The Challenge
KLW Ltd partnered with AIMAI to deliver a practical, confidence-building AI workshop tailored to the needs of their professional planning team. The session aimed to turn curiosity into capability by introducing accessible, real-world tools in a hands-on environment. Designed to remove the intimidation factor often associated with AI, the workshop provided a springboard for sustainable adoption within everyday workflows.
Project Goals
- Demystify AI by clarifying what it is (and isn’t) in plain, non-technical language
- Boost confidence across the team in exploring and using AI tools
- Showcase practical tools like ChatGPT, Otter AI, and Excel AI in live demos
- Deliver role-specific use cases to ensure relevance for each attendee
- Create a safe, exploratory space to ask questions and try out tools
- Spark immediate action by providing tangible next steps for AI adoption
The Approach
From Curiosity to Capability: Why KLW Ltd Decided to Explore AI
KLW Ltd is an independent town planning and development consultancy based in Tunbridge Wells, supporting a wide range of clients across residential, commercial, and mixed-use schemes. With a growing awareness that AI is becoming increasingly relevant to their clients and sector, the leadership team at KLW recognised the need to explore what AI could offer their own business.
Although AI tools had been mentioned in passing — and a few had experimented lightly with platforms like ChatGPT — there was no structured understanding or shared confidence across the team in how to apply these tools practically.
The Office Manager reached out to AIMAI for a hands-on, non-technical workshop to help the entire team build a baseline of AI knowledge, understand relevant use cases, and begin exploring tools that could improve efficiency and support their day-to-day work.
What Success Looked Like: Demystifying AI With Purpose
The primary goal of the project was to introduce the team at KLW Ltd to AI in a way that was accessible, relevant, and immediately useful. The Office Manager wanted a session that would demystify AI, build confidence, and spark ideas for how it could support their existing workflows.
Specific objectives included:
– Raise awareness of what AI is — and what it isn’t — to address uncertainty or hesitation
– Demonstrate practical tools such as ChatGPT, Otter AI, and Excel AI that could be used right away
– Provide role-specific examples to show how AI could assist each team member’s daily work
– Create a safe, non-technical space for asking questions and trying things out
– Encourage momentum by giving the team something tangible to start with immediately after the session
Methodology
How We Made It Happen: A Human-Centred Approach to AI Training
The project followed a collaborative and tailored approach, ensuring the session was aligned with KLW’s needs, pace, and professional context.
Discovery & Planning:
A pre-workshop call with the Office Manager helped identify key challenges, team structure, and existing awareness levels around AI. This allowed AIMAI to shape the session around KLW’s specific goals and context — including their server-based setup and the professional workflows typical of a planning consultancy.
Workshop Design:
AIMAI designed a half-day, onsite AI Skills Builder workshop with a focus on live demonstrations, guided exercises, and interactive discussion. The workshop was structured to be non-technical, jargon-free, and highly practical, ensuring relevance for all attendees regardless of prior AI experience.
Personalisation:
Each attendee received a tailored slide with practical ways AI tools could support their role — covering tools like ChatGPT for drafting and summarising, Otter AI for meeting capture, and Excel AI for data handling.
Delivery:
The session was delivered onsite at KLW’s offices, fostering open conversation, hands-on engagement, and space for individual reflection. Key concepts were introduced through real-world examples and simple prompt frameworks that participants could immediately apply.
Breaking the Ice: Overcoming AI Anxiety and Tech Barriers
One of the main challenges was the team’s limited prior experience with AI tools, which meant there was some initial uncertainty about relevance, practicality, and ease of use. Additionally, KLW operated on a server-based system, raising questions about whether cloud-based AI tools could be meaningfully integrated into their existing setup.
To overcome this:
– The session was designed to be non-technical and practical, with a clear focus on off-the-shelf tools that didn’t require system changes or integrations.
– Live demonstrations helped bridge the gap between theory and application, showing exactly how tools could be used in a planning consultancy setting.
– Open discussion and role-specific examples gave each attendee a sense of relevance, helping shift the mindset from “Is this for us?” to “Where can we start using this?”
These steps helped move the team from initial hesitation to genuine interest and engagement.
Results and Impact
From Hesitation to Action: How One Morning Sparked AI Momentum
The workshop achieved its core objective of helping the KLW team take a confident first step into practical AI adoption. Feedback from the team and leadership was overwhelmingly positive, with a noticeable shift in both mindset and momentum.
Key outcomes included:
– High engagement throughout the session, with thoughtful questions and active participation from all team members
– Immediate action, with several attendees downloading and testing AI tools (such as Otter AI) before the session had even ended
– Increased confidence, with team members leaving the workshop clearer on what AI can do and how it could be applied to their roles
– Positive internal feedback, including strong endorsement from all three directors and the Office Manager, who called the session “incredibly insightful” and noted how motivated the team felt afterwards
– Tangible next steps, including early conversations around how internal workflows could be streamlined using tools introduced in the session
The project successfully moved the team from low awareness to practical capability — all in just one morning.
Testimonial
“The workshop was incredibly insightful, and I’m confident the entire team came away enthused and motivated. We’re already putting some of the tools into practice — in fact, one of our team members downloaded one of the tools before the session had even finished! It really was a great morning, and we appreciated Jonathan’s time, expertise, and tailored approach.”
— Sarah Lester, Office Manager, KLW Ltd
Conclusion
This project demonstrated how a well-designed, practical workshop can help a professional services team move from limited awareness to confident, early adoption of AI tools — in just one session.
For KLW Ltd, the session did more than introduce new tools; it initiated a cultural shift. The workshop gave team members not just capability, but clarity — empowering them to adopt AI tools where they work best: at the edge, in real workflows, with little friction.
As we’ve observed across sectors, the most effective adoption doesn’t come from top-down transformation plans. It begins when smart, capable people are given the tools that work for them, not just the business. KLW’s team embraced this naturally — exploring tools that supported their roles and enhanced their day-to-day work.
But as organisations like KLW begin to build AI capability across individuals, the opportunity — and the challenge — becomes alignment. Smarter people and faster workflows are only part of the story. What matters next is how teams stay connected, reflect together, and move in the same direction.
AIMAI’s role is to support that next step — helping teams align capability with culture, so AI adoption becomes sustainable, strategic, and shared.
