Apowered by artificial intelligence construction document and contract analysis platform Document Crunch—already used on more than 10,000 projects by more than 500 general contractors and construction managers, it will become the risk intelligence layer in Trimble’s Construction One platform after it was acquired April 2 by the Westminster, Colo.-based construction and positioning systems giant. Terms of the deal were not disclosed
“Tumble [has] unmatched distribution overlap with the market that I believe is best served by us at Document Crunch,” says Document Crunch CEO Josh Levy, who will become Trimble’s vice president of risk management and compliance when the deal closes. “We believe Trimble has a fairly diverse stakeholder base across the built world that needs our product.”
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Document Crunch had raised at least $37 million in venture capital and led to the adoption of contractors such as Balfour Beatty to help construction lawyers, project managers and anyone else reviewing document language. Trimble said it will integrate Document Crunch’s contract intelligence tools directly into its Trimble Construction One suite, adding an AI risk layer to project management and ERP workflows already used in the construction ecosystem. Trimble was also an investor in a previous round of capital from Document Crunch.
“Through the investment we got to know them better and see how this fits. Josh and his team have opened our eyes to how this is a natural progression from Trimble Construction One…our platform through Trimble Connect,” says Mark Schwartz, senior vice president responsible for Trimble’s AECO software segment.
“To me, it makes perfect sense,” he adds, “it made a lot of sense as an investment and it made a lot of sense as a combination the more we got to know them.”
Both Levy and Schwartz say that having an AI that has large language models based on construction terms and terminology and not one trained in general language is important to both the combined company and the future of the construction industry. Levy, who was previously a construction lawyer at contractor JE Dunn before co-founding Document Crunch in 2019, says he started the company to give construction lawyers hours of the day reviewing contracts.
“The risk is when a payment request is approved in the ERP and the withholding amount is incorrect,” says Levy. “Or the lien exemption that has the wrong entity name. That’s the wrong development entity and so you don’t even get a proper lien exemption.”
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Schwartz says Trimble’s goal is to link systems that contractors use every day that were once thought necessarily to be separate, such as enterprise resource planning, construction management, materials and procurement, and yes, even contract and construction document review. Trimble also owns the popular SketchUp conceptual design software and Tekla Structures engineering design tool.
“That was behind [Tekla] Procurement of structures,” says Schwartz. “You throw in Document Crunch and you have ERP together. You’re linking field workflows to the office, to risk, to compliance, to execution. It closes this whole set of workflows into an ecosystem that can deliver a huge amount of value and productivity.”
