While a growing body of evidence shows that most artificial intelligence investments are failing to deliver meaningful returns, a UK-based planning consultancy has achieved what many larger organisations still cannot: a working, profitable AI operation built around people, not technology.
Planning By Design, led by director Grant Ward, has deployed AI across customer engagement, project management, sales processes, administrative workflows and content production. The firm reports clear, measurable returns — a stark contrast to the broader picture of wasted spending and abandoned projects that has emerged from recent research.
The scale of AI failure
The problem is well documented. Research published in 2024 by the RAND Corporation found that more than 80% of AI projects fail to reach meaningful production — exactly double the failure rate of traditional IT projects. A 2025 survey by S&P Global Market Intelligence reported that 42% of companies abandoned most of their AI initiatives last year, a sharp rise from just 17% in 2024. And a report from BCG, titled ‘Where’s the value in AI’, concluded that 74% of businesses are generating no tangible value from AI despite collectively spending $252 billion on it.
Industry analysts point to familiar causes: misaligned business objectives, poor data governance, a lack of human oversight, and a tendency to chase the technology itself rather than the problem it is supposed to solve.
Planning By Design: problem-first, not technology-first
Planning By Design’s approach began with the opposite premise. “Most businesses approach AI the wrong way,” Ward said. “They invest in the technology first and try to find a use for it afterwards. We started with our problems and worked backwards to find where AI could genuinely help. That distinction is everything.”
The firm identified specific, repetitive pain points across its workflows — the kind of time-consuming tasks that drain skilled professionals — and built AI solutions to address each one directly. Central to the strategy is Aisa, a custom AI assistant designed for the company’s operations.
On the customer-facing side, Aisa supports visitors through the company website, answering general planning and design questions, guiding people through the early stages of their enquiry and helping them book a planning appraisal with one of the firm’s chartered town planners where appropriate. She can also send invoices and payment links when customers are ready to proceed, but recognises when a human conversation is the better option and flags those cases back to the team.
Behind the scenes, AI has been embedded into many of the repetitive processes that previously relied on manual input. It checks project milestones each day, identifies what is due or overdue, helps staff filter and prioritise projects, and generates reports that give managers a clearer view of workflow, delays and team capacity. Tasks that once consumed significant administrative time are now handled more quickly and more consistently.
Sales and customer service processes have also been streamlined. Planning appraisal invoices, once a manual multi-step task, can now be prepared and sent far more quickly. Feasibility reports and quotes, which previously required information to be transferred between systems and checked manually, can now be assembled with AI support using the company’s internal pricing logic and workflow rules. According to Planning By Design, this has saved time, improved consistency, reduced the risk of missed details and helped create a smoother customer journey from enquiry to instruction.
Another major benefit has come from AI handling essential but low-value administrative work. Emails are checked and saved against CRM records, design briefs can be processed and filed automatically, project tracker updates can be requested through AI with human oversight where needed, and client drawings and documents can be sent, logged and stored in the correct places without the same level of manual handling previously required. For a fast-growing business managing a large number of live projects, those efficiencies add up quickly.
The firm has also invested in a client portal that brings many of these processes together. Clients can log in securely to view project progress in real time, access key documents, and see a clear timeline of activity. AI plays an important role here too, helping to organise files, update statuses and make project information easier for clients to access. The company says this has reduced the volume of routine update calls while giving customers greater transparency and reassurance.
In content production, Planning By Design has used generative AI with full human editorial oversight to produce 133 blog articles and 143 videos over two years — output that Ward said would have required significantly more resources through traditional means.
“AI has never replaced a single member of our team,” Ward said. “What it has done is give talented professionals better tools, freed them from repetitive administration, and given them more time to spend on the work that genuinely needs human expertise, judgment, and communication.”
Five principles that made it work
Ward attributes the success to five clear principles that distinguish Planning By Design’s approach from the failed projects documented in national surveys.
Problem-first, not technology-first. Every AI application was built to solve a specific, documented operational problem, not to deploy AI for its own sake.
Human oversight is non-negotiable. No AI output reaches a client without human review. The technology augments professional judgment; it does not replace it.
Start with repetitive tasks. The highest-value applications have been in administrative and operational tasks that consume skilled professionals’ time without requiring their expertise.
Integrate deeply, not superficially. AI is embedded into the firm’s actual CRM, project tracker, document systems, and client-facing portal, not bolted on as a separate tool.
Measure actual outputs. Success is measured in hours saved, errors reduced, response times improved, and client satisfaction, not vanity metrics.
