Your Submittal Agent Chases Every Resubmittal Until It Is Approved

The AgentWorks Submittal Agent takes the back-and-forth of submittals off your project manager. It reminds subs when their submittals are due, sends reviewer comments back to the sub when an item comes back revise-and-resubmit, chases the resubmittal until it is approved, and alerts the PM when a delay starts to threaten an order date or schedule activity. The Submittal Agent does the reminding and the chasing; your PM makes the schedule calls.

What it takes off your plate

On most jobs, submittals are tracked in a spreadsheet, and the status is only as current as the last time someone updated it. The first send usually happens. What breaks is everything after: a sub misses the due date and nobody notices, the architect returns an item marked revise and resubmit and it sits in an inbox, and the resubmittal goes around a second or third time with no one watching the clock.

Late submittals delay material orders, and late orders delay the schedule, but that connection is not visible until the material is not on site when the crew needs it. The PM ends up finding out at the weekly meeting instead of weeks earlier.

We covered how this agent ties approvals to material lead times elsewhere. This post is about the chase: getting submittals in on time and getting rejected ones back through review.

What the Submittal Agent does, step by step

The work starts with the subs and the reviewers and ends in an approved submittal.

1. Reminds subs before the due date. From the submittal register, the agent texts and emails each sub through Twilio and Gmail ahead of each due date, naming the spec section and what is required: product data, shop drawings, samples.
2. Chases late submittals. When a due date passes, it follows up with the sub and tells the PM which items are late and which schedule activities they feed.
3. Checks the package. When a submittal arrives, it checks that the required pieces named in the spec section are included and asks the sub for anything missing before it goes to the architect.
4. Tracks the review. It logs the date sent for review and reminds the design team as the review period ends.
5. Returns comments. When an item comes back revise and resubmit, the agent sends the reviewer's comments to the sub the same day with the new due date the PM set, and follows up until the resubmittal comes in.
6. Warns the PM. It compares each open submittal against the material lead time and the schedule activity it supports, and alerts the PM when a delay is close to pushing an order date. What to do about it, such as expediting, substituting, or resequencing, is the PM's decision.
7. Closes it out. When the submittal is approved, it tells the sub and the purchasing side so the order can be placed.

Where the work is recorded

An agent that cannot write down what it did is a chatbot. The Submittal Agent records its work where your team already looks.

In the CRM, each sub's and design team contact record shows every reminder, comment returned, resubmittal, and reply, in order. When a sub says they never got the comments, the record shows when they went out.

In the project system, such as Procore, the submittal register shows each item's status, how many times it has gone around, the reviewer's comments, and the approval date. The next morning the PM opens one view and sees what is late from subs, what is sitting with the architect, what came back for resubmittal, and which items are close to affecting an order date.

What your people do instead

Your project manager stays with the client and the design team on the conversations that move the job: resolving a product question, walking the owner through a substitution, keeping the schedule honest. Your super stays with the crews. Your subs get clear, timely comments instead of surprises. Keeping clients confident in the schedule is the human work.

The AgentWorks Submittal Agent keeps the reminders, comments, and resubmittals moving around them. For other parts of the business, read how a Schedule Agent keeps the published schedule true to the field and how owners trust the schedule when it matches what happened in the field.

One next step

Submittals may not be where your company loses the most time. The free Industry Assessment shows which workflow an agent should take first in your business, and the construction industry page lays out every agent built for contractors like you.