Trimble plans to use Document Crunch agents in both Trimble One and Trimble Connect
Artificial intelligence-powered contract and construction document analysis platform Document Crunch—already used on more than 10,000 projects by 500-plus general contractors and construction managers—will become the risk intelligence layer across Trimble’s Construction One platform after it was acquired April 2, by the Westminster, Colo.-based construction and positioning system giant. Terms of the deal were not disclosed
«Trimble [has] an unparalleled distribution overlap with the market that I think is best served by us at Document Crunch,» says Josh Levy, CEO of Document Crunch who will become vice president of risk management and compliance at Trimble when the deal closes. «We believe Trimble has a pretty diverse stakeholder base across the entire 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 brought adoption by contractors such as Balfour Beatty to assist construction attorneys, project managers and anyone else who reviews document language. Trimble said it will embed Document Crunch’s contract intelligence tools directly into its Trimble Construction One suite, adding an AI risk layer across project management and ERP workflows already used across the construction ecosystem. Trimble was also an investor in an earlier round of capital for Document Crunch.
«Through the investment we got to know them better and got to see how this fits in. Josh and his team have opened our eyes to how this is a natural progression of Trimble Construction One … our platform through Trimble Connect,» says Mark Schwartz, senior vice president responsible for Trimble’s AECO software segment.
«For me, it just makes perfect sense,» he adds, «It made perfect sense as an investment and it made perfect 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 on general language is important to both the combined company and the construction industry’s future. Levy, who was previously a construction attorney at contractor J.E. Dunn before co-founding Document Crunch in 2019, says he started the company to give construction attorneys hours of their day going over contracts back.
«The risk is when a payment application is in the ERP being approved and the retention amount is wrong,» Levy says. «Or the lien waiver that has the wrong entity named. That is the wrong development entity, and therefore you’re not even getting an appropriate lien waiver.»
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Schwartz says that Trimble’s goal is to tie together systems that contractors use everyday once thought to necessarily be required to be siloed, such as enterprise resource planning, construction management, materials and procurement and, yes, even contract and construction document review. Trimble also owns popular conceptual design software SketchUp and the engineering design tool Tekla Structures.
«That was behind the [Tekla] Structures acquisition,» Schwartz says. «You put Document Crunch in and you have ERP together. You’re linking the field workflows to the office, to the risk, to the compliance, to the execution. It closes that whole set of workflows into an ecosystem that can deliver a tremendous amount of value and productivity.»
