Project Engineer's Guide to Meeting Minutes in 2025

Using AI to Convert Meeting Transcripts into Actionable Minutes

You're a project engineer, running yet another OAC meeting, trying to simultaneously take notes, lead the discussion, and track multiple action items. Your notebook is a maze of half-finished thoughts and by day's end, your handwriting somehow needs to transform into coherent meeting minutes, assuming they don’t get buried under the avalanche of other urgent tasks.

Everyone in construction management has lived this reality. Drafting comprehensive meeting minutes for every single weekly meeting (i.e. OAC; Subcontractor; Preconstruction; Quality Control) to ensure all key stakeholders remain on the same page is sometimes an impossible task. Often times, those minutes do not get published for days, if at all. Action items slip through the cracks, and all accountability across your stakeholders would evaporate. So what’s even the point?

Why struggle anymore?

This is not an issue today using AI. You can streamline your work from using a well-crafted prompt that turns meeting transcripts into organized, actionable minutes. Here’s what I would use:

Please analyze this construction project meeting transcript and create organized meeting minutes with the following structure:

Meeting Details:
- Date, Time, Location 
- Attendees (with company affiliations)

Key Discussion Topics:
1. Safety
2. Schedule Updates
3. RFIs & Submittals Status  
4. Change Orders & Cost Updates
5. Quality Control
6. Design Updates
7. Owner Items

For each topic:
- Summarize key points discussed
- Note any decisions made
- Highlight outstanding issues

Action Items:
- List specific tasks assigned
- Include responsible party
- Note deadline for each item

Next Meeting:
- Date/time
- Key agenda items

Please maintain professional construction terminology and format this similar to standard OAC meeting minutes.

Start by recording your meeting in Microsoft Teams and downloading the transcript. Then simply copy the transcript text and paste it alongside this prompt into your preferred AI tool (like ChatGPT or Claude) to generate your meeting minutes.

If you’re already using Procore or another platform for meeting minutes, you can supercharge this process by uploading the previous minutes as a template. Just add this line to your prompt:

Please format these minutes to match the structure and style used in the attached template from our previous meeting dated [DATE]. Maintain consistent section headings and formatting while incorporating the new content from today's transcript.

Customize For Your Needs

Reformat this prompt to match your specific meeting types. Add, remove, or modify sections based on what matters for your OAC meetings, subcontractor coordination meetings, preconstruction planning sessions, or quality control reviews. The key is to structure the prompt around your standard agenda items and documentation requirements.

For instance, a subcontractor coordination meeting might emphasize manpower tracking, material deliveries, and coordination with other trades. A preconstruction meeting might focus more on design development, value engineering opportunities, and procurement strategies. Use whatever your team has defined as important discussion topics.

The Future is Already Here

This is just another example of AI eliminating the mundane, time-consuming tasks in construction management. While we're not yet at the point of fully automated meeting documentation, we're getting closer. Eventually, AI will automatically generate and distribute meeting minutes to project teams for quick review before sending them to all stakeholders.

But why wait? You can eliminate roughly 65% of the time you currently spend on meeting minutes by using AI to create solid working drafts. Instead of starting from scratch, you'll start with an organized document that just needs your expert review and refinement.

Think about it: What could you accomplish with all those hours saved? More time in the field? Better preparation for upcoming work? Finally tackling that backlog of submittals? Do yourself a favor and free up some of your time to address more strategic tasks.