General contractors typically rely on some combination of manual processes and software for submittal reviews. Even on a project with modern project management software in place, a person, usually an early career project engineer or assistant project manager, still does the time-intensive comparison work: opening the submittal, pull up the relevant spec section, checking for any relevant RFI responses, and cross-referencing all these documents. Most existing software offerings organize that process rather than replacing it.
What does manual submittal review actually look like?
In practice, "manual review" doesn't mean working outside of software. It means a PE or APM opens the submittal, usually a PDF, inside whatever platform the project already runs, most often Procore, Autodesk Forma, or Bluebeam, pulls up the relevant spec section in a second window, and reads the two side by side to confirm the product, model number, or installation method actually matches what the spec calls for. The platform logs that the submittal came in, routes it to the right reviewer, and tracks its status. It doesn't do the comparison itself. That part still depends on a person, package after package, and it's where most of the time in submittal review actually goes.
Broad project management platforms: Procore and Autodesk Forma
Procore and Autodesk Forma (the platform formerly known as Autodesk Construction Cloud) are what most general contractors already use to manage the project. The appeal of either platform is that nothing about the submittal process lives in a separate system from the rest of the job. The tradeoff is that the review itself is still manual: the submittal log tells a project engineer what needs to be submitted by trade partners, but someone still has to open each submittal package and check it against the spec requirement line by line.
Document markup specialists: Bluebeam
Bluebeam organizes submittal packages by trade or spec section, routes each one through a defined reviewer sequence, and applies standardized stamps, approved, approved as noted, revise and resubmit, or rejected, so review decisions look the same no matter who's reviewing. Studio Sessions let multiple reviewers mark up and comment on the same submittal in real time, and linking a submittal directly to the drawing sheet it affects keeps field and office looking at the same current version instead of two different copies. The core product is built around markup, routing, and stamping rather than compliance checking. Someone still has to know what the spec requires before marking anything up, and there is no automated linking to relevant RFIs that might amend project specifications.
AI-first compliance review: Trunk Tools
Trunk Tools is one of the vendors building AI-first tools for construction, and TrunkSubmittal is its submittal compliance review agent. Instead of a person comparing the submittal to the spec by hand, TrunkSubmittal reads the submittal against the applicable spec sections and relevant RFI responses and flags what's non-compliant before it reaches the architect. In Trunk Tools platform data, around 55% of reviewed submittals carry a significant compliance gap, and another 35% to 40% carry a minor or moderate one, so an automated first pass tends to catch real issues rather than rubber-stamping paperwork nobody actually checked.
TrunkSubmittal can be added as a step directly inside the submittal workflow teams already run in Procore or Autodesk Forma, writing the compliance report and status back to the project management system instead of requiring PEs and APMs to work from a separate tool. It works from the project's uploaded document set, serves as a first pass ahead of the architect's review, and a person still makes the final call before anything goes out.
What should actually drive the decision?
Category matters less than what the software actually does with the submittal once it arrives. A few questions are important to consider regardless of which type of tool you're looking at: Does it read the submittal's content and compare it against your spec sections and prior RFIs, or does it just track that a file was uploaded? Does it check against RFI responses in addition to specifications? Does someone still have to retype information back to the project management system?
Pricing model is worth asking about, too. Some newer AI-assisted tools, including tools added onto older project management platforms, bill based on credits consumed, which means the cost is genuinely hard to predict before construction even starts, and it quietly discourages a team from using the tool as often as they should. A flat, predictable rate for unlimited usage removes that friction entirely, since the incentive shifts to making the tool worth using constantly rather than metering how often it gets touched.
Will the field actually use it?
Software that never gets adopted doesn't save anyone time, no matter which category it falls into. Will project engineers and assistant project managers use the software consistently instead of working from email and paper? With AI agents, the tool only earns its keep if the team trusts the output enough to act on it instead of re-checking everything by hand anyway, which usually comes down to whether the vendor’s tools have been tested against an evaluation dataset from real construction projects and trained the general contractor’s project teams to leverage the tool.
Which one should a general contractor actually use?
The realistic setup on most projects is layered rather than single-tool: a broad PM platform like Procore or Autodesk Forma to log and route every submittal, plus either a markup tool for manual review or an AI-first tool like TrunkSubmittal to take on the actual spec comparison. The question worth asking isn't "which software?" It's "who or what is actually completing the first-pass review?" If the answer is an early-career project teammate doing it from scratch on every submittal, that's where the time and the risk both concentrate, and it's the gap AI-first tools exist to close.
About TrunkSubmittal
Projects using TrunkSubmittal have seen median submittal cycle time drop from around 55 days to about 14 days, a 74% reduction, with the share of "stuck" submittals, the ones that take more than 60 days to close out, falling to between 0% and 4%. PEs and APMs save between 30 minutes and 3.5 hours per submittal review, depending on the complexity of the package received.
Elliot Christiansen, SVP of Operations at Cleveland Construction, described the effect on staff this way: "TrunkSubmittal takes a PE or APM with little to no experience in the industry and gives them five-plus years of experience to work with. It drives efficiency, catches things some of our most senior PM staff doesn't look for, and ensures we aren't just passing paper to the architect to review." Cleveland Construction saved more than 790 hours and over $60,000 across four projects using TrunkSubmittal, and the faster reviews have already generated referral business from architects who noticed the difference.
Frequently asked questions
Do general contractors need special software for submittal reviews? Not necessarily. Many still review submittals manually inside whatever project management platform they already use, comparing each one against the spec by hand. Dedicated tools speed that comparison up rather than replace the underlying process.
What's the difference between a project management platform and a submittal review tool? Platforms like Procore, Autodesk Forma, or Bluebeam log, route, and track the submittal workflow. A dedicated AI-first review tool like TrunkSubmittal, focuses on comparing the submittal's content against the spec and prior RFI responses as well.
Does Bluebeam replace a submittal management system? No. Bluebeam organizes, routes, and stamps submittals as they move through review, but on its own it doesn't compare submittal content against your spec requirements the way an AI compliance tool does.
What is TrunkSubmittal? TrunkSubmittal is an AI-first compliance review tool available to general contractors, built by Trunk Tools. It reads incoming submittals against the applicable spec sections and prior RFI responses and flags non-compliance before a submittal reaches the architect, and it can run as a step inside your existing Procore or Autodesk Forma workflow, writing the compliance report and status back to your project management system.
By the Trunk Tools team. Last updated August 27, 2026.
Sources: Trunk Tools platform data; Trunk Tools case study with Cleveland Construction; Procore, Autodesk Forma, and Bluebeam product pages.