End-to-end teardown of how Imperium Building Solutions produces a facade bid, mapped against where Facade.ai takes over. Reverse-engineered from the 80 West Broadway package (RFP → Exhibit B SOW → leveling form → drawings → RFI samples).
The market gap, confirmed: facade firms use Bluebeam for takeoff measurement — but you still manually identify which areas to measure, and nothing facade-specific carries those quantities into estimating (price generation + a knowledge database). The next step Arianna wants: a system that generates an offer with all items to quote, each referencing the drawing/detail/spec it came from, so the supplier can simply put a price next to each line. Facade.ai owns the identification → organization → packaging chain that no tool currently touches.
GC emails an RFP + a Dropbox link. Simone opens an all-disciplines design package and pulls out only the facade-relevant sheets & specs by hand.
Ingest the entire package, classify every sheet/spec, surface the facade subset. Also: detect the design phase (SD / DD / CD) — this determines scope confidence and flags that a subsequent drawing set will follow.
Read the GC's Exterior Finish Schedule (every material code → source, color, location) and the Exhibit B SOW template to establish what's to be furnished. Cross-check against specs sections.
Extract the full TAG# → material → location table and parse Exhibit B line items into a structured scope list. Output categories are always the same: Windows, Curtain Wall, Terracotta, Metal Panels, Storefront, Terrace Doors. Anything not there must be explicitly EXCLUDED.
Simone prints elevations, hand-colors every surface by material, counts units, measures m²/lm, and applies assembly rules. Bluebeam measures once you highlight — but you still pick what to highlight.
The codification is clearer now. Two tracks:
Metal surrounds (MT-54): (1) identify perimeter in lm from elevation drawings; (2) extract geometry from detail drawings to determine bent / L-shaped / C-shaped fabrication type; (3) quantity = perimeter × assembly rule. Highly automatable.
Terracotta system: identify TC panels from finish schedule; count panels and map to elevation; identify substructure system (each panel has a bracket substructure — engineer determines anchor count based on weight + dimensions + wind loads). Substructure logic is somewhat standard.
The same quantities live in 3 formats — architect (imperial) → Imperium SOW (metric) → GC bid form (imperial/bid categories). Simone converts & cross-checks by hand, every revision.
Deterministic conversion + Exhibit B category mapping + self-validation. Because the numbers must agree across documents, the system can verify itself with no human check.
Email the correct material subset to each supplier, then wait 3–4 weeks while each redoes the takeoff on their portion. If the info is pre-organized with RFIs already sent, suppliers say it becomes very easy — just a matter of putting a price next to it.
Supplier roster is stable and known — auto-package the right material set per supplier from Stage 2–3 output. The packaging format is now confirmed as the value unlock: suppliers get organized, reference-linked line items instead of raw drawings.
Arianna or a supplier spots a missing callout or drawing conflict → manually creates an RFI and references the relevant drawing. Industry is old-fashioned: supplier emails/calls with a question → manually transformed into formal RFI. Tool auto-generation is not used.
Two automation layers:
(1) Pre-bid checklist: scan every project against the 10 standard RFI categories (performance requirements, glass make-up, system type, structural attachment, trade interfaces, dimensions, finishes, mock-up, procurement, scope gaps). Flag any that can't be answered from the documents. This alone saves multiple back-and-forths.
(2) Drawing conflict detection: cross-reference elevation drawings against section details — catch mismatches like corrugated vs flat panel before suppliers ask.
Supplier prices arrive; Imperium layers in overhead, PM, customs & duties, contingency, engineering stamps, Italy travel → the final numbers.
Deliberately hands-off — this is Imperium's judgment/margin logic. One future exception: a $/SF rough budget lookup for early developer-stage asks (where GC doesn't yet have a CD set and just needs a ballpark for a bank loan). Arianna notes this depends heavily on supplier relationships and geography — complex to generalize. Could be a per-company historical database feature (upload past proposals/contracts → track original cost vs final + change orders).
Type every quantity into the GC's Exhibit B template and highlight the relevant scope items in the PDF drawings so the GC can see visually what's being quoted.
Populate Exhibit B from Stage 3 output. Auto-generate the highlighted scope PDF (already identified regions in Stage 2 = pre-done markup). Output schema confirmed — high value, low difficulty.
A new drawing set lands every few weeks for 6–12+ months. DD → 100% DD → CD set → bulletins. Simone manually hunts the deltas and re-prices. Critical business point: changes after the CD set (the contractual basis of design) are additional costs — the ability to flag and document these changes is how Imperium protects revenue on change orders.
Diff drawing versions, flag exactly which quantities changed, re-run Stages 2–3 only on deltas. Added value: automatically flag any change that occurs after the CD set baseline — these are potential change orders. This turns a manual revenue-protection process into an automatic one.
| Scope category | Unit | Qty (80 W Bway) | Furnish + Install |
|---|---|---|---|
| Punched windows (tilt & turn, incl. glass, receptors, straps) | SF | 8,761 | $1,267,703 |
| Painted aluminum window surround (MT-54) | LF | 3,491 | $314,627 |
| Storefront system | SF | 912 | $237,967 |
| Terracotta panels @ storefront | SF | — | $285,200 |
| Cantilever + mech-screen metal panels | SF | 3,269 / 3,660 / 655 / 566 | $1,360,762 |
| Engineering, calcs, submittals, design-assist | LS | — | $291,162 |
| Subtotal — Furnish & Install | $3,984,619 | ||
Exhibit B is the contract's "Exhibit B" — the full scope of work that becomes the binding document. It runs ~230 line items covering office & documentation, safety, installation requirements, glass specs, hardware, louvers, metal panels, testing requirements, and punch list. The top-level categories (windows, curtain wall, terracotta, metal panels, storefront, terrace doors) are consistent across GCs. A structured Alternates block sits below (2-side vs 4-side receptors +$50K/+$128K, terracotta-vs-metal surround −$105K, NY PE stamp +$29K, mockup allowances, bird glass excluded). Note: get the live formula-level file before building against this schema — current values are from cached read.
| Phase | Drawing maturity | When RFP arrives | Facade.ai implication |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD Schematic Design | Conceptual, few details, low info density | Early — developer needs bank loan budget | Rough budget only ($/SF lookup). Low automation value — too little data. |
| DD Design Development | ~80% developed — another 100% DD + CD will follow | Most common RFP phase | Primary target. Full pipeline runs. Must flag "CD set to follow" so revision diffing activates later. |
| CD Construction Documents | Fully developed — contractual basis of design | Final bid before award | Highest automation confidence. Changes after this = change orders → auto-flag in Stage 8. |