How Gray Construction Used AI-Powered Pre-Task Planning to Improve Jobsite Safety

For most construction crews, pre-task planning happens in the field but documenting it can still pull attention away from the work. Gray Construction found a better way. Partnering with HammerTech to pilot HammerTech Intelligence, they streamlined safety planning, making it faster and easier to capture in the field. ABC Alabama recognized this with a Safe Day Award for Innovation in Safety. For Gray, the real measure was simpler: getting everyone home safely. 

THE PROBLEM -

Manual Safety Processes That Couldn't Scale

Gray Construction operates large industrial and manufacturing projects where getting safety documentation right is a prerequisite to keeping people safe. But the processes holding that documentation together were built for a smaller, slower world.

Before adopting HammerTech as their construction safety software platform, Gray’s safety workflows ran on a combination of manual steps and a construction management system that wasn’t designed with safety depth in mind.  Orientations were conducted in person. Certifications were collected on site. Verifying that a worker was qualified to operate a specific piece of equipment meant making multiple phone calls before work could begin. 

Pre-task planning carried its own burden. Documenting a PTP could take 20 minutes or more, requiring supervisors to manually capture tasks, hazards, and controls from the meeting discussion. It was time spent focused on paperwork instead of facilitating the conversation with the crew.

When Gray made the move to HammerTech, it wasn’t just about replacing a legacy system. It was about getting a construction safety platform flexible enough to match how Gray’s teams actually operate, with support for custom audits, site-specific orientations, and inspection workflows their previous tools just couldn't handle. 

THE SOLUTION -

Real-Time Jobsite Safety Management, From Onboarding to the Field

The shift started before anyone sets foot on a Gray jobsite.

With HammerTech, orientation videos, certification requirements, and equipment qualifications are configured in the platform in advance. Workers complete onboarding on their own time. By the time a crew arrives on site, the compliance picture is already confirmed, and any concerning gaps are surfaced before work begins, not during it.

In the field, Wysong and his team carry tablets loaded with audit checklists, inspection criteria, and site-specific requirements, all built directly into the platform. Information that used to live in a trailer on a piece of paper is now in the hands of the people who need it, when they need it most.

WHY HAMMERTECH -

AI-Powered Pre-Task Planning: Where the Real Breakthrough Happened

The most transformative capability Gray has deployed is HammerTech Intelligence. It solves a problem that safety teams rarely talk about openly: the gap between what gets documented in a pre-task plan (PTP), versus what actually gets said to the crew.

Here’s how it works.

The supervisor or project lead preparing the PTP hits record. They walk through the tasks, hazards, and mitigation controls out loud, standing at the work location in front of the people doing the work. Crew members ask questions and give feedback in real time.

From there, HammerTech Intelligence captures all of it – including crew responses – and builds the PTP from the actual conversation as it happens. What used to take 20 or more minutes in an office is now streamlined, allowing the crew to focus on their work for the day.

For the first time, the documentation reflects what was actually discussed, not what a supervisor reconstructed afterward. 

THE RESULTS -

Award-Winning Safety Innovation and a Better Reality for Every Crew

Gray Construction’s deployment of HammerTech Intelligence earned the company ABC Alabama’s Safe Day Award in the Innovation in Safety category. The award recognizes organizations advancing safety practices beyond their own jobsites and across the industry.

Gray’s submission centered on the HammerTech Intelligence pilot, specifically on how they partnered with HammerTech to prove out AI-powered pre-task planning in real industrial environments, and what it changed on the ground.

However, the award reflects something more significant than a pilot program.

It marks a shift in how construction safety software can function, not as a documentation tool that follows the work, but as an active participant in the safety conversation itself. 

Across Gray’s manufacturing projects, those changes compound.

Faster pre-task planning. More accurate documentation. Crew members who are part of building the plan, not just signing off on one someone else wrote. Safety conversations happening where they should have always happened: at the work location, with the people doing the work.