‘TL:DR’
No Paywall
Bluebeam, a construction management platform based on sharing and mark-up of construction document PDFs, acquired on Sept. 4 Firmus AI, an artificial intelligence design review and risk analysis platform—in the latest move by the CM site's owner to invest in construction documents with AI as a way to detect problems and automate document-based workflows.. The deal will bring Firmus’ document AI capabilities—such as early identification of design-related risk, cross‑discipline coordination issues and scope gaps, as well as phase-to-phase drawing set comparisons and priority-based issue reporting—directly into the review and markup workflows of Bluebeam, owned by Nemetschek Group.
Firmus, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup, allows construction professionals to use AI in estimation, bidding, preconstruction and quality takeoff through early procurement processes and operations handoff. Its AI analyzes construction documents and drawings, identifying missing information, cross-discipline discrepancies and scope gaps."Drawings are the universal language of construction, and that’s where risk hides," said Shir Abecasis, Firmus CEO. "By joining Bluebeam, we’re placing Firmus’ drawing‑first intelligence exactly where millions of [industry] professionals already work. Together we’ll help teams surface issues earlier, communicate them clearly, protect their reputation and move projects forward with greater confidence and trust."
The acquisition brings Bluebeam's widely adopted PDF-based platform that brings 4D planning into 2D documents a stronger preconstruction analysis engine for users.
"We definitely see documents as the future of construction [and] we believe those workflows will continue to be improved with artificial intelligence," said Usman Shuja, CEO of Bluebeam.
He added that Firmus brings an AI engine that understands 2D PDFs at a granular level and can spot scope gaps, inconsistencies and changes across disciplines and revisions. Integrating Firmus capabilities gives construction teams quality assurance that reduces reviews and "stop-everything moments late in a project," Shuja said.
Also Bluebeam has furthered its partnership with Procore on the latter's construction management platform. Procore Documents + Bluebeam and Procore Submittals + Bluebeam are new integrations between the two platforms created to streamline collaboration and ensure building teams work from a single source of truth across projects. Users can now markup files stored in Procore Documents directly in Bluebeam (Documents + Bluebeam). With Procore Submittals + Bluebeam, users can launch Studio Sessions from Procore, review submittals collaboratively and return marked-up documents with a full audit trail to Bluebeam's platform.
My Thoughts 💭
Normally I am bearish on AI implementation when it comes to construction but this application seems logical. I can see this shortening the document review process but it remains to be seen if it will increase productivity and increase margins.