Forward for general contractors

The field-to-PM lookup tax

Pick a GC PM on any active project and ask how many texts they answer per day from the field. The honest answer is usually 40–80, and the questions are almost identical week to week:

• “What’s the latest revision of A-301?”
• “Did the EOR ever respond on RFI 142?”
• “Submittal status on division 09 51 13?”
• “Are we on track this week or behind?”
• “What change orders are open against the mechanical sub?”
• “Who’s pouring the slab Thursday?”

Each one is 60–90 seconds of PM time looking up the answer in Procore and texting it back. Across a 6-PM org running 10 projects, that’s 30–50 hours of senior labor per week consumed by answering questions that already have answers.

Why GCs can’t just give the field Procore access

Three reasons, every time:

• Cost. Procore is sold against GMV, but named-seat overlays exist on some plans. Adding 30–50 tradespeople per job adds real budget for licenses that get used twice.
• Adoption. Tradespeople don’t open project-management apps. They’ll text a foreman. Forcing another app into the field stack is the most reliable way to be ignored.
• Permission complexity. Even read-only Procore access is a non-trivial config: which projects, which directories, which docs. Maintain that across 40 hires/quits a year and you’ve burned a half-FTE on access management.

What Forward does for a GC

Forward is a text-message layer in front of your project data. Your field crew — subs, foremen, owners’ reps, inspectors — texts a single number. Forward authenticates them once, then reads from Procore (and Autodesk Construction Cloud, and OneDrive / SharePoint document libraries) and replies with the cited answer.

What it can answer today, drawing from the tool catalog the orchestrator actually ships with:

• Drawings. Pull the current revision of any sheet, the most recent set for a discipline, or the latest drawing log entry.
• RFIs & submittals. Search open / closed / pending RFIs by sheet, spec section, or keyword. Same for submittals across CSI division codes.
• Specifications. Search a spec section by name or number. Pull cited passages of text directly — useful when a sub disputes a material requirement.
• Change orders. List open CORs by sub, status, or dollar threshold.
• Daily logs & observations. Pull the daily log for any date, search observations by trade or location, file a punch item or a safety incident from a text.
• Schedule. Look up an activity, its predecessor and successor relationships, slack, and current critical-path membership.
• Subs & pay apps. List active subcontractors on a project. Pull the most recent pay application for any sub with the gross / retainage / net breakdown.
• Inspections & tests. Search inspections and test reports by date, system, or status. Request a new inspection from a text.
• Engineering calcs. Wire sizing, voltage drop, HVAC load, duct sizing, beam deflection, panel demand load — all NEC / IBC / IMC referenced. The bot returns the number, shows the work, and cites the code section.
• Quick-takeoff math. Square footage, concrete yards, drywall sheets, stud count, paint gallons, rebar LF — for that “how much will it take” question that comes in five times a day.

Every answer includes the source it came from: a Procore RFI URL, an Autodesk Build sheet, a OneDrive file path. The field user can verify; the PM can audit.

The approval queue

Anything that would write to your systems goes through the approval queue first. A foreman texts “file a punch item for the loose handrail at stair B”; Forward drafts the punch item and queues it in your dashboard. You click approve, or edit, or reject. Nothing posts to Procore without a human in the loop.

Same for RFI drafts, observation drafts, daily-log entries, inspection requests, and delivery-window requests. The field gets the convenience of texting; the GC keeps full control of what lands in the official record.

How it sits in a GC’s tech stack

Forward is additive, not replacement. It connects via OAuth to whatever you’re already running:

• Procore — RFIs, submittals, drawings, observations, daily logs, change orders, pay apps, schedule activity.
• Autodesk Construction Cloud (Build / BIM 360) — sheets, RFIs, submittals, issues.
• OneDrive / SharePoint — document libraries where the spec PDFs and as-builts actually live.

You don’t pick one and lose the others. Most pilots connect Procore + OneDrive on day 1, and add Autodesk in week 2 once the team is comfortable with the workflow.

The compliance + audit story

Every Forward interaction is logged: the field user’s phone number, the verbatim question, the source Forward cited, the verbatim answer, the timestamp. The log is exportable as JSON or CSV. Retention follows your plan tier — 90 days Standard, 365 days Pro, 7 years Enterprise.

Writes only happen through the approval queue. Revoking Forward’s OAuth grant in Procore terminates access instantly. Forward doesn’t copy your project data — every query is a live read against your systems.

What a GC pilot looks like

We run two- to four-week pilots on one active project. Week 1 we connect your Procore + OneDrive, enroll a handful of foremen and supers as field users, and watch the inbound. Week 2 we’re looking for the question types we missed and the citations that weren’t precise enough. By week 4 you have data on:

• Volume of PM lookup texts displaced (we count them from the conversation log).
• Field-side adoption: how many tradespeople texted in twice or more.
• The five most-asked question types — usually drawings, RFIs, change-order status, schedule, and submittal status.
• Approval-queue throughput: how many drafts landed, how many you approved as-is.

Pilot pricing covers the SMS line, the orchestrator usage, and unlimited field-user seats for one project. After the pilot, the usual move is a Standard or Pro subscription per project, which scales linearly.

How to try it

Drop your email above for an early-access conversation, or skip the form and text +1 (682) 300-6750 right now. The live demo runs against a synthetic commercial project — ask it what change orders are open, send me a-301, submittal status for 09 51 13, what’s on the critical path this week. It will answer with the cited source.

Once you decide to pilot, we wire your Procore + OneDrive in roughly 30 minutes of OAuth + a short scoping call to pick the right pilot project.