Pricing Calichi case study FAQ Start with an Audit
Custom AI deployment for AEC firms, Contractors, Developers, Lenders

Them — AI‑curious.
You — AI‑native.

Engineering report — 2 hours, not 16–24
Proposal out the door — 40 minutes, not half a day
Plan QC + spec review — 5 minutes, not 4–6 hours

Your engineers, project managers, and coordinators get back 10–15 hours a week. Firma AI deploys the system that makes this your firm’s baseline — live in 2–3 weeks, built on 600+ hours of real-world development, running in production today.

“Your competitors are learning how to prompt. You’re learning how to implement. That’s not the same race.”Firma AI

Prompting is typing a question and pasting the answer into Word. Implementing is building a system where your project manager emails a request at 8 AM and the finished deliverable is in the project folder before lunch — formatted to your standards, QC cleared, ready for review. One is a productivity trick anyone picks up in an afternoon. The other takes months to build and runs while your team is asleep. A handful of firms in every market are building it right now. The rest are watching.

Type 1 firm
  • Agent sprawl. No spine.
  • Treats AI like a search bar.
  • Ships slow. Learns nothing.
  • Gets replaced.
Type 2 firm
  • Multi-agent stack.
  • Treats AI like a workforce.
  • Ships 100x. Compounds.
  • Is the replacement.

Firma AI builds Type 2 firms.

What moves to the AI
  • Repetitive calculations and reports
  • Template formatting and assembly
  • Compliance checklists and QC runs
  • Records research and data gathering
  • Production, administration, busy work
What your team keeps
  • Judgment and decisions
  • Design creativity and problem framing
  • Quality review and expert refinement
  • Client relationships and strategy
  • The work that actually needs them

AI doesn’t replace your people — it clears the path for them. Production and administration move to the system. Creativity, quality, and judgment stay with your team. That’s the shift.

Not sure where to start?

Start with an AI Readiness Audit — $2,000 fixed fee.

One week. We map your workflows, identify 5–7 highest-value opportunities, and hand you a written report with hours saved and P&L impact. Credited toward deployment if you proceed.

Request an audit →

Discovery first. Always.

We don’t show up with a fixed product. We show up with a process for finding what your firm actually needs — then we build it.

01

Discovery

We go deep into your firm’s workflows. What takes the most time? What gets done the same way every time? Where do good people spend hours on work that doesn’t need them? We map the conformance gap — the distance between how the work is documented and how it actually gets done — before writing a line of code.

What we’re looking for

Repetitive processes. High-volume low-variance tasks. Knowledge that lives in one person’s head. Anything done the same way more than twice a month.

02

AI Identity + Architecture

Your firm gets its own AI — named, branded, and calibrated to your team and voice. We design the architecture: which agents to build, how they connect, how work flows through the system, how outputs get delivered, and how cost gets controlled.

What gets defined

Your AI’s name and personality. The agent roster and build sequence. Email intake setup. Storage and file delivery path. Model routing. QC gate criteria. Firm config: offices, team, licenses, jurisdictions, standards.

03

Build

We build the agents, the orchestrator, the backend, and all the integrations. Each agent is calibrated to your templates, your output formats, your jurisdictions, your standards. Nothing is generic.

What gets built

Custom agents for your specific workflows. The orchestrator that routes work. Email intake. File management. The QC gate. Skills layer. Firm memory. The supervisor that keeps everything running.

04

Deploy

The system goes live on your infrastructure — your server, your storage, your email. Your data never leaves your environment. We handle the installation, configuration, and first live jobs end-to-end until the system is running clean.

Your infrastructure

Deployed on your VM or local server. Connected to your existing storage (Dropbox, SharePoint, network drive). Wired to your email. Firma AI has no persistent access to your data after deployment.

05

Train

We train your team to work with AI as a colleague — how to hand off work, how to review and trust outputs, how to prompt well, and how to recognize when to escalate to a human. The goal is fluency, not just access.

What training covers

How to write a good request. How to attach project files. How to review AI output before stamping. When to trust the system and when to push back. How AI decision-making works so your team can catch errors.

06

Evolve

We stay as your Head of AI. Every month: new agents, refined capabilities, architecture improvements, and direct advisory for your leadership. The model market shifts every quarter — the firms that stay AI-native have someone actively developing their AI function.

What monthly includes

New agent development. Prompt and output refinement. Model routing updates. Cost review. Architecture changes. Team training refreshes. Direct access for AI strategy questions from leadership.

Start with an audit →

Built inside a live engineering firm. Ready to deploy inside yours.

Firma AI’s architecture was built and proven inside Calichi Design Group — a four-office civil engineering firm operating in California, Oregon, and Hawaii. Six months. 600+ hours. 15+ specialist agents handling fire flow reports, proposals, contract review, plan QC, utility research, and more — in production today, on real projects with PE-stamped deliverables.

Read the full case study →
10–15 hrs
Freed per engineer per week
Measured across Calichi’s 15 production agents. At a $150/hr billing rate, that’s $1,500–2,250 in freed billable capacity per engineer per week.

It’s different every time. That’s the point.

Your firm’s bottlenecks aren’t the same as Calichi’s. We don’t deploy a template. We deploy what your discovery surfaces. These are the categories we’ve worked in — your agents come from the discovery, not a menu.

Technical deliverables

Engineering calculations, reports, and analysis that follow a repeatable pattern.

  • Hydraulic analysis and fire flow reports
  • Stormwater compliance packages
  • Hydrology and drainage calculations
  • Plan QC, coordination, and spec review
  • Utility and infrastructure research
  • Feasibility and developer reports

Business operations

The work that keeps the firm running.

  • Proposals, letter agreements, scope/fee
  • Contract review and risk flagging
  • Job cost estimates and bid packages
  • Website and marketing copy
  • Internal documentation and SOPs
  • RFI and submittal responses

Permit expediters

Research, correspondence, and tracking — AI’s sweet spot.

  • Permit requirements research by jurisdiction
  • Plan check comment parser + response drafter
  • Permit application packager
  • Agency correspondence drafts
  • Live permit status tracker
  • Conditions of approval tracker

Developers & lenders

Anyone making a go/no-go decision on land or property pays $10–15k and waits weeks for what AI produces in hours.

  • Site feasibility report
  • Pro forma builder with confidence ratings
  • Entitlement research
  • Environmental constraints summary
  • Due diligence package
  • Permit timeline estimate

Contractors & CMs

Every project carries massive admin burden — AI takes that load.

  • RFI drafter, log, and closeout
  • Submittal assembly and spec compliance
  • Buyout schedule and long-lead alerts
  • Lien waiver tracking by pay app
  • Bid packages and quantity takeoff
  • RFP responses and pre-qual packages

Discipline calculations

Architectural, MEP, structural — code-bound, repetitive, perfect for AI.

  • HVAC load calcs and Title 24
  • Electrical load calcs and panel schedules
  • Structural seismic and wind parameters
  • Plumbing fixture units
  • ADA / accessibility review
  • Energy compliance narratives

Your discovery will surface different categories. An electrical contractor has different bottlenecks than a structural engineer. The process is the same. What gets built is yours. See pricing →

One day per month, on-site with your team
We sit with your staff. We find what’s slowing them down, what’s repetitive, what’s frustrating. That session drives the build agenda for the month — not a roadmap decided in a kickoff and never revisited.
Top 2–3 pain points deployed each month
Every on-site session produces a prioritized list. We deploy the top two or three before the next visit. Your AI system solves real problems your team identified — not problems we assumed they had.
Continuous backend refinement
The Council, token routing, the supervisor, firm memory — these improve every month. Your system benefits from every improvement we make across the entire platform.
Internal team training — so they can build further
The goal is a team that understands the system well enough to extend it. The deeper they go, the faster you pull ahead.

We don’t deploy and disappear.

Getting there first is only half of it. Staying ahead is the other half. Your competitors will eventually close the gap — unless your system keeps getting better every month while they’re still standing it up.

The firms that win the AI race don’t just deploy once. They build continuously — new agents, refined capabilities, expanding coverage. We stay as your AI development partner so the gap you open at launch compounds into an advantage your competitors can’t close.

See pricing →

We’re looking for people who know the work.

AI for AEC has to be built by people who understand AEC. You don’t need to know how to code. You need to know how the work gets done — we’ll teach you the rest.

Every new client engagement is a new deployment, a new set of custom agents, a new set of problems to solve. We need sharp people from the industry — engineers, PMs, estimators, permit expediters — who are curious about what AI can do and ready to learn how to build it.

Apply to join the team →

No formal job postings. Send us a note about your background and why you’re interested. We’ll talk.

AI Implementation Specialist

Work directly with AEC clients to deploy AI inside their firms. You’ll run discovery sessions, configure agents, train staff, and manage ongoing engagements. Background in engineering, construction management, or a related AEC field preferred.

AEC Domain Expert

Your job is making sure the AI knows the work as well as you do. You’ll build agent prompts, test outputs, and write the domain knowledge that turns a general-purpose model into a specialist.