Stop 1 of 8 · Weekly
Plans and specs
Read the set and the spec once, and come away with the sheet index, the takeoff questions and the RFIs.
The read-through nobody pays for
A forty sheet set and a spec book take an evening, and the evening never comes. So Luis prices off the plan sheets, skims the general notes, and meets the structural revision three weeks into framing. Uploading the set does not delete the read-through. It moves it. Claude does the first pass in a minute, and Luis spends his half hour on the twelve things it flagged instead of hunting for them.
What to upload, and in what order
The full set as one PDF first, then the spec or the general notes, then anything that arrived after: a revision, a structural sheet, the architect's email with a clarification. Scans are fine. Keep the set and the spec in the same chat, because half of what matters on a job is the conflict between them.
Three lists, not a summary
| List | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Sheet index | One line per sheet, so Luis knows what exists before he needs it |
| Questions | What the documents do not answer and he has to decide or price |
| RFIs | Conflicts and gaps, already written to send |
What Claude cannot see on a drawing
It cannot scale. It cannot measure a line on a PDF and hand you a length. It reads the dimension strings, the schedules, the callouts and the notes that are printed, and it does arithmetic on them. So make the sourcing part of the prompt: every quantity names the sheet it came from, and anything not printed goes on the questions list instead. The second read then takes ten minutes, because Luis opens four sheets, not forty.
[upload the plan set and the spec] Three things, in this order. One: a sheet index, one line per sheet, what it covers. Two: the scope room by room, in the order a crew would build it. Three: every question these documents do not answer. For any dimension or quantity you state, name the sheet and the dimension string it is printed on. If it is not printed, put it in the questions list instead of stating it.
From the same documents, list every conflict between sheets and every gap that stops me pricing: architectural against structural, plan against schedule, plan against the general notes, drawings against the spec. Write each as a numbered RFI with the sheet, what it says, what contradicts it, and the question. Three sentences each so the architect can answer them the same day.
[upload the original set and the revision] Compare these sheet by sheet. List every change: sheet number, what it was, what it is now, and which trade it hits. Order them by how much they move cost. Mark anything that changes work the subs have already bid on, and write that group as a separate list I can send to those subs today.