Accelerator 13 · Construction & engineering
RFI and submittal review assistant
Answers requests for information from the project's own specifications and drawings notes, checks submittals against the spec, and flags likely cost or schedule impact.
The problem
- Large projects raise thousands of RFIs and submittals, and each one waits days for an engineer to find the right spec section.
- Slow answers stall crews on site; wrong approvals of non-compliant materials surface later as rework.
- The answer often already exists in the specs, a previous RFI or a manufacturer sheet.
What it does
- Finds the governing specification sections and earlier RFIs and answers with citations.
- Checks a submittal line by line against the spec: Complies, Deviation, or Not shown.
- Flags possible change-order, cost or schedule impact for the project manager.
- Drafts the response for the engineer of record to review and sign.
Paste a specification extract and an RFI or a submittal and get a cited answer, a compliance check and impact flags.
Live demo: RFI and submittal review assistant
Synthetic data only · nothing you type is stored
Output
Cited answer or compliance table, impact flags and a draft response for the engineer.
The demo first calls the Surge in-house AI server and falls back to a hosted open-source model if it is busy. The badge on the output shows which one answered. Limited to a few runs per visitor per day.
How it integrates
In your deployment the accelerator runs inside your environment, behind your single sign-on, and is connected to the systems below. You choose the hosting and the model.
Systems and APIs
- Project platforms: Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Oracle Aconex (RFIs, submittals, documents)
- Specification and drawing registers
- Manufacturer product data sheets
Data we need for a pilot
- Project specifications and drawing notes
- Closed RFIs and submittals with their final responses
Where it runs
- Private cloud per project or per firm; documents stay in the firm's tenancy
Open-source models we start with
- Qwen3-class 32B instruct model
- Embeddings over specs and past RFIs
- Drawing-sheet OCR for title blocks and notes
Walkthrough
A short recorded walkthrough of the rfi and submittal review assistant: the input, the output and how a reviewer uses it.
Next accelerator: Guest messaging and review response agent →Walkthrough video coming soon
We are recording a short walkthrough of this accelerator. Meanwhile, run the live demo above or book a working session.
Run the construction & engineering accelerator on your data
In a working session we map it to your process, systems and rules, and agree what a pilot must prove before it goes live.