Construction & Contractors
You don't lose money on the pour — you lose it in the bid room, the RFI backlog, and the paperwork chase, and that's exactly where an intelligent system earns its keep.
In one line
A construction firm makes or loses its margin long before the concrete cures. It's decided in the bid room, where someone prices a job against a spec book and a drawing set no one had time to read cover to cover — so the scope gap and the addendum that quietly moved a detail surface only after the contract is signed. It's decided in the RFI backlog, where a question to the architect sits for three weeks while the schedule slips. The build is hard; the leaks are in the paper around it.
This isn't a small tax. The McKinsey Global Institute's Reinventing Construction report found large projects typically run about 80% over budget and 20% longer than scheduled, and that construction's productivity has barely moved in decades while other sectors pulled ahead. The causes are stubbornly analog: information trapped in PDFs, site photos, and email threads no one has time to cross-check before it costs money. The tools to change that — document AI, computer vision, and agentic follow-up — are finally good enough to run on data you already generate.
Plenaura builds that system. We put document AI on your spec books and drawings so scope gaps and addenda changes are surfaced before you price the job. We run computer vision over the site photos your crews already take to track progress and flag potential hazards for a human to review. We automate the RFI, submittal, and change-order loop between GC, subs, and architect so paperwork moves instead of aging in an inbox. It's one connected system, not five point tools — designed, built, deployed, and handed over, with you owning 100% of the code and models.
The outcome is bids priced against the whole spec instead of the half someone had time to read, jobs where the money questions get answered before they blow the schedule, and a field record that protects you when a claim lands. We're a product engineering studio, not an advisory firm — we don't hand you a slide deck or a pilot that dies after the demo. Scope and timeline are agreed up front, work is quoted per project, and if an off-the-shelf tool already solves a piece of this, we'll tell you rather than sell you a build you don't need.
What we can build for Construction
Bid & spec-book intelligence
Document AI reads the full spec book and drawing set — divisions, submittal requirements, and the addenda that quietly move a detail — and surfaces scope gaps, conflicts, and changes before you commit a number. The point is to price against the whole spec, not the half someone had time to skim the night before the bid is due.
Drawing review & takeoff support
The system parses drawing sets to pull counts, dimensions, and quantities that feed your takeoff, and cross-checks drawings against the specs so a discrepancy shows up in preconstruction rather than in the field. It gives your estimator a faster, more complete first pass — it doesn't replace the number they're willing to stand behind.
Site-photo progress & safety monitoring
Computer vision runs over the photos your crews already capture to track installed work against the schedule and flag potential hazards — missing PPE, unguarded edges, blocked egress — for a human to review. It never guarantees a site is safe; it surfaces things worth a second look so your super sees more than one walk a day can catch.
RFI, submittal & change-order automation
Agentic follow-up drives the paperwork loop between GC, subs, and architect end to end — drafting and routing RFIs, tracking submittal status, chasing overdue responses, and tying change orders back to the affected scope and cost. Information stops aging in inboxes, and the questions that hold up the schedule get answered while they still matter.
Subcontractor COI & compliance tracking
The system reads certificates of insurance and compliance documents, tracks coverage types, limits, and expiration dates, and warns you before a sub's coverage lapses or falls short of the contract. No trade works uncovered because a certificate quietly expired, and the audit trail is there when a GC or owner asks for it.
Pay-app & lien-waiver processing
Document AI reads applications for payment and lien waivers, checks them against the schedule of values and prior billings, and flags math errors, missing waivers, or over-billing before money moves. It turns a stack of monthly paperwork into a reviewed, reconciled queue — with a person approving anything that needs judgment.
Daily reports & schedule-risk forecasting
The system assembles daily reports from field inputs — photos, logs, weather, manpower — into the consistent record that protects you in a dispute, and reads across job data to flag work trending toward slippage. You get an early warning that a job is drifting while there's still time to act, not a variance you discover at month-end.
How we deliver it
Start with how you bid and build
We begin in preconstruction and on the job — how you take off, where RFIs pile up, which paperwork slips — so we build for how your firm actually wins and runs work, not a generic contractor. AI enters only where a real leak of time or money justifies it, and we say so when it doesn't.
Prove it on your own jobs
We validate against your real spec books, your site photos, and your past RFIs and pay-apps before committing to a full build, so you see it working on your projects rather than a demo dataset — and we'll tell you honestly where a piece isn't worth automating.
Build to production
We build the whole system — document pipelines, vision models, integrations, and the interfaces your team touches — and put it live on real jobs. The engagement ends with a working system in use, not a proof of concept on a slide that never reaches the field.
Keep a human on the call
Anything that carries risk — a flagged hazard, a scope gap, a payment exception — is surfaced for a person to decide, not auto-actioned. The system flags potential issues for review; your supers, PMs, and estimators keep the judgment and the sign-off.
Hand over everything
You receive the full code, models, and integrations with documentation and knowledge transfer, running on your own infrastructure, so your team can maintain and extend it after we leave — no per-seat platform fees, no vendor lock-in.
What these systems are built to do
The kind of capability these systems give you — not client metrics.
AI for Construction — answered
Yes — connecting to your project-management and document tools is part of the build, whether that's Procore, an Autodesk product, Sage, or a shared drive full of PDFs. The goal is a system that reads and writes where your team already works, so RFIs, submittals, and daily reports flow through your existing process instead of becoming another login no one opens. Where a tool has no clean integration point, we handle the documents directly.
It works with the photos you already capture — phone pictures, tablet snaps, and any fixed jobsite cameras you have. We build the vision on your existing image stream wherever the quality and angles allow, and only suggest added hardware when a specific view genuinely requires it, telling you so up front. You don't need a camera rollout to start getting progress tracking and hazard flags out of the pictures your team already takes every day.
Accurate enough to do the heavy first pass — reading specs, checking pay-apps, scanning photos — with confidence scoring that routes anything uncertain to a person. The aim isn't zero humans; it's letting your estimators, PMs, and safety staff spend their attention only where judgment is actually needed, with the system catching what a tired eye at 6pm misses. On anything that carries cost or safety risk, a person reviews before it counts.
No. It removes the reading, chasing, and paperwork that eats their day so they can spend more of it managing the actual build. The system drafts, tracks, and flags; your PMs and supers decide. On safety especially, it surfaces potential hazards for a human to review — it never signs off that a site is safe or a job is compliant. The judgment stays with your people; the busywork doesn't.
You do, completely. The code, the trained models, the document pipelines, and the deployed infrastructure are yours, running on your own systems. Your spec books, site photos, and financials stay inside your walls, there are no per-seat platform fees, and we provide full documentation and a handoff so your team can run and extend the system without ever having to call us back.
We start with a focused first system on the problem costing you most today — often spec-book review or the RFI and change-order chase — prove it on your own jobs, then expand from there. Work is scoped and quoted per project against a timeline agreed up front; there's no one-size fee because no two firms bid and build the same way. We'd rather ship one thing that earns trust on a live job than promise a sweeping rollout that stalls.
Related use cases
Other industries we build for
Let's build it for Construction.
Tell us the operation you want to transform. We'll map the system and scope it with you — or give you an honest no.