Better Automatic Submittals

See also:
https://projectsight.ideas.aha.io/ideas/PSW-I-3078

https://projectsight.ideas.aha.io/ideas/PSW-I-1887

We've done some testing with ACC, ProjectSight's BETA feature, and directly with various A.I. models (via OpenRouter). My current ranking is Gemini 2.5 Pro (~$2 in credits to process 1,600 pages) > ACC > ProjectSight. I would encourage anyone who needs this feature to just use an A.I. model and bypass the built-in features, for now. My comments here will hopefully help Trimble build out the Automatic Submittals feature to actually become useful, and ultimately better than competing solutions.

Enhancement Request

I'm providing three sample output files here, along with my current prompt to A.I. My hope is that Trimble ultimately gives us the following:

• Either give us a selection of common numbering formats, or (ideally) let us define our desired numbering format.

• Custom rules input, at the company level and during creation. Allow admins to define some custom rules, for example, my special instructions in my prompt. When users go to use the Automatic Submittals feature, present those rules, and allow them to customize the rules at that point. It should be used as a default/starting point.

• Fuzzy matching for Submittal Type. Use the Submittal Type Lookups to perform a fuzzy match against the provided specs. Right now, type extraction is very inconsistent. It should use our Lookup as the final result, and we should be able to use our Lookup to limit extraction to only those types.

• Extract the detail of the submittals requirements. Specs always show what exactly you need to submit, and this should be pulled into the description field.

• Remove the Spec Section number from the Subject.

• Actually link the Submittal Lookup field to each item. Otherwise, why have this? It's useful for sorting/filtering and should be filled in.

• Provide some feedback to users about the progress. Right now, you select the specs and submit, and you get a brief notification overlay that it's started. There is no progress bar, no notification, no indication of when it's done, leaving users to wonder if it's working. Eventually, they show up in the Submittals screen, but you have no indication of if it's 100% done, you just have to hope/assume so.

Summary Comparison

ACC provides a little too much (bad/duplicate) data, requiring detailed review and cleanup of the details, and their numbering is useless. ProjectSight has better numbering, but no detail extraction, leading to maybe less cleanup, but more work required to fill in the details. Gemini provides a nearly ready to use submittal register...it will require a final review of course, but seemingly everything is how we want it.

Pros & Cons for Each Platform

ACC Pros:

• Very good submittal type detection.

• Full extraction of the details of what is actually required for each submittal. Also a con in its current form (see below).

• Good messaging to the user about the progress of extraction.

ACC Cons:

• For our workflow...sequential numbering of submittal register items doesn't make sense. Submittals aren't submitted in the order of the specification sections. Would want control over how submittals are numbered.

• A good amount of duplication and/or overlap of details of each item being included seems to occur, leading to lots of cleanup.

ProjectSight Pros:

• Automatic linking of relevant spec section to the item, so reviewers can quickly open the specs.

• Numbering makes more sense than ACC, but still not what we would create manually.

ProjectSight Cons:

• Need full control over numbering of items.

• Spec Section is a lookup on each item, but it is not filled by the process.

• Spec Section is shown in the Subject, which is unnecessary.

• Submittal Type gets maybe 50% of the items, at best. So much is blank.

• No detail extraction for what should actually be submitted for review. Yes, you can open the specs to review that, but it should be extracted. It's so much faster to view in the record, rather than loading the specs.

Gemini 2.5 Pros:

• We control the prompt, which means we can direct the model to output exactly what we need.

  • Submittal numbering exactly how we do it manually.

  • Build out certain sections ahead of time, such as concrete reinforcing and cast-in-place concrete, where we know we'll have multiple shop drawing submittals.

  • Fuzzy matching for Submittal Type.

Gemini 2.5 / A.I. Cons:

• Models are constantly changing (improving...?), and what works today may not be available tomorrow. Users need long-term consistancy and reliability.

• Lots of up-front testing for file size/page length/dataset size and compatibility with models. Most can't handle a full spec book (in my testing), leading to having to break down the specs into chunks and then combine the output after.

• While we can get a great output that can be easily imported into ProjectSight, that won't give us the valuable feature of automatically linking the relevant spec section to each item.