Conduit

For electrical contractors

Conduit puts AI where your shop is buried — and keeps a licensed human on the signature.

Bids, permits, and the phone pull your master off the tools, and that licensed hour is the most expensive in the company. Conduit maps how your shop actually runs, picks the one or two workflows that pay back fastest, and builds them with your team. AI drafts; a licensed human signs. Done with you, from $499/mo.

8 min read

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The shift

The trade is short-handed and getting shorter — NECA estimates roughly 7,000 electricians enter each year while about 10,000 retire, with around 30% of union electricians near retirement. Scarce licensed labor makes every non-billable hour your master spends counting symbols or stuck in phone tag more expensive than last year. AI's job here isn't to replace that judgment — it's to hand the busywork back so the licensed hour goes to billable work.

Your reality

You're one of about 261,958 US electrician businesses (IBISWorld, 2026), most of them owner-operators or a few licensed electricians plus an apprentice and one office person. Net margins are thin — a median around 5–6%, top-quartile firms at 8–12%, with competitive-bid commercial as low as 5–10% net. At those margins, a junction box missed on takeoff or a service call that went to voicemail isn't an annoyance — it's the quarter.

23%

of calls missed

58%

of calls come after hours

$350+

per missed service call

$50K

variance on a $158K job when AI sends the number alone

Built to fit the tools your shop already runs

ServiceTitanHousecall ProQuickBooksMcCormick EstimatingAccubidJobber

Sound familiar?

Counting symbols at 10 p.m. — the master builds estimates in spreadsheets on nights and weekends, one missed junction box away from tanking the margin.
The call you missed went to whoever answered first. Shops miss about 23% of calls, roughly 58% come after hours, and 85% of callers who hit voicemail never leave a message — each missed service call is worth $350+, about $42,000 a year.
More bids to win the same work. Owners chase the lowest price, sales cycles stretch, and unlicensed side-job labor undercuts you — so you produce more bids just to hold volume, straight through the estimating bottleneck.
Permits and paperwork steal billable hours. Cities want thicker plan sets and utilities pile on meter-spot, service, and interconnection coordination, pushing finish dates back.
You wait about 83 days to get paid. Around 80% of contractors deal with late payments, DSO runs 60–90 days, and 5–10% retainage is held back on work you've already finished.

Where AI fits

AI drafts the bid. Your master signs it.

Hand AI the walk-through notes, panel photos, and your own price book, and get a structured estimate plus an on-voice proposal back in minutes instead of an evening. A revision is one prompt, not a full redo.

AI reads job notes and photos against your labor rates and price book, drafts line items and a cover proposal, and flags its assumptions for review.

Evenings back
Revisions in minutes, not redos
Bid more without adding office headcount

Watch for: Never let AI send a number — pure-AI estimating produced a documented $50K variance on a $158K job. · Your licensed estimator reviews every quantity and NEC or permit assumption. · The final price is signed by a human before it leaves.

Best for: Shops where the owner does takeoff on nights and weekends and bids go out a day too late.

Stop losing the job to whoever answered first.

An AI front desk answers in seconds, sorts emergency from routine and residential from commercial, captures the address, and books or escalates — so the after-hours call that used to hit voicemail turns into a job on the board.

AI greets the caller, triages, captures details, and drops a confirmed booking into your FSM for the dispatcher; true emergencies route to an on-call human.

Capture calls you miss today
Cover the 58% that come after hours
Be the first to respond

Watch for: Any safety call — burning smell, arc flash, sparks — goes straight to a human in seconds, never a bot. · Bookings drop into the FSM for a dispatcher to confirm, not straight onto the truck. · The human path stays open by design.

Best for: Shops with no after-hours coverage where the owner's cell is the answering service.

Follow up before the quote goes cold.

AI sends a quick follow-up text on every missed call, nudges unbooked estimates, and re-engages last year's service customer who's due for a panel upgrade, generator, or EV charger.

AI watches for missed calls and stale quotes, sends an on-voice follow-up, and surfaces past customers for seasonal and upgrade outreach.

Fewer quotes going cold
Old customers re-booked
Owner stops being the only follow-up

Watch for: The owner sets the cadence and approves any discount, price, or commitment before it goes out. · Messages stay on-voice and respect opt-outs. · Outreach is batched for approval, never fired blind.

Best for: Shops sitting on a customer list nobody has time to call back.

Pre-fill the paperwork, surface only the exceptions.

An AI workflow pre-fills permit applications from the job record, flags the documents each jurisdiction wants, schedules inspection windows, and tracks status — handing back the hours the master spends assembling plan sets and chasing inspectors.

AI builds the permit packet from the job file, checks it against jurisdiction requirements, books the inspection window, and tracks status, raising only exceptions.

Plan-set assembly off the master's plate
Fewer stalled permits
Finish dates that hold

Watch for: The licensed party reviews and submits every permit — AI never files unsupervised. · Code and amendments vary by city and county, so requirements are checked per jurisdiction. · Only exceptions reach a human, but a human owns the submission.

Best for: Shops doing solar, EV, or commercial work where each jurisdiction wants a different, thicker packet.

Turn approved field notes into an invoice — and chase what's owed.

AI turns approved field notes and materials into a draft invoice, triggers progress-billing and retainage reminders, and flags aging AR so the owner sees the receivables slipping past 83 days.

AI drafts the invoice from field notes and materials, schedules billing and retainage reminders, and surfaces aging AR for review.

Field notes off the re-keying pile
Receivables that get chased
Retainage that isn't forgotten

Watch for: The office manager approves every invoice before it sends. · Any collections message gets a human sign-off first. · Money never moves on AI's say-so.

Best for: Construction subs carrying long DSO and retainage with nobody assigned to collections.

Draft the answers to the questions you get all day.

Do you do panel upgrades? EV chargers? Are you licensed and insured? What's your service area? AI drafts replies grounded in your own service menu, pricing rules, and warranty terms — with a citation to the source doc — so the office isn't retyping the same answers.

AI drafts the reply from your service docs and pricing rules, cites the source, and queues it for approval.

Repeat questions answered in seconds
Consistent, on-record answers
Office freed for booked work

Watch for: Anything implying a code or safety judgment escalates to a licensed electrician. · Replies cite the source doc so the office can check them. · A human approves before any answer goes out.

Best for: Shops drowning the office manager in the same five questions every day.

Safe to start vs. proceed with guardrails

Safe to start now

After-hours call capture that books routine work and escalates emergencies to a human.
Quick follow-up texts on missed calls and stale quotes, with the owner setting the cadence.
Draft estimates from your price book that the licensed estimator reviews before sending.
Draft front-desk replies to repeat questions, grounded in your service menu and cited.
Past-customer re-engagement for seasonal and upgrade work, batched for owner approval.
Supplier-invoice and bid-doc intake into your accounting system, reviewed by the bookkeeper.

Proceed with guardrails

The final bid number — a licensed estimator signs every quantity, NEC assumption, and price; never AI autonomy on the number that decides profit or loss.
NEC and local-code interpretation — jurisdictions adopt and amend the code and continuing education is mandatory, so ground AI in your standards and keep a licensed human as the final word.
Permit filing — AI pre-fills; the licensed qualifying party reviews and submits, because requirements vary city to city.
Anything implying a safety or qualified-person judgment — LOTO, arc-flash, OSHA recordkeeping — is drafted, never decided, by AI.
Customer data and home-interior photos — you're legally on the hook for protecting customer information even when a vendor hosts it, so every workflow is scoped for data handling before go-live.
Money movement — invoices and collections messages get a human approval before they send.

Why do it with us

Hire a consultant	High hourly	Long discovery, then a deck	They leave
Hire an engineer	Fixed salary plus benefits	Still needs your trade context	No one governs the work
DIY nights and weekends	No cash outlay	Burnout the trade already knows	No evening left to wire up four tools
systemlevel.ai	From $499/mo	One senior expert maps the shop	A licensed human on every code or money call

An AI voice agent reportedly lifted one electrician's booking rate from 10% to over 70%, unlocking $170K in new revenue and capacity for four hires (vendor-reported, directional).
AI-assisted takeoff is reported to cut estimating time around 40%; even moving off spreadsheets to dedicated software yields 40–60% less bid-prep time and up to 30% fewer errors (vendor-reported, directional).
Shops report saving 15–20 hours a week on scheduling and dispatch and completing about 25% more jobs via optimized routing (vendor-reported, directional).
The honest counter-evidence we lead with: independent analysis found pure-AI estimating produced a $50K variance on a $158K project and called relying entirely on AI for bids an unacceptable risk — which is exactly why we keep a licensed human on the number.

Questions you’re probably asking

AI will blow a bid and I'll eat the loss.: Earned fear — there's a documented $50K variance on a $158K job behind it. So Conduit never lets AI send a number. AI does the grunt takeoff and drafts the proposal; your licensed estimator reviews every quantity, NEC and permit assumption, and the final price before it leaves. You bid more jobs without handing a machine your margin.
I don't have time to learn another tool — I'm already buried.: Conduit is done with you, not handed to you. We map how your shop already runs, pick one or two workflows — usually the phone and estimating — build them with your team, and stay accountable. You approve everything; you administer nothing.
My customers' info — and photos of the inside of their homes — can't leak.: You're legally on the hook for protecting that data even when a vendor hosts it. So we scope every workflow with security, cost, and risk up front, recommend the vendor and model with the right data handling, and run it through approval before it touches a customer. The duty of care stays yours — we make sure the tooling honors it.
AI can't read the NEC or know my city's amendments.: Correct. So we ground it in your price book, your standards, and your jurisdiction's requirements, and keep a licensed human as the final word on anything code-related. AI handles the repetitive 80%; your master owns the judgment.
I tried an answering service and it booked junk.: Generic bots fail because nobody tuned them to your trade. We configure qualification — emergency vs. routine, your service area, your job types — route real emergencies to a human in seconds, and report booking rate in plain numbers. Then we keep improving it.
Where would I even start?: Conduit ranks candidate workflows by value and risk and starts with the one that pays back fastest — for most shops that's the after-hours phone or the estimating bottleneck. One workflow, measured, then the next. From $499/mo, pause or cancel anytime.

Pricing

Operator — $499/mo

Monthly strategy, your first workflows mapped and scoped, vendor and model recommendations, a stack assessment, and email support. Start where the payback is fastest, measured in plain numbers.

Best for: Shops that know the phone or the estimating bottleneck is the problem and want a plan.

Partner — $999/mo

Everything in Operator, plus bi-weekly working sessions, implementation guidance through deployment, architecture and integration review across your estimating tool, FSM, QuickBooks, and permit portal, team training and prompt libraries, and a direct line to unblock your people.

Best for: Shops ready to ship and keep improving, with tools that don't talk to each other today.