The drawing shows one thing. The specification says another
The drawing shows one thing. The specification says another. The employer's requirements ask for a third. Anyone who has reviewed a tender pack has met this.
Last week the Berlin start-up Kuro announced a €10m funding round for an AI platform built for general contractors. It brings a project's drawings, specifications and tender documents into one data model, lets the contractor lay its own rules over them, and flags contradictions between drawings and specifications before the bid goes in.
It is aimed at contractors pricing work. Reading it as a Principal Designer, I see the same problem from the other side of the table.
A clash between documents is rarely just a pricing risk. A fire stopping detail that differs between drawing and specification. A roof access route shown on one sheet and missing from another. A performance standard in the employer's requirements that the drawings never picked up. Each is a gap a contractor can fill in good faith with the wrong answer.
Both principal designer roles point at this. CDM 2015 regulation 11(1) asks the principal designer to plan, manage and monitor the pre-construction phase and coordinate health and safety matters. Under the Building Regulations, regulation 11M(2)(b) asks the principal designer to take all reasonable steps so that the design work of all designers is coordinated, and the work, built to that design, would comply.
A performance standard in the employer's requirements that the drawings never picked up.
Software that finds contradictions in minutes is welcome. A pack read end to end beats one that was sampled. But finding the clash is the easier half. Someone still has to decide which document is right, record why, and make sure the designer who owns it changes it. A tool cannot hold that duty.
Three things I would want from any checker, human or machine:
- Show every clash with both sources side by side, so a person can judge it.
- Say what it did not read: scanned sheets, schedules, appendices.
- Leave the decision, and the record of it, with a named person.
Where do the contradictions usually hide in the packs you see?
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