Dan Cumberland
Founder
Know Where Your Firm Stands With AI, and What to Do First
Most companies have plenty of AI activity and no clear picture of what it's returning. We work with you to understand how your team uses AI and build a plan you can take to your board, with proposed priorities, costs and expected benefits.
Free assessment · about 8 minutes · results on screen · email at the end
“Most leaders know AI matters but don’t know what to do first. Dan walked me through his maturity model and it does exactly that. It turns an overwhelming topic into a clear picture of where you are and the next right move. It gives the kind of clarity a team needs to make real progress.”
Jay Papasan
Co-author, The ONE Thing
Four Places Firms Stall With AI
You built this company on your expertise. Scattered AI experiments and operational drag are keeping your best people from the work that grows it.
AI Tool Sprawl
Your team signed up for six AI tools and none of them talk to each other. People experiment on personal accounts, the wins stay isolated to individuals, and nobody can say what any of it returns.
Leadership as Bottleneck
Every AI decision routes through the same two or three people, and they already have full-time jobs. Questions pile up, pilots stall, and the people who want to move wait for answers.
At a $10M company, every hour a leader spends sorting out AI tools is an hour not spent on strategy worth multiples more.
No AI Strategy
They buy licenses for everyone, sometimes training too, and six months later the team is still doing the same work the same way.
95% of companies see no measurable return from AI. The 5% who do tend to start with one workflow, redesign it with AI in it, and measure the result before buying more. That is the plan we build with you.1
Growing Pains
You have more work than your team has hours for. Hiring is slow and expensive, and your best people already spend big parts of their week on documentation and coordination that AI handles well.
AEC firms capture 20-30% more billable hours through workflow automation. Multiplied by your billing rates, that is a large number for most mid-market firms, and the calculator below sizes it for yours.2
All four trace back to the same gap: nobody can say where the company stands with AI, so nobody can say what to do first.
Your Best People, Back on the Work Only They Can Do
Calculate Your Numbers
What Waiting on AI
Costs Your Firm Each Year
Plug in your firm's numbers and see what the hours are worth.
Based on your firm's numbers, your team is spending an estimated
$1.2M/yr
on admin work AI can handle. That's
4,375 hours/year
your team could redirect to billable work.
"I completed a complex data report in two hours— work that used to swallow up two full days."
Daniel Hatke
Client
At your firm's numbers, reclaiming even half of that admin time adds up to $602K/year.
Among firms that optimize technology adoption, 77% report higher profit margins— a median 4 points higher. (Dodge Construction Network, 1,100+ respondents, 2025)
The calculator sizes the opportunity. The assessment offers a reported profile to discuss with your team, free, in about 8 minutes, with results on screen. Take it here.
Book Your AI Strategy CallFree. 30 minutes. Let's pressure-test your numbers together.
How every engagement starts
First, See Where You Stand
Pacemark gives you a reported profile to examine with your team.
“Pacemark was the first maturity model that showed my team where we actually stand, AND what to do next. Instantly clarifying.”
Lindsey Sailors
Head of TA Strategy & Operations, Dropbox
The count comes from published research on at least 401 named firms and organizations as of October 28, 2026. Some of that evidence is thin, and we have not yet validated the assessment method directly, so treat your result as a starting point for a conversation with your team.
In a full engagement, we bring together interviews and supporting evidence to assess the firm. We can use that evidence to propose a priority, compare it with the current approach, and agree on what the team would need to see before expanding the work. Evidence and limitations.
Free · 8 min
See where your firm stands with AI
Twenty-five questions give you a reported profile across six dimensions and an area to examine with your team, in about 8 minutes. To see your result, you provide contact and firm details at the end and sign up for follow-up emails. Each email includes an unsubscribe link.
Start the assessment →Free assessment
Find out where you are with AI
In about 8 minutes, you can see your reported profile across six dimensions and a proposed experiment. To see your result, you provide contact and firm details at the end and sign up for follow-up emails. Each email includes an unsubscribe link.
Take the assessment →Free · 8 min
Where does your firm stand with AI?
In about 8 minutes, you can see your reported profile and an area to discuss with your team, shown on screen. To see your result, you provide contact and firm details at the end and sign up for follow-up emails. Each email includes an unsubscribe link.
See your score →The Four Services, in the Order Most Firms Take Them
Pick the one that fits where you are right now.
AI Roadmapping
You don't know where to start, or you need leadership aligned before you spend. We interview your team, score where you stand, and hand you a prioritized plan: what to do first, who owns it, what it returns.
Explore Roadmapping
AI Workflows
You know the workflow that hurts— proposals, reporting, client communications. We map it, build the fix, and train your team on it. You keep everything we build.
Explore Workflows
AI Training
Your team has the tools and uses a tenth of them. Hands-on sessions built around work your team is doing now, so people leave having done the work themselves, with prompt patterns and review habits they can use the next morning.
Explore Training
AI Advisory
You want a thinking partner who's done this before— someone to pressure-test decisions, evaluate vendors, and keep momentum between milestones.
Explore Advisory
90-Day ROI Guarantee
If you don't regain at least 10 hours a month, we'll keep working with you free until you do.
Book a CallWhat Clients Say
"They talked with almost a third of the firm before recommending anything, then handed us a clear, prioritized plan: what to do first, what to do later."
Larry Rupp, PE
President & CEO, Keller Associates
Challenge:
250-person engineering firm, 12 offices, board asking for an AI strategy
Result:
Firm-wide assessment → prioritized 90-day roadmap
A plan the CEO presented to every shareholder-owner.
"Dan's AI infrastructure is changing everything for our agency— it's the foundation taking us from seven to eight figures."
Amanda Northcutt
Founder & CEO, Level Up Creators
Challenge:
Scaling from seven to eight figures without ballooning headcount.
Result:
AI infrastructure built as the foundation for that growth
"[They] gave us a prioritized plan and the guidelines to adopt it responsibly… helped us get buy-in on using AI throughout the firm."
Eric Roundy, PE, BCEE
Senior Wastewater Engineer & Board Treasurer, Keller Associates
Challenge:
Regulated engineering work where every deliverable carries a stamp
Result:
Responsible-adoption guidelines + firm-wide buy-in
AI does the work. A licensed engineer still reviews and approves it.
"It generated in one minute seven emails that I can pull the trigger on immediately."
Julie Boll
Leadership Coach
Challenge:
Authentic marketing stalled by voice mismatch.
Result:
AI drafted 7 on-brand emails in 60 seconds: 4+ hours saved per batch
About Dan
Featured in Inc., Entrepreneur, and Fast Company, Dan combines technical leadership with a background in psychology. He has built and sold multiple software companies, and he leads Dan Cumberland Labs with a documented method: Pacemark, the AI maturity model behind every engagement, built from published research on more than 400 named firms and organizations.
AI should make your people more effective, never less necessary. That is why we build the systems with your team, train the people who run them, and stay through adoption. Your team keeps everything we build.
Dan Cumberland
Founder
Three Steps to Results
1
See Where You Stand
Take the free 8-minute assessment, or book a call and we'll walk it together. Either way, we start from where your company is.
2
Get Your Roadmap
We interview your team, score the six dimensions, and hand you a prioritized plan: the proposed first move, who owns it, estimated costs and potential returns.
3
Build and Adopt
We build the systems with your team, train the people who'll run them, and stay through adoption. You keep everything we build.
Our clients typically see measurable ROI within 90 days. Early adopters in AEC report 20-30% more billable hours captured through workflow automation. (Monograph, 2024)
FAQs
What size company do you typically work with?
We work most with mid-market engineering and construction firms, roughly 100 to 500 people. Around that core the range is wide: we've done this work inside teams as small as 20 and organizations as large as $1.5 billion in revenue. The common thread is a leadership team that knows AI matters and wants a straight answer to "where do we start?"
What's the free assessment?
It's Pacemark, an evidence-informed practitioner framework, packaged as a 25-question self-assessment. It takes about 8 minutes and shows your reported profile across six dimensions and an area to examine with your team. To see your result, you provide contact and firm details at the end and sign up for follow-up emails. Each email includes an unsubscribe link, and no sales call is required. If you want help discussing a proposed experiment, the free 30-minute Signal Call is the next step.
How do you handle our client data and project files?
Data security is built into every engagement. We work within your existing Microsoft/SharePoint environment, never export sensitive client data, and can operate under NDA from day one. Your IT team gets full visibility into what tools we deploy and how data flows.
What if our team resists using AI?
That's normal, and it's usually fear of being replaced or just the pain of change. We start with quick wins on the work people didn't love to begin with: status reports, meeting follow-ups, first drafts of routine documents. When AI takes the tedious work and people keep the judgment calls, the resistance tends to resolve itself. When people have been trained on the tools and know which decisions stay with them, they do better work than people who are worried about being replaced.
Do you have experience with engineering and construction firms?
Yes, and it's where we do our deepest work. We're ACEC members, and our flagship engagement was a 250-person civil engineering firm across 12 offices. We know what an RFI is, what RFP season feels like, and why a licensed engineer still stamps every deliverable. If that's your world, start at our engineering & construction page.
Free Guide: The Data-Centric AI Blueprint
Train AI on Your Firm's Expertise
The system our clients use to train AI on their firm's processes and standards. Proposals, reports, and documentation your team can produce in minutes, without starting from scratch every time.
Download GuideThe guide is free. You do have to opt in with your email, and you'll also get Dan's weekly AI newsletter: free tools, learnings, and best practices. One click to unsubscribe.
Book a Strategy Call
Book a free 30-minute call. We'll look at where your company stands, discuss a proposed first move, and you'll leave with next steps you can use whether we work together or not. Most useful before budget season, and the timing is yours.
Not ready to talk? Take the free assessment and see your result on screen in about 8 minutes.
