Every construction professional has lived this moment: a critical-path trade is ready to install, but the submittal is sitting in someone's inbox marked "Revise and Resubmit." The spec section referenced on the transmittal was wrong. Or the contractor's review stamp was missing. Or worse, the product data shows a substitution nobody approved, and now a three-week resubmittal loop starts while the schedule absorbs the hit.
On projects ranging from tenant improvements to large institutional builds, the pattern is familiar. The workflow itself is well-defined. Where I see it break is in the execution, specifically in the gap between what the contract requires and what actually happens when project teams move submittals through email, shared drives, and project systems.
This article explains what a submittal actually is, where the workflow fails, and what changes when AI agents take on more of the coordination layer.
What Is a Submittal in Construction
A submittal is any drawing, document, physical sample, or mock-up prepared by the Contractor and submitted to the Architect for review in connection with some portion of the Work. AIA A201 establishes three primary types:
Shop Drawings (§3.12.1), purpose-built project documents like structural steel connections and curtain wall systems
Product Data (§3.12.2), manufacturer catalog pages with contractor markups
Samples (§3.12.3), physical examples establishing quality standards
Here's the part most project engineers learn the hard way. Submittals are not Contract Documents. Their purpose is to demonstrate the Contractor's proposed conformance to the design concept. The Architect's review is limited to that purpose, not dimensional accuracy and not installation procedures.
How the Approval Workflow Moves
The approval workflow moves through a defined sequence:
The Contractor develops a submittal schedule
Subcontractors and suppliers prepare the packages
The GC reviews for contract compliance and applies their review stamp which is a contractual obligation, not a rubber-stamp formality.
The stamped submittal goes to the Architect, who routes discipline-specific items to consulting engineers.
The Architect issues one of four dispositions (Approved, Approved as Noted, Revise and Resubmit, or Rejected).
If resubmittal is required, the cycle repeats.
Why Every Submittal Sits on the Critical Path
The critical constraint is that the Contractor cannot perform any portion of the Work requiring submittal review until the respective submittal has been approved. Every rejection, every delayed review, every incomplete package is a potential work stoppage on the critical path.
CMAA guidance states that each submittal has the potential to create a delay to the work and, perhaps, the critical path of the schedule. And as anyone who has managed a submittal log through a claims dispute knows, that log is not just a tracking document. It is also a claims document.
Where the Workflow Breaks, and What It Actually Costs
The failure modes are predictable. A painting subcontractor submits a two-coat system because that's what they always use, without reading that this spec requires a three-coat system with a humidity-rated primer.
A mechanical contractor's AHU submittal arrives without the ASHRAE forms the spec requires in Part 1, even though the equipment itself is compliant.
A curtain wall shop drawing clears the envelope consultant's review but conflicts with structural connection plates that were reviewed by a different engineer on a different timeline.
On complex projects, these examples show how submittal issues can arise across multiple specification sections and trades.
What Bad Data and Rework Actually Cost
FMI report reported that bad data, defined as data that is inaccurate, incomplete, inaccessible, inconsistent, or untimely, cost the global construction industry $1.84 trillion in 2020. FMI rework found that poor project data and miscommunication is responsible for 48% of all rework in the United States. Another FMI report found that owner respondents reported rework amounts to 19% of total project costs, with 70% of that unrecoverable.
CII research narrows the focus further. Design deviations (including changes, errors, and omissions) accounted for roughly 80% of increased rework costs on industrial projects. Submittals are a key control point for identifying design and coordination issues before installation. When the submittal workflow fails, those deviations are more likely to proceed into the field and become rework.
Why Fragmented Project Information Compounds the Problem
Meanwhile, an Autodesk/FMI study says construction professionals spend an average of 13 hours per week searching for project data.
Specs live in one system. Drawings in another. Submittal logs in a spreadsheet. Approved product data in an email attachment from three months ago.
McKinsey characterizes the mechanism precisely. Paper-based document management causes owners and contractors to "work from different versions of reality," and mismanaged paper trails routinely spur disagreements on construction progress, change orders, and claims.
Fragmented project information across collaborators and systems, not the absence of a formal submittal workflow, is the underlying problem. The previously cited FMI report also says only 55% of construction companies even have a formal data plan, and 96% of data generated in construction goes unused.
How I Would Run The Pre-Review Checks For Every Submittal Package
Before a package reaches the Architect, I would want the same checks every time:
Confirm the submittal is tied to the right spec section.
Confirm the contractor review stamp is present.
Confirm required certifications and forms are included.
Confirm the revision matches the current drawing set.
Confirm the package is complete for the relevant scope.
What Changes When AI Agents Absorb the Coordination Layer
This shift relocates where routine cognitive work happens in the submittal workflow.
Today, a project engineer manually cross-references every submittal against the relevant spec sections, verifies certifications are present, checks that the contractor's stamp is applied, confirms the revision number matches the current drawing set, and updates the submittal log. On active jobs, I see that coordination layer stretched across dozens of submittals at the same time as RFIs, change orders, and schedule updates.
Datagrid's Summary Spec Submittal Agent, Deep Dive Spec Submittal Agent, and Deep Search Agent execute parts of that coordination layer.
Datagrid's AI agents cross-check submittals against specifications, flag non-compliant or missing items, and search across specs, drawings, RFIs, and submittals to ground answers in project requirements.
The engineer's role becomes more focused on adjudicating flagged exceptions instead of performing every step of the compliance review manually.
In practice, the Summary Spec Submittal Agent checks for spec compliance and flags where the submitted package does not match the specified requirement, even when the discrepancy is subtle.
People make decisions. AI agents take on more of the coordination work between those decisions.
What Practitioners Are Seeing
Up to 81% faster workflow execution. Level 10 Construction reduced an 8-hour workflow to just 90 minutes (Jacob Freitas, Project Executive).
That points to a shift in how project teams can spend their time, away from manual cross-referencing and toward exception-based decision-making. Moez Jaffer reinforces the deployment model. "We like that Datagrid is a true agentic AI platform and very customizable. We have it in two projects with Deep Search, Submittal and Scheduling."
See How AI Agents Handle Submittal Cross-Checking
Datagrid's Summary Spec Submittal Agent and Deep Dive Spec Submittal Agent are positioned around the failure modes described above, including spec non-compliance, missing certifications, incomplete packages, and scope misalignment.
