MENLO PARK, Calif. — In the fast-paced world of modern commercial construction, time is quite literally currency. For decades, general contractors, project managers, and preconstruction teams have shared a common, universally dreaded rite of passage: comparing architectural and engineering drawings. Scouring hundreds—sometimes thousands—of pages of blueprints to identify subtle changes between revisions has traditionally been a painstaking, manual chore. Missing a single shifted wall, an adjusted structural beam, or a modified MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) layout can result in costly change orders, delayed schedules, and strained client relationships.
Enter artificial intelligence.
Recognizing the urgent need to modernize these archaic workflows, Menlo Park-based Novo Construction has turned to an innovative software solution known as BuildCheck. Specializing in AI-driven drawing reviews for city comments, Requests for Information (RFIs), and change orders, BuildCheck has quickly become a cornerstone of Novo’s tech-forward operational strategy.
Recently, the builder integrated BuildCheck’s latest product, Diffs, into two major California projects. According to Colin Stoner, Chief Information Officer at Novo Construction, the tool has fundamentally altered how the company handles drawing management, slashing review times and helping project teams stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly complex construction landscape.
The Main Facts: Revolutionizing Drawing Management
At its core, Diffs is designed to solve a very specific, highly frustrating problem: version control and visual inconsistency detection. In traditional project execution, when architects or engineers issue revised drawing sets, project managers must manually cross-reference the updates. While legacy digital tools like Bluebeam allow users to digitally overlay drawings to spot shifts, doing so across massive multi-discipline drawing packages is cumbersome, error-prone, and visually exhausting—frequently leaving team members with severe eye strain and cognitive fatigue.
Diffs automates this entire process. Leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms, the software instantly compares new drawing iterations with previous versions. It flags "diffs"—discrepancies, modifications, and inconsistencies between the documents—and generates a comprehensive, easy-to-navigate log of changes.
For Novo Construction, the primary advantage lies in pre-construction cost estimation and early-stage budgeting. By automating the detection of design alterations before construction mobilization begins, Novo’s project managers can instantly assess how a relocated wall, an added window, or upgraded door specifications will impact the project’s scope and budget.
By capturing these discrepancies early, Novo empowers its trade partners—such as framing and drywall contractors—to price adjustments accurately, safeguarding profit margins and maintaining absolute transparency with project owners.
Chronology of Adoption: From Manual Headaches to Automated Efficiency
The journey toward fully embracing AI-driven drawing review at Novo Construction did not happen overnight. It is the result of a deliberate, step-by-step technological evolution aimed at eliminating project bottlenecks.
Phase 1: The Era of Manual Overlays and Visual Fatigue
Historically, Novo’s project managers relied heavily on manual oversight and basic PDF overlay tools. When an updated drawing package dropped, teams would spend countless hours scrolling back and forth, zooming in on grid lines, and highlighting modifications by hand. The process was not only a massive drain on human capital but also carried a high risk of human error. A single overlooked structural revision could slip past the preconstruction team, only to be discovered in the field when rework became exponentially more expensive.
Phase 2: Integrating BuildCheck for Compliance and RFIs
Recognizing the limitations of manual reviews, Novo initially partnered with BuildCheck to streamline code compliance checks, address city review comments, and manage RFIs. BuildCheck’s core platform proved immensely successful in automating these administrative compliance hurdles, building trust within Novo’s operational ranks regarding what AI could realistically achieve in a high-stakes environment.
Phase 3: Scaling Up with "Diffs"
Building on its successful integration of BuildCheck’s core features, Novo recently piloted Diffs across two distinct California projects. The implementation marked a major leap forward, shifting the AI’s utility from purely regulatory compliance to proactive design-change management. Instead of spending hours hunting for discrepancies, Novo’s project managers could instantly run automated diff checks, review or dismiss flags, and immediately initiate pricing discussions with subcontractors.
Supporting Data and Technical Insights: How Diffs Operates in the Field
To understand the tangible impact of Diffs, one must examine the mechanics of modern construction documentation. A typical commercial construction project generates thousands of pages of architectural, structural, civil, and MEP drawings. Every time an architect issues an "addendum" or "revision cloud," the baseline contract documents shift.
Volume Reduction: Manual comparisons of a 500-page drawing set can easily consume several working days for a senior project manager. Diffs reduces this administrative burden to a fraction of the time, allowing automated algorithms to isolate relevant changes in minutes.
Targeted Flagging: The software does not merely dump a massive list of changes onto the user; it categorizes and logs them. Project managers can click on a specific flag to instantly highlight the exact sheets and locations where modifications occur.
Low-Friction Filtering: Not all drawing changes are created equal. Many revisions involve minor notation updates, title block changes, or engineering notes that do not affect physical construction scopes. Diffs allows users to quickly review and dismiss non-pertinent flags, ensuring that teams only focus on actionable items that impact pricing, scheduling, or constructability.
Official Perspectives: A Conversation with Colin Stoner
In an exclusive interview with Construction Dive, Novo CIO Colin Stoner shed light on the strategic value of the Diffs tool, the reality of workplace learning curves, and the broader lessons Novo has learned regarding artificial intelligence in the built environment.
The Power of Early Pricing
When asked about how Novo utilizes Diffs on active projects, Stoner emphasized that the software’s greatest value proposition lies in pre-construction pricing accuracy.
"The biggest get for us is pricing out projects early on. Not necessarily in preconstruction, but before construction starts. That’s when changes can impact the pricing dramatically, whether it’s moving a wall, adding a window, changing the doors, whatever," Stoner explained.
Stoner contrasted this streamlined approach with traditional methods, noting the physical toll and inefficiency of legacy software:
"Before, our project managers might try to use something like Bluebeam to overlay the changes and see what moved. But doing that over hundreds of pages of drawings is cumbersome and makes you go cross-eyed."
By leveraging Diffs, Novo’s team can bypass this tedious visual search.
"You can run a ‘diff check,’ and it flags issues on the project relating to those diffs. Then, if a wall moves, the PM can go back, talk to their framing drywall contractor and start getting the price changes for that. Because typically with us, these changes can often change the scope we are contracted to do. That’s the really big win for us: being able to stay in front of the drawings as they evolve."
Navigating the Learning Curve
Introducing new software into a legacy industry often encounters resistance from field personnel and project managers accustomed to traditional methods. However, Stoner noted that the learning curve for Diffs has been surprisingly manageable.
"Before, when you’d have to spot the changes manually, the learning curve was pretty steep. But now that it runs that AI check for changes, it just flags any issues just like with the initial drawing check," Stoner said.
Because the interface allows users to review, filter, and dismiss irrelevant flags intuitively, user adoption has been smooth.
"Now, you go through, review the flags or dismiss them. There’s plenty of changes that are not pertinent, so they just get dismissed. It’s more about having that log and being able to capture those quickly. You can still click on it. It’ll highlight everything on the pertinent sheets where it’s referring to whatever changes exist. So, it’s pretty low friction for the learning curve now."
Trust, But Verify: Lessons Learned in AI Deployment
As the construction industry continues to be flooded with emerging AI tools, contractors are actively figuring out how to balance technological enthusiasm with operational pragmatism. Stoner reflected on what Novo has discovered through its partnership with BuildCheck and Diffs.
"Frankly, it just complements what BuildCheck does. It’s not that BuildCheck can’t do it; it just doesn’t really have those features yet. But for what we’ve been able to do, they complement each other."
More importantly, Stoner highlighted a cultural shift within Novo’s team regarding artificial intelligence. Rather than fearing AI or viewing it as a gimmick, team members are developing a healthy, productive reliance on the technology.
"As far as changing the way our team looks at AI, I think more than anything, it’s made them more trustworthy of it in a lot of ways," Stoner observed.
However, he was quick to emphasize a golden rule of technology integration in high-risk industries:
"At the same time, whether it’s something I’m pushing out to them or something that comes from one of our vendors, I always make sure to trust but verify. That’s the name of the game here."
Broad Industry Implications: The Future of AI in Construction
Novo Construction’s successful deployment of Diffs serves as a bellwether for the broader commercial construction sector. As profit margins remain tight and labor shortages persist, general contractors are under immense pressure to adopt technologies that maximize efficiency and eliminate administrative waste.
1. Shifting from Reactive to Proactive Risk Management
For decades, construction technology focused primarily on post-facto documentation—tracking what already happened on a job site. AI-powered tools like Diffs represent a paradigm shift toward predictive and proactive management. By catching design changes before mobilization, contractors can negotiate equitable change orders before trade partners order materials or mobilize labor crews, drastically reducing friction between owners, architects, and builders.
2. Democratizing Tech Adoption in the Field
One of the historical barriers to construction tech adoption has been complexity. Software that requires extensive, multi-week training sessions often fails to achieve high utilization rates among busy project managers. Novo’s experience demonstrates that successful construction AI tools must be intuitive, "low-friction," and directly solve an acute daily pain point. When software saves time and reduces physical fatigue—like curing the metaphorical "cross-eyed" blueprinted review process—field teams embrace it willingly.
3. Redefining the Role of the Project Manager
Far from replacing human expertise, tools like Diffs elevate the role of the project manager. By automating the mechanical, tedious work of line-by-line comparison, AI frees professionals to focus on higher-value tasks: strategic negotiations, relationship management, quality control, and value engineering. The project manager transitions from an exhausted document-checker to a strategic financial and operational controller.
Conclusion
The integration of BuildCheck’s Diffs tool by Novo Construction underscores a broader truth about the evolution of the built environment: artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept reserved for theoretical whitepapers. It is a pragmatic, highly effective jobsite reality.
By eliminating the tedious manual labor of cross-referencing architectural drawings, Novo has not only saved valuable hours for its project management teams but has also secured a critical competitive advantage in pre-construction budgeting and risk mitigation. As firms across the country watch pioneers like Novo navigate the AI landscape, one lesson is abundantly clear: while technology can automate the heavy lifting, the ultimate key to success remains grounded in smart leadership, operational vigilance, and Colin Stoner’s guiding industry mantra—trust, but verify.
