AI for CDUS: teaching a development team to use generative AI
A hands-on session for Skanska's Commercial Development team on why AI matters for real estate, and how to use it on everyday work like zoning research, offering memorandums, comps, and Excel.
In March 2024, about a year after I started using ChatGPT, I put together an internal session for Skanska’s U.S. Commercial Development team (CDUS). The goal wasn’t to talk about AI in the abstract. It was to show a team of developers and analysts exactly how AI could help with the work already on their desks.
Why AI matters
I opened with the big picture:
- Goldman Sachs estimated generative AI could raise global GDP by 7% (about $7 trillion) by lifting productivity growth 1.5 percentage points over 10 years.
- PwC put AI’s potential contribution to the world economy at $15.7 trillion by 2030, with the biggest gains coming from labor productivity.
- For real estate specifically, AI touches every product type: labs (AI drug discovery), office (AI and software companies), and industrial and flex (robotics, semiconductors, autonomous vehicles). AI companies were already a growing source of leasing demand.
What AI is, and which tools to use
A plain-English explanation of what these tools are, examples from the industry, and a practical comparison of the AI tools available to the team: what each did well, and where each fell short.
Live examples from the team’s own work
Most of the session was demos, each built around a real task the team does:
| Task | What AI did |
|---|---|
| Zoning research | Looked up the zoning for a specific address and explained what it means and where to verify it |
| Offering memorandums | Pulled the key facts out of long OMs |
| Comps | Organized and compared comparable properties |
| Tenant tracking reports | Ranked and summarized tenants from a long market report |
| Company guidelines | Answered policy questions straight from a guidelines document |
| Sales pitches | Drafted pitch language |
| Power BI and Excel | Wrote formulas and helped with report logic |
Why I include it
This session is where my two careers met: the teacher and the data person. Meeting people where they are, with examples from their own work, is still how I teach AI today.