Trunk Tools Discussed on Construction Technology Podcast (Ft. Elliot Christiansen, Cleveland Construction)

Episode Title: Transitioning from Procore to Autodesk and new ConTech – Elliot from Cleveland Construction

Podcast Info: Construction Technology Podcast, Hosted by Luigi La Corte, Mike Powers, and Andrew Zukoski

Trunk Tools Discussed on Construction Technology Podcast (Ft. Elliot Christiansen, Cleveland Construction)

Trunk Tools took center stage in a recent episode of the Construction Technology Podcast, where Elliot Christiansen, Senior Vice President of Operations at Cleveland Construction, told hosts Luigi La Corte, Mike Powers, and Andrew Zukoski why the national general contractor is all in on Trunk Tools.

In the episode, “Transitioning from Procore to Autodesk and new ConTech,” Elliot is direct about Cleveland’s commitment: “We just recently signed our enterprise deal with Trunk Tools, so we’re 100% in on them. We’re rolling them out on all new projects, and we’ve retroactively rolled them out on projects that have any significant time period left.” He points to Trunk Tools’ drawing review, submittal review, and RFI agents as the ones driving tangible ROI for his teams.

The strongest signal, though, came from the field. After internal demos and a few project rollouts, the people Elliot least expects to ask for new software started asking for it: “We don’t get a lot of our older superintendents and PMs asking for new technology. So when you get those guys asking for stuff, you know you’re on to something.”

Why Trunk Tools, and not a build-your-own approach

Cleveland also experiments with horizontal AI — building its own agents in Box AI, where the cost is capped and the data already lives. So the hosts pressed Elliot on the obvious question: why pay for a dedicated platform when you can spin up agents yourself? His answer came down to construction context and workflow depth — this is purpose-built construction AI, not a general-purpose tool pointed at a jobsite.

“With Trunk Tools, they have such better construction context,” Elliot explained. “The construction industry has its own language — terminology, acronyms, just the way people talk about things.” (His example: “sheetrock” and “drywall” mean the same thing, except sheetrock is also a brand — the kind of nuance a generic model misses.)

He then walked through how that depth shows up in real workflows. The RFI agent first checks whether the answer already exists in the drawings; if not, it drafts the RFI, attaches the right documents for the architect, and pushes it into Autodesk as a draft inside the workflow. The submittal agent auto-detects submittals and — through a custom service account Cleveland built into its Autodesk process — reviews them and writes back a table flagging what’s compliant, not compliant, or partially compliant before routing it to an assistant PM. The drawing review agent reads drawings in a way Cleveland’s homegrown Box agents simply can’t. Submittals come right back into Autodesk Forma, and Trunk Tools meets with project teams weekly or bi-weekly to keep usage high.

“Where Trunk Tools is going is so much further ahead of what we could build ourselves,” Elliot said. “It’s making our project teams a lot more efficient and a lot faster than what we could do internally.” He also previewed a new tool he’d seen in beta the day before — Trunk Tools’ TrunkBrowse — describing it as 2D BIM-style navigation where clicking a door opening surfaces its properties, associated RFIs, and any issues tied to it.

From managing paperwork to managing agents

The conversation closed in on a prediction Elliot had shared publicly: “The future construction project manager will not manage paperwork. They’ll manage agents.” He imagines a PM running agents overnight and walking in to a prioritized list — these submittals need review, these are ready for the architect, these RFIs need a final look — and noted he doesn’t think the industry is all that far from it.

In this episode, you’ll hear Elliot dive into:

• Why Cleveland Construction signed an enterprise deal and is 100% in on Trunk Tools
• What made superintendents and PMs start asking for the tools themselves
• Why construction context beats a general-purpose, build-your-own AI agent
• How the RFI, submittal, and drawing review agents fit directly into Cleveland’s Autodesk workflows
• Where Box AI, OpenSpace, Breadcrumb, and Autodesk fit around Trunk Tools in the stack
• Why the future PM will manage agents instead of paperwork
• Why field buy-in — not features — is what makes or breaks construction software

The episode also covers Cleveland’s move from Procore to Autodesk and where CM fees and design-build are headed, but the throughline is clear: when the AI is built for construction and wired into the way teams already work, the field actually adopts it.

Trunk Tools is the trusted AI platform for construction, augmenting project teams to #LetBuildersBuild.

Watch the full episode to hear why Cleveland Construction is betting on Trunk Tools.