Volve, a tendering software company whose customers so far are Nordic contractors, has added what it calls an orchestration layer to its platform. AEC Magazine reported the release on October 6, 2026, and Volve describes it as the largest upgrade since the platform launched. The first task it takes on belongs to the bid team’s estimator: checking that the quantities in the specification match the drawings and the BIM model.
What it does
On most bids that check is manual today. A quantity can read one way in the spec, another on the drawings and a third in the model, Volve says, and someone has to open all three to find the difference.
The work in Volve starts with the tender set. The team drags the documents in or pulls them from SharePoint or Procore, and Volve’s homepage says it reads PDFs, Word and Excel files and keeps track of document versions. For the model, the release names IFC, the open file format that most BIM tools can export.
Then the estimator types the task in plain language. AEC Magazine gives Volve’s example request, which asks the software to check that the quantities in the specification match the drawings and the IFC model. The orchestration layer is the part that turns that request into steps: it decides which documents to compare, runs the comparison across the whole tender, and checks its own result before it reports back, according to Volve.
The output is a list of places where the quantities differ, with the source page or model element behind each one. Volve says the same layer can check that scope matches what was estimated and that an addendum has not moved something without anyone noticing.
An estimator or preconstruction manager still reviews each flag. A confirmed mismatch can go into the price, into a bid qualification, or into a question to the owner before bid day. Volve’s argument is that these mismatches tend to surface during construction as change orders and disputes, after the price is fixed, and that catching them in the tender lets the team price them.
The same cross-document problem is the target of Kuro, a Berlin tender-review company covered here on October 2. How well general AI models read drawings is a separate question, and Togal.AI’s takeoff benchmark measured it this week.
Evidence so far
The evidence so far is Volve’s release note, its website, its August funding announcement, and AEC Magazine’s report, which relays Volve’s description of the product. These claims come from Volve and from customer comments it publishes:
| Claim | Figure | Who reported it |
|---|---|---|
| Projects Volve has been used on | More than 2,500 | Volve, in its October release note and its August funding announcement |
| One public infrastructure tender | 213 documents, 20 risk findings, 73 subcontractor bids compared | Volve, in its August funding announcement |
| Time on early mitigation and optimization | 60% more | Volve's homepage |
| Rework | 30% less | Volve's homepage |
| Bid quality scores | 100% from public evaluators across five consecutive wins | A tender manager at an unnamed contractor, on Volve's pricing page |
The figures in the table describe the platform as a whole and predate the orchestration layer. The 213-document tender is the most specific case Volve gives, and the announcement counts what the software surfaced there, which was 20 risk findings.
Volve’s homepage also carries a comment from Christoffer Hernæs, Skanska’s CDO at the time, who says his team saw time saved and better decision support from the first day.
Results for the new quantity check, such as how many real mismatches it finds and how many of its flags turn out to be wrong on review, are not yet public.
How to measure it on your projects
Track quantity reconciliation hours per bid. That is the total time your estimating team spends comparing quantities across the spec, the drawings and the model for one bid, from opening the set to closing the last open line.
Capture the baseline before a pilot:
- On your next three to five bids, give quantity reconciliation its own line on the estimators’ timesheets.
- For each bid, record the hours and the number of quantity mismatches the team found.
- After award, tag any RFI or change order on those jobs that traces back to a quantity mismatch already in the bid set.
During the pilot, log the same hours, including the time spent reviewing the tool’s flags. Count how many flags your estimators confirmed and how many they rejected. The confirmed share is the tool’s precision, meaning the fraction of its flags that pointed to a real mismatch. A first step on one job is to add the timesheet line on the next bid that comes in with a model.
Availability and cost
Volve’s pricing page asks buyers to book a demo, where the company matches a plan and any enterprise add-ons to the buyer’s size and project portfolio. The onboarding page says the first session happens in the first week and runs on a live bid, followed by weekly follow-ups through week four.
Volve raised a USD 3 million seed round in August 2026, led by Skyfall Ventures, and said it was expanding into the UK and continental Europe. Availability for US contractors could not be verified. The homepage shows ISO 27001 and GDPR marks.