Should field service businesses be afraid of AI?

The mood has changed

A year ago, most of the conversations we had with customers about AI were driven by curiosity. Today they are noticeably more cautious, and in some cases genuinely anxious. People want to know whether it will replace members of their team, whether they are already falling behind, and how anyone is supposed to keep up when the tools seem to change every few weeks.

Those feelings are widespread, and they are not irrational. Research from King's College London published in May found that 69% of people in the UK are worried about AI's impact on jobs and the economy, with 60% believing it will take more jobs than it creates. A survey of 2,900 full-time workers by Henley Business School in June found that 61% feel overwhelmed by the pace of AI development, and that more than a third fear it could replace their role.

So if you run a grounds maintenance contract or a highways operation and you feel a little wary every time another headline appears, you are in good company. The pace really is fast, a great deal of what is written about AI is aimed at office-based businesses that look nothing like yours, and very little of it comes from people who understand what your teams actually do each day.

Why landscaping and highways are in a different position

No piece of software is going to cut a verge, reinstate a footway, plant a scheme or set out traffic management on a live carriageway. The work your teams do depends on judgement, experience and the kind of practical skill that takes years to build, and nobody serious is suggesting AI will take that over.

What AI can do is take on the layer of work that sits around the job itself: the forms, the photos and the checks, the re-keying of site records, the chasing of missing signatures, and the hours spent trying to work out from a pile of job records whether a contract is actually making money. That layer has grown heavier every year as clients ask for more evidence, and it is usually the first thing to slip when teams are stretched.

Most teams in this sector are stretched already. The Landscape Institute's Skills for Greener Places review found that more than half of landscape businesses report hard-to-fill vacancies, against a backdrop of an ageing workforce and firms turning down work because they cannot staff it, and highways contractors will recognise much the same pressure. When you cannot recruit fast enough, the realistic risk is not that AI replaces your people, but that your people spend too much of their limited time on administration that a machine could be handling for them.

There is another reason to pay attention, and it comes from your clients. Local authorities are already putting AI to work on their own networks. Surrey County Council is thought to have been the first in the country to use AI-equipped cameras to detect potholes, and Cambridgeshire rolled out an AI inspection tool across the county this year after a successful trial, with officers still reviewing the footage to confirm accuracy and plans to connect it to the council's works ordering system. As clients get used to data arriving faster and in better shape, they will reasonably expect the same from the contractors who work for them.

Where AI is already earning its place in Formulate

This is why we have approached AI in Formulate the way we have. Rather than adding features because the market expects them, we have focused on the specific moments in a field team's day where errors creep in and time gets lost.

Photo checks are a good example. On a highways job, a photograph of a traffic management setup is only useful as evidence if it clearly shows what it needs to show. Formulate can check a site photo as it is taken, so an incomplete or unusable image is flagged while the operative is still on site rather than three days later when someone in the office spots the gap. The same thinking applies to reading number plates, meters and labels automatically, which removes one of the most common sources of keying errors and saves time on every form that needs them.

Form completeness works in a similar way. Before a job is signed off, Formulate can confirm that every mandatory field, attachment and compliance step is in place, so missing information is caught at the point of work rather than chased afterwards. For the office, that means fewer rejected invoices, faster job closure and a far cleaner audit trail.

Because Formulate connects to the back office rather than stopping at the phone, all of that cleaner data ends up somewhere it can be used. That is where the real value has always been for our customers, in being able to see which contracts, sites and work types are earning their keep and which are quietly eroding margin while there is still time to act. AI does not change that goal. What it does is make the data underneath it more reliable and much quicker to read, while the decisions stay with the people who understand the work.

How to approach AI without the panic

Whether or not you end up working with us, a few principles will help any field business approach AI with confidence rather than anxiety.

• Start with a problem, not a product. The businesses getting value from AI began with a specific frustration, such as late invoices, missing evidence or contracts that overrun without warning, and asked whether AI could help with that one thing.

• Look at your data before your tools. AI is only as good as the information it works with. If your site records are still on paper or scattered across disconnected systems, getting them captured properly and in one place is the most valuable first step you can take, and it pays for itself long before any AI is involved.

• Keep people in the loop. The most useful applications of AI in field operations check, flag and summarise, and leave the decisions with the people who understand the work. Even the councils using AI cameras still have officers reviewing what the system finds.

• Tell your team what you are doing. Henley's research found that 60% of workers say their employer has no AI guidelines, or that they are not sure whether one exists. Much of the anxiety people feel comes from not knowing what AI means for them, and a simple, honest conversation about where you will and will not use it goes a long way.

• Work with someone who knows your world. The evidence suggests partnerships work better than going it alone, and a partner who already understands how your jobs, contracts and back office fit together will get you to something useful far faster than one who is learning your industry as they go.

Frequently asked questions

Will AI replace jobs in landscaping and highways?

The practical, on-site work in landscaping and highways relies on skills and judgement that AI cannot replicate. Where AI is making a difference is in the administration around that work, such as checking forms and photos, reading plates and meters, and analysing job data. Among UK SMEs already using AI, the British Chambers of Commerce found 95% had seen no change in workforce size.

What can AI do for a field service business today?

The most useful applications today are practical ones: checking site photos meet the required standard, confirming forms are complete before a job is signed off, reading number plates, meters and labels automatically, and helping managers see patterns in job data such as which contracts are overrunning or losing margin.

What is private AI?

Private AI means AI built around your own business information and kept private to your business, rather than a public tool where you paste in data and hope for the best. With Raid by Triangle and Cortex, the AI works from your own records and processes, so the answers it gives reflect how your business actually runs.