Construction business - AI project

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Posted on by HG-03121614-0

Hi,

I have multiple projects linked to all the administrative sides of operating a construction project and I want to know if it's possible to do them all in AI Builder.

Here's what I would need the AI to do:

1. Product submittals

Currently, at the start of a construction project, we review the project's specifications and extract the prescribed products listed to send the required technical documentation as outlined in our contract. Since we work with multiple suppliers, we often have equivalent alternatives to the products specified in the document.

Next, we submit the technical data sheets for our suppliers' products, filling out the shop drawing identification form provided by the general contractor.

I believe this process takes far too much time and could be easily automated.

My Idea

I'd like to know if it’s possible to train an AI model that can:

Read an architectural specification document: Extract all the prescribed materials and place them in an Excel file (based on a template).
Allow manual review and selection: Let me review the information in the Excel file. Through dropdown menus, I can choose whether to submit the technical data sheet for the prescribed product or an equivalent product.
Generate complete technical documents: After I submit the finalized Excel file with my choices, the AI would:
- Retrieve the relevant technical documentation for the selected products.
- Fill out the shop drawing identification form automatically (as the information is always the same but formatted differently depending on the form).
- Generate complete PDF files for each product, including the identification form and related documentation.
Send the documents automatically: Optionally, I could approve the AI to send these technical data sheets directly by email.

2. Change orders (CO)

When I have a contract, I often receive Change Orders (CO), which are instructions that affect the scope of work by adding or removing contractual tasks. To handle these, I need to:

Analyze the changes by comparing the current plans with the ones provided for the DDC (changes are always indicated with clouds on the plans).
Quantify the new partitions, ceilings, or elements required to complete the work.
Estimate the quantity of materials needed for the task.
Produce a detailed quote, allowing me to manually control the level of breakdown (ventilation) for the submission.
Send the finalized quote as an amendment or change order to the contract.

Would all of this be possible in AI builder?

Thank you!

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AI Builder

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ronaldwalcott 3,847 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Short answer, all, probably not as you would expect.

Longer answer, you can probably get sufficient improvements on your processes to make it worthwhile.

Start with the Document Processing model and try to extract data from your architectural specification document. Even automating just this step should increase the efficiency of your processes.

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CU10021449-0 22 on at

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AI Builder can help automate parts of your workflow, but it has limitations. It can extract data from architectural specs using AI models and export them to Excel for manual review, which fits your first task well. However, tasks like retrieving product documentation, filling out various shop forms, and generating and sending PDFs will need integration with Power Automate and possibly custom connectors or APIs. For change orders, AI Builder can assist with document comparison and basic data extraction, but detailed quantity takeoffs, estimations, and quote generation will likely require external tools or custom-built AI solutions. So yes, it’s possible to automate much of this, but it will need a mix of AI Builder, Power Automate, and custom development.

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CU26110615-0 2 on at

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We launched a new enterprise website design & development with Toimi, and they delivered everything in about a month. Clear structure, fast pages, modern design, and the CMS is simple enough for our team to manage. Exactly what we needed for our first sales push. Huge thanks to the team.

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SebS 4,616 Moderator on at

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AI Builder isn’t really the right tool for what you’re trying to achieve. It’s best suited to pattern recognition, document scanning, invoice processing, image classification, and similar structured extraction. You could technically force it to work in your scenario, but the result would be expensive to design, train, maintain, and extend over time, and you’d quickly hit limitations when the project grows.

What you’re describing aligns much better with Copilot Agents powered by generative AI. This approach is more flexible, can handle unstructured documents such as architectural specifications, and can manage multi-step logic rather than just extraction. It does require a deeper skill set, particularly in prompt engineering, agent design, and integrating the agent with your existing systems.

The most realistic path is to break your solution down into dedicated agents for each step of the process, rather than trying to make one “super agent” that does everything. For example:

one agent to read and extract prescribed materials into your Excel template

one agent to retrieve and package the technical documentation

one agent to produce shop drawing forms and generate PDFs

one agent to handle email delivery and logging

This keeps your system modular, easier to maintain, and less likely to break when your processes or suppliers change.

From a cost perspective, do look at licensing and ROI. Every automated action and generation run has a cost. If you’re a large enterprise processing thousands of submissions, exploring a dedicated AI foundation or custom model might make sense. For small to medium-sized operations, Copilot Agents are usually the sweet spot.

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