Sitewire launches AI tools to streamline pre-construction risk review

As homebuilders face shrinking access, tighter reins, and higher costs from traditional local and regional banks for construction financing, Sitewire this week introduced two new AI tools, BudgetIQ and Permit IQ, to streamline pre-construction budgeting and permitting for small residential construction projects.

The company, which facilitates private credit construction draws, a solution widely used by small builders who need quick capital to fund projects, is bolstering its pre-construction solutions with the two new products.

BudgetIQ and PermitIQ both leverage AI to complete a task in minutes that would otherwise be completed in hours or even days. 

BudgetIQ helps small builders assess whether a budget is feasible for a range of residential construction projects in cities across the country. The system’s software reviews each budget line and compares costs for similar projects in the specified geographic area. 

While this process can be done manually, automating it can save time and help builders obtain necessary construction finance draws faster, Sitewire CEO Bryan Kester tells The Builder’s Daily/HousingWire. 

“It saves you having to go to a GC, ask for a construction bid or estimate, and then just hope that it’s correct. It’s the opposite process. You would put it into our system, hit a button, and we’ll tell you within 15 minutes if that budget is feasible or not,” 

PermitIQ, on the other hand, tells builders what specific aspects of their project are going to require a permit down the line. Sitewire built a database of about 20,000 local government jurisdictions across the nation that it can pull permit information from.

Kester, a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, mentioned his experience working on his own home in California as an example. Where he lives, if his roof is higher than 14 feet, nine inches, it could trigger a city-led review that could greatly slow down the project. 

“Before permit IQ was around, I had to go into my local ordinances and find out what the tallest roof I could build on my house was. And if I had had permit IQ at the time, I could have just clicked a button. It would have said, ‘for your roof, do not make it higher than 14 feet, 9 inches, or that’ll trigger a six-month design review by your city,” Kester explained. 

While AI is growing in popularity, many homebuilding professionals see the technology as potentially unreliable. AI isn’t perfect and can make mistakes, critics say. 

In response, Kester compared the current state of AI to a highly proficient high school student — smart, but perhaps lacking in wisdom. Leaders in AI generally agree that the technology isn’t perfect due to its relative youth. 

“But it’s really good at gathering data and being an analyst, and it speaks with authority. Every once in a while, it’s wrong. So the trick for providers like us is, we’re writing software and technology that’s making it more wise and also making it run through routines that do what a human does, which is double-check things and be skeptical,” he said. 

The technology, though, is rapidly improving, according to Kester. 

“Right now, we can analyze plans. You can put in blueprints, and it’ll look through the blueprint, analyze it, extract all the square footage, things like that. A year ago, it was totally incapable of doing that, and now we’ve been able to train ours to look through blueprints, just like a human would,” he explained. 

The growing influence of AI in homebuilding

In November, D.R. Horton announced that it had agreed to a blanket enterprise, multi-year agreement with Prophetic, an AI-driven platform that automates the initial land discovery and analysis process for homebuilders and developers. 

The agreement, which involved America’s largest homebuilder, signaled AI’s growing influence in homebuilding. 

There’s also a widening trend among local governments that have pivoted to leveraging AI to streamline the review process for housing development, amid pressure on municipalities to simplify an often complex regulatory framework.