Benesch’s AI Evolution: Smarter Search, Faster Content and Greater Efficiency

About Benesch

Benesch is a premier, national engineering firm with expertise in transportation infrastructure and community development. Since its founding in 1946, Benesch has been driven by one goal—improving communities large and small. Comprised of multidisciplinary experts with diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and skill sets, the Benesch team is dedicated to exploring new solutions, putting cutting-edge technology to the test, and reimagining what is possible for clients.

Summary

Facing information silos across the breadth of a large organization, Benesch implemented Joist AI to enable marketing content search and discovery while streamlining their proposal management process through generative AI technologies. The platform is now being used by the company’s 34-person marketing team and nearly 400 technical staff, increasing collaboration and maximizing efficiency for everyone who touches pursuit marketing. By using Joist AI, Benesch has been able to triple productivity in certain use cases. 

The Challenge

Navigating a Complex Structure with Information Silos

With more than 1,000 employees across 22 states, Benesch possesses extensive infrastructure expertise. Every day, teams across the country collaborate on project pursuits that span multiple disciplines and markets. 

While Benesch’s marketing team was satisfied with the structure of their proposal process and the quality of their outputs, accessing specialized knowledge across the company’s divisions remained challenging. 

“Our proposal process is well-structured, but we didn't always have the right institutional knowledge at our fingertips," notes Chad Bay, Marketing Communications Manager at Benesch. “For example, say there’s someone in the North region who has developed multiple proposals about Benesch’s emergency response capabilities; if someone on the West Region team needs that information, they have to dig through old files or interrupt that person’s work to find it.”

Bay recognized the potential of modern AI-powered proposal management tools to streamline content discovery and generation. 

“We really wanted a tool that could do two distinct things. We wanted an easy, user-friendly way to search for quality content from our own proposal archives, and we wanted the latest generative text capabilities to help us draft new content faster.” 

The Solution

A Tailored AI for Engineering

While evaluating various tools, Benesch struggled to find an AI solution aligned with their specific needs. "Many platforms we reviewed were either not AEC-specific or their AI capabilities weren't developed enough," Bay recalls.

The breakthrough came when Bay attended a Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) luncheon where Rohan Jawali, Joist AI's Co-founder and CEO, was presenting. "I immediately saw the potential. Unlike other tools, Joist AI wasn't just a glorified file directory—it actually understood our industry and could generate content from our existing proposals."

After implementation, Joist AI's search capabilities perfectly addressed Benesch's primary challenge of locating the right content quickly:

“We now have almost 1,000 proposals in Joist AI. I can search for any term, and within seconds, I have every relevant reference broken down by documents, people, and projects. It’s a huge time saver,” Bay relates. 

Beyond search, Benesch discovered growing use cases such as streamlining proposal kickoff meetings, compliance checking deliverables, and supporting technical content creation for proposal text.

“I am so impressed by how well the tool is able to write about our work technically. That kind of content, for example finessing a case study, takes a lot of time. We can now just go back and forth with Joist AI to produce a solid draft in a fraction of the time.”

The Result

Enhancing Proposal Development, Enabling Strategic Initiatives

In achieving the goals of content searchability and generation, Benesch unlocked process improvements that have had a demonstrable impact on Benesch’s marketing function.

• Expedited Deliverable Production - deliverables are accelerated in terms of both speed and quality. “Joist AI is helping our teams deliver higher quality work much faster. Our first drafts can be checked for compliance against the requirements of the RFP, and we have access to a massive library of content to help us flesh out marketing messages and technical content right at go. That's huge. It's a game changer.”
• Expanding Use Cases - utility has extended beyond RFP review and proposal AI assistance in proposal generation. “Our marketing teams are using Joist for more than just proposals—we draft team bios, marketing collateral, and case studies for a variety of uses. It’s saving us time and elevating our content across the board.”
• Excitement and Efficiency -  benefits have extended to the company’s technical staff as well. “One engineer, who’d never used AI before, was pulled into a proposal last minute to write a technical approach. He called me out of the blue to say he finished in two hours what would typically take him 6 to 8. It turned what could have been a chore into an exploration of a new tool. He was excited.” 

Beyond the boundaries of content development, Joist AI is also providing invaluable insights regarding client RFPs as part of the initial project pursuit process. From the kick-off meeting through to first and final proposal drafts, Benesch’s marketing and technical team are leveraging the power of Joist AI to strengthen their messaging and increase efficiencies in production. 

“Joist AI is helping us work faster and ensure our proposals reflect the best of what we do. It’s quickly becoming a key part of our proposal development strategy.” - Chad Bay