Our lead estimator has been with us for twenty-five years and plans to retire next year, taking a massive amount of unwritten institutional knowledge with him. How do we use AI to extract his brain and create a usable asset before he walks out the door?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Extracting legacy knowledge from a long-tenured employee is a classic business risk that can be solved efficiently using AI. Trying to have them write standard operating procedures from scratch is usually a failure because experts often struggle to document what has become second nature to them.

Instead, set up a structured interview process. Have a team member shadow the estimator and record their work sessions using a secure screen recorder and audio capture tool. Have them talk through their decision-making process aloud as they build actual estimates.

Once you have several hours of recorded sessions, run the audio through an AI transcription and analysis tool. Use the AI to synthesize the transcriptions, identify the underlying rules and logic they use, and structure them into draft SOPs. The AI can quickly turn hours of conversational rambling into structured, step-by-step processes.

Next, have the estimator review the AI-generated drafts. It is much easier for an expert to edit and correct a draft than it is for them to write one from scratch. They can quickly spot where the AI missed a nuance or got a rule wrong.

Once finalized, store these AI-synthesized playbooks in your central knowledge base. This turns twenty-five years of experience into a documented, searchable company asset. This protects your business from a sudden loss of capacity and ensures you can train a new hire to get the job done correctly.