AI for Steel Drawing Review, RFIs, and Mill Certs

Mill Test Report Verification

Every heat of structural steel arrives with an MTR listing chemistry and mechanical properties. Someone must confirm that the grade matches the specification, for example A992 for wide flanges or A572 Grade 50 for plate, and that values fall within limits, including yield, tensile, elongation, and carbon equivalent where relevant. Projects with Buy America or domestic-content requirements add a check that the steel was melted and manufactured in the US.

Reading dozens of MTRs per week is tedious. A private AI can extract the heat number, grade, chemistry, and country of melt from scanned certs, compare to the purchase order and spec, and flag mismatches for a person to review.

• Heat number and grade extraction from scanned PDFs
• Comparison of values to the ASTM limits for the specified grade
• Domestic melt flag for projects with Buy America requirements

Shop Drawing Checks Against Contract Documents

Before a shop drawing is released for fabrication, a project manager compares it with the structural drawings and specs. Do the member sizes match the framing plans? Are weld sizes and connection types consistent with the contract details?

Are camber, finishes, and bolt types as specified? AI can assist by reading both sets and listing discrepancies with sheet references, such as a beam size that differs between the plan and the shop drawing. It does not replace review by the engineer of record or detailer coordination, but it can surface candidate conflicts quickly so the reviewer spends time on the real ones.

• Cross-check sizes, grades, and finishes across drawing sets
• Flag missing weld symbols or inconsistent connection notes
• List items needing clarification with sheet and detail references

Drafting RFIs and Tracking Responses

A request for information is how a fabricator resolves conflicts before cutting steel. Good RFIs are specific: they cite sheet numbers, describe the conflict, propose a solution, and note schedule impact. Poor ones are vague and take weeks to get answered.

AI can draft an RFI from a flagged discrepancy, including references and a proposed resolution, for the project manager to edit and send. It can also track open RFIs against the schedule and flag those blocking release of a package. The cost of an unanswered RFI is idle drawings and schedule slip, so visibility matters.

Answering Project and Job Status Questions

Owners, project managers, and sales staff ask the same questions repeatedly: What is the status of job 2417? Which pieces are waiting on material? How many hours have we spent on the welding of package 3 against budget?

When the answers live in an ERP or fabrication system, a natural-language layer lets staff ask directly, with the underlying query shown and the user's ERP permissions respected. That saves the back-and-forth with the office and reduces misquoted ship dates.

Boundaries and Deployment Considerations

Do not let AI approve drawings, accept material, or send RFIs without a person reviewing them. Verify outputs against the source and keep logs of what the AI read and produced. Many owners restrict drawing distribution, so run models on your own servers using open-weight models and keep documents in your network.

If you handle very few projects or your documents are already well-structured in a detailing system, the manual process may be fast enough that setup cost is not justified.