That is it. No boardroom epiphany, no consultant telling them what to do. Their members kept talking about AI, so they listened.

The Beautiful Mess of AI

Here is what Katzmann told us that made us sit up and pay attention: "There are no specific challenges that our membership is looking to address with AI. That's the beauty of AI -- it affects every element of a shop, so each individual shop can use it to fix, improve or enhance any area of their business to match their goals and strategic plans."

Translation? AI is not a hammer looking for a nail. It is more like a Swiss Army knife that works differently for everyone. Some shops start with sales stuff, others jump into operations. There is no wrong way to begin.

Getting Real About Implementation

 We have all heard the AI hype. But what are fabricators actually doing with it? Katzmann shared something that made us take notes: "One of our most common 'starter' projects is an Agent that the shop can use to instantly provide job level information to everyone in the shop with no need to access an ERP, CRM or other systems. The bot does it all for them. This is a quick development, low cost, instant impact project. It's nice to get a quick win for the staff."

Simple. Practical. Gets people excited instead of scared. Then he shared something that made our jaws drop. At one shop they worked with, they found 336 individual steps needed to go from customer lead to scheduled job. After implementing AI solutions? Thirty-four steps. That is not a typo.

Dealing With The Fear Factor

Let us talk about the elephant in the room. A lot of fabricators are freaked out by AI. Too complicated, too expensive, too risky. Katzmann gets it.

"The first step in our initiative is for shops to attend our bootcamp. One of the goals is to level up the knowledge of everyone. This 1+ day virtual training is intended for both shop executives and the actual in-house resources that may be creating the solutions themselves."

But here is what makes their bootcamp different. You do not just learn about AI and leave with a head full of possibilities and no plan. "The result is to have a roadmap personalized to their shop's AI initiatives that will outline costs, potential ROI, timing expectations, early wins vs more complex high-impact wins," Katzmann explained. Think of it as your shop's AI GPS, showing you exactly where to start and how to get where you want to go.

But here is the part that got our attention. They do not just teach you and send you home. "We have ALL of the resources to help the shops create their solutions. If a shop wants to do all of the development work themselves, we can advise and test it for them. If they want to co-develop or have us do it, we have the expertise to accomplish that too."

The Money Thing (Because Let's Be Real)

AI development is expensive. Or at least, it used to be if you were going at it alone. Katzmann explained something pretty clever: "As a networking group, the Rockheads are uniquely positioned to aggregate solutions so that multiple shops can share the development costs."

Here is the math that made us believers: "A rule of thumb for AI development is that similar projects at different shops are 80% complete once they are built once, meaning that to make it custom for a specific shop, there is only 20 to 30% of the required development dollars. That is four to five projects for the cost of one!"

Three or four shops split the cost, everyone gets a custom solution. Pretty smart.

The Hard Truth About Getting Started

Katzmann did not sugarcoat this part: "If you are just beginning to consider AI (you better hurry), you should start by identifying champions within your organization. This isn't something that you can just outsource -- you need an internal resource who understands technology and business processes."

Why? Because "implementing any AI project involves intensive process evaluation and redesign." You cannot just bolt AI onto broken processes and expect magic.

What Is Next?

The Rockheads are not pretending they have all the answers. "Our initiative is a proven model used for years with other technological advances where understanding the potential of the technology is as important as the actual development," Katzmann explained.

What they do have is a track record of helping fabricators navigate big changes together. And right now, AI is the biggest change any of us have seen.

Your Next Move

Here is some practical advice: if you're serious about AI, put dollars in your 2026 budget right now. Most shops are putting their budgets together anyway, and AI is not going away. You need an annual AI budget to keep pushing forward, not just a one-time experiment.

Start small but start somewhere. And get that roadmap built so you are not just throwing money at shiny objects.

Bottom Line

Look, we get it. AI feels overwhelming. But sitting on the sidelines while your competitors figure this out is not a strategy; that is hope. And hope is not a business plan.

The fabricators who are already implementing AI are not necessarily smarter than you. They just decided to start learning instead of waiting for certainty. Maybe it is time to have that conversation.