When Decisions End in (Ex)Cell
Cost estimates, vendor comparisons, change orders — they all end in a spreadsheet. The question is what happens when the spreadsheet starts thinking with you.
1. The problem: numbers without judgment
It's 11 PM. Dana — procurement lead at a $180M mechanical sub — stares at cell D14: $142/CY for concrete. The formula is right. But where did that number come from?
Across thousands of projects, teams reverse-engineer the reasoning behind their own spreadsheets every night. Not because the data is wrong — because the judgment doesn't travel with it. Click through to trace a cell back to its source.
| Item | Qty | Unit Cost | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Concrete (4000 PSI) | 240 CY | $142 | $34,080 |
| 3 | Rebar #5 | 18 tons | $1,180/t | $21,240 |
| 4 | Formwork rental | 1 lot | $8,600 | $8,600 |
| 5 | Labor — Foundation | 320 hrs | $68/hr | $21,760 |
2. The workbook stays. The infrastructure changes.
Instead of replacing Excel, add an intelligence layer underneath it. Five capabilities — ingestion, querying, template filling, report generation, and verification. Click each capability below to see what it does.
Click a capability to explore
3. Upload and unlock
Before anything else, the system has to understand what your workbook means — not just raw cells, but headers, tables, key-value pairs, and document structure. Watch how a workbook gets analyzed on upload.
| 1 | Riverside Plaza — Schedule of Values | Contract: $2.4M | Aug 2024 | ||
| 2 | GC: Riverside Builders | ||||
| 3 | |||||
| 4 | Line | Description | Scheduled | Completed | Balance |
| 5 | 3.1 | Foundations | $340,800 | $312,000 | $28,800 |
| 6 | 5.1 | Structural steel | $286,000 | $143,000 | $143,000 |
| 7 | 15.1 | Mechanical | $194,200 | $58,260 | $135,940 |
| 8 | 16.1 | Electrical | $167,500 | $41,875 | $125,625 |
| 9 | |||||
| 10 | Total | $2,412,000 | |||
| 11 | Retainage (10%) | $241,200 | |||
| 12 | |||||
| 13 | Per AIA G703 format. Retainage held per contract. |
Primavera P6
.xer — Schedules, activities, resources
MS Project
.mpp — Tasks, calendars, assignments
Accubid
.xlsx — Estimates, bids, change orders
Smartsheet
.xlsx — Exported for AI analysis
4. Every number carries its source
Dana's $142 looked clean — but was it based on Rev 2 or Rev 3 delivery terms? Verification cross-references your spreadsheet against source documents and flags mismatches before they become disputes.
Cited Answers
Ask “where did this come from?” and get a response pointing to the exact spec section, contract clause, or drawing.
Stale Data Flags
When a unit price doesn't match the latest contract revision, or delivery terms changed between versions — the system flags it.
Construction-Native
Built for JIS, cost estimates, schedules, and industry-standard document structures — not generic document search.
5. Full reports from a single prompt
“Analyze cost variance for Phase 2 against approved budget.” The query engine scans your project documents, extracts the data, and assembles a formatted spreadsheet. Step through the workflow below.
6. Your format, your methodology
Dana's vendor comparison template encodes twelve years of judgment. Upload any .xlsx — the system fills it from your project documents while preserving formatting, formulas, and layouts. See a template get filled in real time.
Submittal Log — Building C Foundation
Project: ________ PM: ________
| Item | Spec § | Subcontractor | Due Date | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | |||||
| 4 | |||||
| 5 | |||||
| 6 | |||||
| 7 |
7. Ask questions where the work happens
No copy-paste, no tab switching. Highlight a cell, type a question, get a cited answer — right inside the workbook. Try the plugin demo below.
| Item | Scheduled | Previously | This Period | Source | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | |||||
| 3 | |||||
| 4 | |||||
| 5 | |||||
| 6 | |||||
| 7 | |||||
AI writes results directly into your workbook — not a chat bubble
8. Dana's Thursday night, revisited
Same workbook. Same cell D14. Same question. But now with an intelligence layer behind the spreadsheet. 46 minutes becomes 4. Compare the before and after.
9. What we're still figuring out
This isn't a silver bullet. Three hard problems remain.
Template ambiguity
A section labeled “Misc.” with twelve unlabeled rows forces the system to guess. Cleaner templates get better fills — your worst-maintained ones need the most hand-holding.
Revision hell
Six drawing revisions, three referenced across different email threads. We flag conflicts, but “which revision did we actually bid from?” sometimes still needs a human call.
The last 10%
90% done in seconds. 100% — matching formatting quirks, merged cells, formula dependencies — still takes iteration. Faster than from-scratch, but not hands-off yet.
Where this works best today: Teams with well-structured templates and consistent naming see immediate value. Teams with fifteen versions of “Final_Estimate_v3_FINAL_USE_THIS.xlsx” have cleanup work first. The system multiplies your existing organization — it doesn't replace it.
10. Before and after
Excel Today
- -46 minutes to trace one number back to its source
- -A cell comment that says 'from Martin bid' — no revision, no date, no section
- -Six tabs of vendor data with no connection to the actual contract terms
- -Re-keying Accubid exports into your own template, row by row
Excel + Intelligence Layer
- +Highlight a cell, ask where the number came from — get a cited answer in seconds
- +Describe a report in plain English, get a structured spreadsheet back
- +Cross-reference against specs before the number becomes a dispute
- +Upload P6, Accubid, MS Project natively — no manual re-keying
“The workbook stays. The infrastructure underneath is what changes.”