How Mortenson Laid the Groundwork for Smarter Proposals

About Mortenson

Mortenson is a nationally recognized construction company with more than 70 years of experience delivering complex projects across the energy, commercial, healthcare, sports, and data center markets. With over 7,000 team members and 12 regional offices across the United States, Mortenson operates at scale, bringing together diverse teams to pursue and deliver some of the most challenging builds in the industry.

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Summary

Mortenson partnered with Joist AI to modernize proposal development by centralizing past proposals and reusable content. With a governed, AI-enabled platform in place, pursuit teams significantly reduced time spent on first drafts, improved consistency across offices, and collaborated more effectively across markets. By starting with content organization and governance, Mortenson established a strong foundation for scaling AI, unlocking immediate efficiency gains while preparing for deeper integrations across their pursuit workflows.

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The Challenge

Operating across multiple regions and markets, Mortenson’s marketing teams were producing a high volume of proposals, often under tight deadlines. While the organization had a wealth of strong past proposals, resumes, and project profiles, accessing the right content at the right time was a challenge.

Proposal teams relied on disconnected file systems, emails, and ad hoc requests to piece together content. This made proposal development slow, repetitive, and inconsistent across offices.

“Before Joist AI, I would have to scan through our folders, open up every proposal individually, and spend multiple minutes reading each one just to find the highlights I needed.”
— Ken Erickson, Senior Proposal Specialist, Mortenson

In addition to inefficiencies, the process made it difficult to ensure consistency in tone, messaging, and compliance—particularly across regions. Teams spent significant time simply getting to a usable first draft, leaving less room for strategic thinking and refinement.

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The Solution

Mortenson implemented Joist AI to centralize all proposals, boilerplates, resumes, and pursuit content into a single intelligent platform, managed by their pursuits team.

With Joist AI, Mortenson:

• Brought proposal vaults online in a governed environment
• Enabled AI-powered search across all approved content
• Controlled access through curated collections to protect confidential submittals
• Ensured consistent tone, messaging, and compliance across offices

“We wanted to reduce the time marketers spend on the pain points of putting proposals together—resumes, project profiles, generating first drafts,”
— Jen Orthaus, Proposal Manager, Mortenson

Unlike generic AI tools, Joist AI was purpose-built for AEC pursuits,  allowing Mortenson to reuse their best work safely and effectively.

By giving teams strong, compliant drafts to react to, Joist AI helped Mortenson eliminate “blank page syndrome” and shifted effort away from manual content assembly toward strategy and messaging.

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The Results

Significan TIme Savings
During a pilot survey, Mortenson team members reported saving 8–10 hours per week on basic proposal activities.

“If you regularly use Joist AI, you’re saving eight to ten hours a week—which is huge,”
— Jen Orthaus, Proposal Manager, Mortenson

Stronger Strategic Focus

With first drafts generated faster, Mortenson was able to spend more time refining messaging, asking better questions, and improving proposal quality.

“Joist AI allows us to show up differently in the proposal process—not just as information gatherers, but as strategists.”
— Jen Orthaus, Proposal Manager, Mortenson

Improved Collaboration Across Offices
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Joist AI enabled teams to pull the best content from across the company, breaking down silos and creating a more unified pursuit process.

“Joist AI has allowed us to pull the best of the best content from around the company.”
— Ken Erickson, Senior Proposal Specialist, Mortenson

Faster Onboarding and Greater Independence‍

New hires were able to ramp up faster by gaining visibility into approved content and past proposals, without relying heavily on shadowing or manual searching.

“Joist AI allows people to become independent faster by giving them a place to start.”
— Jen Orthaus, Proposal Manager, Mortenson

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Conclusion

Joist AI has transformed how Mortenson approaches proposal development, from first drafts to team collaboration and onboarding. What began as a solution to content inefficiencies has evolved into a scalable, trusted foundation for AI adoption. With governed content in place and teams using Joist AI every day, Mortenson is now well-positioned to extend AI across deeper pursuit workflows and system integrations.

“Our team uses Joist AI every day. I can’t imagine leading a proposal without it.”

— Ken Erickson, Senior Proposal Specialist, Mortenson

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