One of the issues I have come across is combining mechanical and electrical designs together. I've been told that is quite a clunky process. Is it common enough to dedicate time to solving? I'm not sure, what do you think?
Reconciling the MEP layouts tends to be manual, but it's just part of the job.
Automation may happen on large projects, but that's not most projects.
Is it worth solving? No.
The economics don't work out. The problem has been solvable for more than thirty years. The nature of the business relationships and the cost sensitivity of design fees and the disruption of changes to methods make it mostly a non-starter.
In mathematical terms it's in NP. A job shop scheduling problem where each workstation has no slack capacity.
There's no money in solving it. The limits on profits are almost entirely in the class of clients a firm has not in its work methods.