Why did the CIO of Limbach not allow the company’s 1,400 employees to use AI gene tools until this year

When the Openai generative artificial intelligence chat debuted at the end of 2022, the Information Manager Christos Ruci had a quick, intestinal reaction. Absolutely not.

“We are not doing it, or generative,” says Ruci, who oversees technology and cybersecurity for the Limbach Company Services and Constructions Services Company. “I blocked everything I could.”

What kept him apart from AI was the concern about data leakage, which Ruci feared that he could erode confidence with Limbach’s employees and customers, and even potentially damage his own professional reputation. Any exposure to external data far exceeds the benefits of using and generating to automate workplace tasks or accelerate the development of programs and products.

“My personality is usually the opposite, that is,” we do. “But when it comes to the security and risk of my company and the data of my clients and my employees, there is no failure.”

The computer departments are spent thousands of millions annually to the tools and generators of companies and today, around seven out of ten companies They use at least a business function, according to the consulting giant McKinsey & Co., but there are a lot of CIO that they do not yet use and until recently, Ruci was one of them.

This year, Ruci finally authorized some limited uses of tools and generative tools of Openai, Microsoft and Google to the 1,400 Limbach employees. Ruci has a complete supervision of the future extensions or functions of the AS that vendors may want to use.

The cautious approach of Ruke meant that it would be regularly consulted with legally and compliance to develop clear corporate guidelines that explained what they could and could not do with generative IA. In Limbach, he also monitored cybersecurity and used his experience by educating labor on how to prevent cyberataques as a model to deploy the formation of the AI.

This constant training cadence has included Webinars, staff meetings of all hands and a ruman talking to each separated business unit to explain the company’s IA policies to all employees. The newsletters are distributed to give future updates. “It is to rinse and repeat now to remember them continuously about what they can and cannot do,” says Ruci.

Until now, the AI ​​focus of the Ruci generator has focused closely, almost completely emphasizing the more productive to employees, such as transcript tools for meetings. Some larger cases, which Limbach has not completely adopted, include new and generative tools that facilitate data recovery and automate the process of renewing the client’s contract. There are still not many things that are not allowed to touch the AI ​​in Limbach: no personal or protected health information, non -public financial data and client data, including anything about project creation, intellectual property or commercial serles.

Rucle is more unfolded throughout the traditional AI forms, including the collection of data from construction facilities such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and then using these AI visions to make these systems more efficient for buildings and facilities managers.

He also moved quickly to complete a complete migration of the entire Limbach infrastructure through 20 cloud locations. Limbach has been collecting suppliers of smaller regional construction systems and Rucy says that a 100% cloud environment can accelerate IT integration.

When asked about the Agents, the new keyword on all Cios lips in 2025, Ruci returns to practice precaution. He says he is taking a page by Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, who has been slower than most Giants of great technologies to deploy the functions Ai externally to users.

“I really want to see where the market and industry go out before going through something,” says Ruci.

John needs

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This story originally presented to Fortune.com

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