Find the needle. Skip the haystack.
An IFC set lands and the answers are scattered through it: the shutdown restrictions, what a vendor left out of a quote, the scope that still has to be priced. We mapped 90 days of real contractor usage onto the six SOP steps where those answers hide, and where every hour spent finding them is an estimator's or a PM's hour.
1. Place a bet first
Everyone in construction has an intuition about where the burden sits. Pick the three SOP steps you think contractors grind through most in Pelles, then look at the numbers.
Before you scroll
Which three steps do contractors work hardest?
2. How the map was drawn
Nothing here is a survey. Both signals are things customers already do, repeatedly, without being asked.
Repeated questions
55%
Of every readable document question over 90 days turned out to be part of an identical question set re-run project after project. A question list re-typed on every new package is not a question. It is a specification the customer wrote for us.
Workflow patterns
95%
Of contractors run the single most common flow. Sorting every workflow run by its shape returned seven recurring flows, and each one is run by more than half the contractors in the product. Not preferences. Trade-wide procedure.
3. The SOP, lit by usage
Six steps, in the order a job actually moves through them. The bar on each step is how much of it runs through Pelles today. Click any step for what contractors are actually hunting for there.
Pursuit
Preconstruction
Execution
Execution
Document Control
Keep the current set current, and get the part that belongs to you out of the 900 pages.
91%
of contractors run this
100%
of the busiest step's volume
The busiest step in the product, and it runs the length of the job rather than sitting at one point in it. Comparing revisions is the single most-run flow in the product, worked by nine in ten contractors. Splitting a set (pulling out the finish plans, the tiling specs, the one trade that is yours) is a substantial flow in its own right. It is unglamorous, and it is the step before almost every other flow on this map, which is why so much of the product runs through it.
Compares a June drawing set against the August set of the same project.
Compares two versions of a subcontract against each other, looking for what moved between them.
Asks for only the drawings that belong to their trade to be pulled out of the set, the matching specification sections separated from the rest, and confirmation that nothing in their scope was left behind.
4. The seven flows behind those steps
Underneath those six steps sit seven recurring flows, shaded here by how much work each one carries. The volume is one story. The share of contractors is the better one: every flow on this list is run by more than half the contractors in the product, and the top three by nine in ten.
| Recurring flow | Process step | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Compare and find changes | Document Control | 100% | 91% |
| Scope narrative and completeness | Project Acquisition | 91% | 95% |
| Extract to table / BOM | Detailing & Engineering | 76% | 91% |
| Submittal package | Submittals & Material Matrix | 51% | 68% |
| Split and isolate documents | Document Control | 45% | 59% |
| Quote levelling | Major Equipment Buyout | 34% | 59% |
| Budget and labour hours | Job Cost Budget | 29% | 59% |
Click a column head to sort.
Share of volume is measured against the most-run flow, and the categories are keyword-matched and overlap, so read it as sizing rather than as precise measurement. The contractor spread is the reliable figure, and it says these are not one customer's habits, they are the trade's.
5. The specs customers wrote without knowing it
The clearest signal in the data is not a feature request. It is the same list of things to check, worked again against a new project. Three of them, by role, summarised rather than quoted.
Typed into a new project every time a package lands.
Whether prevailing wage applies to the work
Whether the project is taxable
What the liquidated-damages exposure looks like
How change-order overhead and profit are handled
Which bonds the package requires
A sample of what the list covers. The full one is longer.
6. What the lit steps have in common
The map is not random. Every step that lights up shares the same three properties, and together they are what turn a repeated question into something an agent can own.
The input is a document set
Drawings, specs, subcontracts, quotes. If the answer lives in a 900-page PDF rather than in a database, someone is reading it manually today.
The output is a table, not an essay
A BOM, a panel schedule, a levelled quote comparison, a list of missing scope. Customers are already asking for Excel explicitly, so the deliverable is the file.
The question set never changes
Only the project does. That is what makes it an agent rather than a chat: the procedure is stable, and package after package it is still the same list.
Pelles is not spread evenly across the SOP, and it should not be. It concentrates on the six steps that run from the day a package lands to the day the job is bought out: acquisition, budget, document control, detailing, buyout, submittals. Those are the steps where the input is a document set and the procedure repeats, and where every hour saved is an hour of an estimator or a PM, not an hour of data entry.
Keep exploring
See what happens to the table once it leaves the document, or how a subcontractor loses margin one filing cabinet at a time.