Forward for mechanical contractors

The mechanical-sub problem in three sentences

Your scope is mostly hidden — chilled water, hydronic pumps, AHUs, ductwork, controls. Your installation depends on long- lead-time equipment (pumps, AHUs, chillers) that won’t land if a single submittal stays in revise-and-resubmit. Your foreman needs current submittal + drawing data and has zero access to the GC’s Procore.

What Forward does for mechanical

• Submittal status by spec section. Foreman texts is 23 21 23 approved for hydronic pumps; Forward returns ball-in-court, last action, days outstanding.
• Drawing pulls. send me M-501 returns the mechanical schedule with current revision number in iMessage in 4 seconds.
• HVAC sizing calculators. cfm for 5 ton at 70F returns ASHRAE-cited CFM, duct size lookup. Live tool, not a hallucination.
• Spec text retrieval. Foreman asks what’s the spec on the AHU coil; Forward finds 23 73 13 in the spec PDF and returns the relevant paragraph.
• RFI drafting. draft RFI: chilled water riser conflicts with structural beam at column line E; Forward composes the RFI, attaches photo, routes to PM’s approval queue.
• Pre-install gating. ok to set the AHU-2 tomorrow returns submittal status, delivery confirmation, and a YES / WAIT / NO answer.

Why mechanical subs need this more than most

Mechanical scopes have the longest equipment lead times in the industry. A hydronic pump in revise-and-resubmit for 14 extra days isn’t a paperwork problem — it’s a 6-week procurement delay that cascades into your schedule.

Your PM needs to see those bottlenecks the moment they form. Your foreman needs to know in the field whether the submittal cleared so he’s not standing around waiting for an answer. Forward closes both gaps:

• PM gets a daily “submittals over 14 days” text summary
• Foreman gets real-time status when he asks
• When a submittal closes, the foreman who asked about it gets an automatic SMS notification

How it connects to the GC’s Procore

Forward holds OAuth grants on both sides:

1. The GC’s Procore — one-time OAuth click from the GC’s project administrator authorizes Forward to read submittals, drawings, specs, RFIs scoped to the specific project.
2. Your spreadsheets — the mechanical submittal log that your PM keeps in Excel and uploads to the GC’s Documents folder. Forward auto-detects + parses submittal-log spreadsheets, so the bot can answer from your log even when Procore’s structured Submittals tool is empty.

Your foremen don’t need a Procore login. They just text the project’s Forward phone number.

Pricing for a mechanical sub

Forward’s standard pricing is per-PM-seat with unlimited field users + unlimited projects. For a mechanical sub running $20M-$200M in annual scope, that’s typically $1,499/mo on the Pro plan covering 3-5 PMs and however many foremen + tradespeople you have.

The ROI math: if Forward saves your PM 4 hours/week of text-and-reply ping-pong with the field, it pays for itself. Most teams report 8-15 hours/week recovered.

Try it from your phone

Text +1 (682) 300-6750 with submittal status for 23 21 23. The live demo project returns the actual ball-in-court for hydronic pumps.