rooppal

More than just red-tape there's whitecollar processes in pre-construction that take months. Just estimating the cost of each subtrade is a process currently done by hand on blueprints (what I work on automating).

`white_collar_automation * robotics_automation = building more, cheaper`

We don't really have plans on using user-data to train our models, since it's too much of a chicken-and-egg problem. Carbon estimating is something we had some clients talk about -- it uses the same material quantity estimation we're already doing, and is something we're really interested in (my heart is in impact-driven work). Would love the connections!

I think parsing a whole blueprint with monolithic models is really difficult, but the constrained object detection/semantic segmentation problems are significantly more tractable. You can chain those CV models with VLMs to do things like get scale right. I'm always interested in novel HCI paradigms like voice!

I think that's well within the realm of possibility :)

Amazing, I saw you already connected with my cofounder over chat, looking forward to it!

Absolutely! That's our end-goal, to remove the painful back-and-forth of permitting. Once you solve blueprint understanding, the possibilities are enormous, from spell-check to material efficiencies, etc.

Thanks for such a detailed question! We're focused on material quantity estimates right now. We're using pretty generic averages for costing as our primary users (suppliers) have a way better finger on the pulse of the market and typically change the unit price anyways. We'll work on better cost accuracy though, and are looking to integrate with RSMeans or building our own scrapers.

For the second question, it really is most accurate on "fully standardized" blueprints due to our training distribution. Will work on improving that as well!

We've seen that suppliers do a ton of bidding and cost estimation, and are keen to be accurate (estimate too high and they lose to competitors). GCs and suppliers don't want to be too low because that potentially costs them tens of thousands of dollars.

I really wish BIM took off more, unfortunately most suppliers and GCs are still using blueprints (but at least have moved off paper).

Our focus is currently on servicing suppliers and GCs. Our models would need labels to train, so we have to source our own data.