If a vendor sells "AI for your construction documents," the whole game is whether the answers are trustworthy on a real job. A wrong answer delivered confidently is worse than no answer. Walk through these before you sign anything.
1 · Grounding & accuracy
- Does it answer only from my uploaded documents — or can it pull from general training data?A tool that answers from the public internet will invent project specifics. You want document-only.
- Will it tell me when it doesn't know instead of guessing?
- Can it show me three real answers from a project like mine before I commit?
2 · Citations
- Does every answer cite an exact source — sheet number, detail, spec section, or change-order number?"It's in the drawings somewhere" is not a citation. Demand sheet + detail.
- Can I click the citation and see the source it pulled from?
- If it can't cite it, does it refuse to state it?
3 · Revisions
- Does it always answer from the latest revision?
- Will it flag when an answer relies on a superseded document and name the one that replaced it?
- How does it know which revision is current when I upload a new set?
4 · Conflicts
- When the spec and the drawing disagree, what does it do?The right answer: surfaces both with citations and flags it — never silently picks one. See our spec-vs-drawing guide.
- Does it detect change-order vs. original-contract conflicts?
5 · Safety rails & escalation
- Does it escalate contractual, cost, code, and safety questions to a human instead of answering them?
- Does a person always send the final reply, or can it auto-send unreviewed?
- Can I set who is allowed to receive answers (an approved-recipient list)?
6 · Data isolation & security
- Is each project's data walled off from every other client's?
- Are my documents used to train any public model?The answer you want is no.
- Where is my data stored, and can I delete it on demand?
7 · Fit, effort & cost
- How long until my team gets its first real answer — hours, or weeks of setup?
- Is it per-seat priced?Per-seat pricing makes crews ration logins — adoption killer. Unlimited users is better.
- Is there a free pilot on one of my real jobs, judged on my own documents?
- What's the total first-year cost including setup and onboarding?
8 · Record & closeout
- Does it keep a searchable, cited Q&A history I can use at closeout or in a dispute?
- Can it export a dated, defensible record of decisions and their sources?
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IntelMS answers "yes" to all 23
That's not a coincidence — these are the questions it was built around. Try it free on one real job for 14 days, judged entirely on your own documents.
Start a free pilot →Or see how it compares to a generic AI chatbot and the manual way.