How to Do AI at Your Engineering Company

Patrick Law
Jul 1
2 min read

Some engineering companies say they want to “use AI.” But what they’re really facing is this.

Where do we even start?

Forget the buzzwords. We've break it down into a clear, step-by-step method any engineering company can follow. Here’s how to actually do AI — without hiring a full dev team or waiting six months.

Step 1: Write Down Every Step of the Process

Pick a task. Write every step involved — from start to finish.

Whether it's equipment sizing, pulling data from PDFs, or building reports — clarity begins with full process mapping. Don't skip the boring steps. The small ones often hide the most time loss.

Step 2: Find the Most Painful Step

Look at your list and ask: Which step takes the most time, creates bottlenecks, or gets copied and pasted manually?

That’s your first automation target. Not the whole workflow — just one painful point.

Step 3: Engineer a Prompt That Solves It

Open ChatGPT.Craft a prompt that handles the painful step.

Be specific. Give it real-world context:

Input formats
Data quirks
What a “good” output looks like

Test, refine, iterate. This one prompt will become the foundation for your AI system.

Step 4: Build a Custom GPT and Connect with an AI Agent

Once the prompt works. Create a Custom GPT that runs the prompt every time, reliably and consistently. Now, anyone on your team can access that same functionality with one click.

And once you’ve built a few Custom GPTs for specific steps, use Agent AI to connect them. Think of it like a conductor: it decides which GPT to run, in what order, using your input as the trigger. This creates a chain of logic that mirrors your workflow — but runs in seconds.

You don’t need to do all the steps in order for this to be useful.

One well-written prompt might save 3 hours per engineer per week. You don’t need a full AI system to see impact. Each step is a win on its own.

Most AI projects fail because they start with tools. Start small, start specific — and build from there.

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