AI readiness for builders and contractors

A homeowner with three quotes and one evening to compare them.

C3E3D2E1D1

The moment

Ruth, who runs a six-person building firm

A homeowner planning a loft conversion asks an assistant to compare the local firms that do this work and say which are accredited and insured.

What the agent needs: What work do you actually do, are you certified, and what does a project like this cost.

What actually happens: The portfolio is a lightbox gallery with no captions, the accreditations are logo images with no alt text, and the project descriptions are in a downloadable PDF brochure. The assistant summarises two competitors and skips the firm entirely.

Which dimensions decide it, and why

AIScan grades five dimensions. These are the ones that carry the outcome for this kind of business.

Content

Accreditations, insurance and project types are exactly the evidence an assistant is asked to weigh, and on builder sites they are almost always images. Text plus LocalBusiness markup turns a gallery into an answer.

Discoverability

Case-study pages are the strongest asset a builder has and the most likely to be orphaned — reachable only from a JavaScript filter, absent from the sitemap.

Capabilities

A working 404 and a quote form that exists as a real URL matter more than they sound: agents hand back links, and a link that dead-ends is a lost enquiry.

The checks that matter here

Fix guides: /docs/checks/content · /docs/checks/discoverability · /docs/platforms/wordpress

Most sites like this run on WordPress — read the WordPress playbook for where each fix lives.

Questions we get asked

Why would an AI assistant care about my accreditations?

Because the question it is asked is usually 'who is trustworthy for this job'. Certifications are the cheapest trust signal to publish and the most commonly locked inside a logo image.

My portfolio is all photographs. Is that a problem?

The photographs are fine; the missing captions are the problem. Each project needs a sentence of text: what it was, where, how long, what was involved.

Should I publish prices?

Publish ranges and a basis — per square metre, day rate, typical project band. It lets you appear in comparisons rather than being skipped for having no number.

Is a brochure PDF good enough?

No. Treat the PDF as a download, not the source of truth. Everything in it should exist as an HTML page too.

Do reviews help here?

Yes, if they are on the page as text with Review markup rather than an embedded third-party widget that renders only in a browser.

Where do I start?

Give six real projects a text description each, add your accreditations as text, then scan the site free at aiscan.site to see what an agent can actually read.

Scan your site and see where you actually stand

Free, no account, about twenty seconds. The report names every failing check by ID, shows the evidence we found, and gives the fix for your platform — plus a hand-off prompt you can paste straight into Claude Code or Cursor.

Run a free scan npx aiscan-cli yoursite.com

Prefer to read first? Browse every check we run or the guide library.

Next in Home & trade servicesAI readiness for cleaning and facilities companies

Also covers: builder, building firm, general contractor, loft conversion, extension builder, renovation company, kitchen fitter, bathroom fitter, carpenter, joiner, bricklayer, plasterer, groundworks, scaffolding, civil contractor, property maintenance.