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Case Study · Construction & Real Estate

Contracts & drawings, read by machine.

A construction project is a paper avalanche wearing a hard hat: contracts, drawings, specs, change orders, RFIs — thousands of pages where one missed clause or one conflicting dimension costs real money. This group stopped reading it all by hand. The machine reads everything; people read what matters.

90%Time saved in document review
100sOf hours back, every month
0Deadline clauses missed since go-live
Regional construction group
IndustryConstruction & Real Estate
DocsContracts · drawings · COs · RFIs · submittals
Built byPromata — Blueprint → AI Build
StatusLive · reading right now

Does this sound like your projects?

A 240-page contract arrives. Somebody’s weekend disappears.
The clause that hurt you last year was on page 187. Nobody got to page 187.
Drawings and specs disagree — and the disagreement is found by the crew, on site, at cost.
Change orders arrive faster than anyone can read what they change.
Your best PM’s real job title is “professional document skimmer.”
IF YOU CHECKED THREE OF THESE — THIS CASE STUDY IS ABOUT YOU.
The Challenge

The information was all there. That was the problem.

Every risk, obligation, deadline, and dimension the team needed was in the documents — buried across thousands of pages that arrived faster than humans could read them. Review was triage: read what looks important, skim the rest, and hope the expensive sentence was not in the skimmed part.

⚠ REVIEW BY WEEKEND
240-page contract · senior PM · weekend20+ HOURS
Liquidated-damages clause, page 187FOUND AFTER SIGNING
A-201 vs S-104 dimension conflictFOUND BY THE CREW
Change order #14 alters steel specNOTICED WEEK LATE
Submittal deadline in §6 appendixMISSED · PENALTY
✦ REVIEW BY MACHINE
Same contract — read, extracted, summarizedBEFORE THE MEETING
Every penalty & obligation clause surfaced, citedPAGE 187 INCLUDED
Drawing-vs-spec conflicts flagged on arrivalBEFORE MOBILIZATION
Change orders diffed against affected docsSAME DAY
Every dated obligation on the project calendarZERO MISSED
VS

THE SAME DOCUMENT SET — A WEEKEND OF SKIMMING VS. A MACHINE THAT READS PAGE 187

  • Reading was rationed by seniority

    Only experienced eyes could spot the dangerous sentences — so experienced people did clerical reading, and everything waited for their weekends.

  • Conflicts surfaced at the worst price point

    A dimension mismatch costs a note in review, a re-pour on site. The review backlog converted cheap catches into expensive ones.

  • Change orders compounded

    Each CO silently modified documents already reviewed. Keeping the mental model current was a full-time job nobody officially had.

  • Deadlines hid in appendices

    Notice periods, submittal dates, cure windows — scattered contractual time-bombs, tracked in heads and highlighters.

The Solution

Every page read. Every risk surfaced. Every claim cited.

Document intelligence reads every arriving document — contracts, drawings, specs, change orders, RFIs — and extracts what the team actually needs: obligations, deadlines, penalties, dimensions, and conflicts, each with a citation back to its page.

Contracts240 PP · EXHIBITS · APPENDICES
DrawingsA · S · M · E SHEETS
Δ
Change ordersDIFFED VS. AFFECTED DOCS
?
RFIs & submittalsTRACKED · DATED
EXTRACTED · PROJECT RIVERBENDEVERY ROW CITED
Liquidated damages · $2,000/day
CONTRACT §14.3 · P.187
Submittal due · Aug 12
§6 APPENDIX B · CALENDARED
Dimension conflict · 42′-6″ vs 42′-0″
A-201 vs S-104 · FLAGGED
Steel spec modified by CO #14
DIFF VS. SPEC 05100 · NOTIFIED
Notice period · 7 days, written
CONTRACT §9.1 · P.94
  • Reads like a lawyer, measures like an engineer

    Contract language and drawing geometry are different problems — the system handles both, and cross-references them, which is where the expensive surprises live.

  • Citations on everything

    Every extracted obligation links to its page and clause. Trust is checkable — which is why the senior PMs actually use it.

  • Change orders diffed, not filed

    Each CO is compared against every document it touches; affected teams are notified the day it arrives, not the week the conflict surfaces.

  • Deadlines become calendar entries

    Every dated obligation flows to the project calendar with its citation attached. The appendix time-bombs are defused on arrival.

Results & Business Impact

Hundreds of hours back. Every month.

DOCUMENT REVIEW · BEFORESENIOR HOURS / MONTH
~340 HRS
DOCUMENT REVIEW · NOWREVIEWING FLAGGED ITEMS ONLY
~34
90%Review time returned
100%Pages actually read
0Deadline clauses missed
Day 1Conflicts flagged on arrival
  • Ninety percent of review time, returned

    Senior staff read the flagged 10% — the risks, conflicts, and judgment calls — instead of the haystack around them.

  • Page 187 stopped winning

    Penalty clauses, notice periods, and obligations surface on day one, cited. The expensive sentence no longer hides in volume.

  • Conflicts caught at note-cost, not re-pour-cost

    Drawing-vs-spec mismatches are flagged before mobilization — the cheapest possible moment to be wrong.

  • Bidding got faster and braver

    With contract review measured in hours instead of weekends, the group evaluates more opportunities — and walks into every one knowing what §14.3 says.

The documents were never the problem. The reading was.

Construction documentation exists to protect the project — it just arrives in volumes only a machine can honestly read. Now one does. The expertise did not leave the loop; it moved to the top of it, where it always belonged.

90%Review time returned
100%Pages read
0Deadlines missed

What we didn't solve

Hand-marked redlines on scanned drawings still need a person to read them. The system extracts and cites what is typed; what somebody drew on afterwards is flagged rather than interpreted.

What’s hiding on YOUR page 187?

Send us nothing — just tell us your document volume. We’ll show you what machine-read projects look like, before you spend a dollar.

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30 minutes · No pitch deck · An honest first read

Case study: contracts and drawings, read by machine