SMACNA, the national association for sheet metal and HVAC contractors, has featured OpenSpace on its platform, spotlighting the company’s Spatial AI approach to jobsite documentation. The article highlights how Visual Intelligence, powered by OpenSpace’s Spatial AI Engine, gives contractors a timestamped visual record of site conditions that supports faster dispute resolution and early detection of coordination issues. According to insurance provider Shepherd, contractors using Visual Intelligence are reducing insurance claims by 41%.
Sheet metal and HVAC contractors work in some of the most demanding coordination environments in construction. Their scope intersects with structural, electrical, and plumbing work on nearly every floor and every phase, and when something goes wrong, the consequences are expensive. Visual Intelligence from OpenSpace addresses this by giving teams something most AI tools cannot: a direct connection to what is actually happening on the job site. Rather than analyzing text or documents, the OpenSpace Spatial AI Engine maps site conditions in real space and time, creating a timestamped visual record aligned to the project plans that any team member can access. That record is the foundation for resolving disputes quickly, catching coordination issues before they become rework, and documenting progress in a way that is verifiable rather than anecdotal.
The 41% reduction in insurance claims, documented by insurance provider Shepherd, is one of the most concrete signals yet that spatial documentation delivers measurable financial value. For HVAC and sheet metal contractors managing tight margins and complex coordination across multiple trades, that kind of outcome matters. But the deeper point the article makes is about foundations: the contractors who are building a consistent, verifiable visual record of their projects now are the ones who will be best positioned as AI tools become more capable of analyzing that data automatically. OpenSpace is designed to make that capture effortless, so teams build the habit without adding work to the field.
