AI for General Contractors

General contractors deal with the full lifecycle of construction documents — from estimating off schematic drawings through managing submittals, RFIs, and closeout documents. AI impacts each of these phases differently, and contractors are seeing the fastest ROI in document-heavy workflows that currently require expensive professional time.

Submittal review is the highest-impact application. On a large project, managing submittals is a full-time job for one or more project engineers — comparing submitted products against specifications, tracking review status, and coordinating resubmissions. AI does the first-pass comparison automatically, flagging discrepancies between submitted products and specified requirements. The project engineer reviews the AI findings instead of doing the line-by-line comparison themselves.

RFI management is close behind. When a subcontractor sends an RFI, the project team needs to find the relevant information in the contract documents and get an answer from the design team. AI can search the entire project document set instantly, often finding the answer within the existing documents — which means the RFI can be resolved internally without waiting for the design team's response. For the RFIs that do need design team input, the AI provides the relevant document context that speeds up their response.