Bobyard, a San Francisco company that sells AI takeoff and estimating software to trade contractors, announced AI-prepared submittals on October 29, 2026. The tool matches the materials in a contractor’s takeoff to manufacturer cut sheets and assembles a product data submittal package for the general contractor. The same release ties Bobyard’s takeoff, cost database, estimate table and proposal generator into one workflow, and adds drywall, insulation, doors and windows to the trades it covers.
What it does
On a subcontractor’s side, the product data submittal usually falls to the estimator or project manager who won the bid. They take the material list, find each product’s cut sheet on a vendor site or in a catalog PDF, mark up the right model on each page, and format a cover sheet by hand. Bobyard’s blog post describes that work as hours of screenshots and cross-referencing.
The tool follows the order of that work. A team uploads its manufacturer catalogs once, and Bobyard splits each catalog into individual products tagged with manufacturer, model and size. The library is shared across the company, so a catalog one estimator uploads is there for every later job.
For each job, the user uploads the spec or the submittal requirements. Bobyard’s product page says the AI then lists the required packages, such as product data, warranties and test reports, with spec references. Materials come in from the Bobyard takeoff with descriptions filled from the legend. Teams that did their takeoff elsewhere can paste in a list instead.
Bobyard’s AI assistant, Bob GPT, then searches the library and the web for each item. It returns candidate cut sheets ranked by a confidence score, which is the model’s own estimate of how likely a match is correct. It also highlights the model number on the page. The user confirms every product and every page before it goes into the package. Bobyard’s FAQ says the AI does not choose the product.
| Step | What goes in | What Bobyard does | Who checks it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build the product library | Manufacturer catalogs uploaded once | Splits each catalog into products and tags manufacturer and model and size | Anyone on the team who uploads |
| Set up the packages | The spec or the submittal requirements | Lists the required packages such as product data and warranties and test reports with spec references | Project manager or estimator |
| Load the items | Materials from a Bobyard takeoff or a pasted list | Creates submittal items and fills descriptions from the takeoff legend | Estimator |
| Match product data | Each submittal item | Searches the library and the web and ranks candidate cut sheets with confidence scores | The user confirms every product and page |
| Package and send | Confirmed cut sheets | Builds a branded cover page and table of contents and exports one PDF | Project manager before sending to the GC |
| Resubmit | GC review marks per item | Builds a resubmittal with only the items marked Resubmission Required | Project manager |
The output is one PDF with a branded cover page, a table of contents and the marked-up spec sheets. Each item can then be marked Approved, Approved as Noted, or Resubmission Required. A resubmittal package includes only the flagged items. For plants and other organic materials, which have no manufacturer cut sheet, the tool generates a product data page with an image and cited sources for the user to check.
Bobyard describes the tool for product data packages, and its pages do not cover shop drawings or samples.
Evidence so far
The evidence so far is Bobyard’s announcement, its product pages, and comments from unnamed participants in its beta program. Bobyard identifies the quoted participants as landscaping contractors.
These claims come from Bobyard:
- In a survey of beta participants, most said a single submittal took 2 to 5 hours to prepare, and some put it at 10 hours or more.
- The tool cuts submittal prep time in half.
- Customers cut takeoff time by an average of 65% and submit three to five times more bids per estimator, according to the release.
- Building the submittals feature took one engineer about two months, according to founder and CEO Michael Ding.
One landscaping contractor in the beta said the tool was about twice as fast as the old method for irrigation and soil submittals. Another wrote, “Search accuracy on our irrigation catalogs was flawless, and setting up the package and items was straightforward.” Both comments come from irrigation and soil work, where the catalogs are narrow. Match rates on drywall, doors or MEP equipment, and the size of the beta survey, are not yet public.
How to measure it on your projects
Track prep hours per product data package. Start the clock when someone opens the material list for the package and stop it when the PDF goes to the GC. Log rework hours on a resubmittal separately.
Capture the baseline before the pilot:
- Pick three to five recent product data packages from one trade, with a similar item count.
- Ask the person who built each one for the hours it took, and count the line items in each.
- Record whether each package came back Approved, Approved as Noted, or Resubmission Required.
On the pilot job, log the same three figures for each package built in Bobyard. Count the line items where the top-ranked match was wrong and the user had to pick another or search again. That count tells you how much of the saved time goes to checking. The first package will also include catalog uploads, so log those hours as setup.
A first step you can take on one job is to pull the last approved product data package and its resubmittal from the project file and count the line items the GC sent back.
Availability and cost
Bobyard’s blog post on the feature is dated October 1, 2026, and tells existing customers to ask their customer success manager to add submittals to their plan. New customers book a demo, and Bobyard prices through that demo request. Teams can use submittals without Bobyard’s takeoff. The company’s earlier releases on Business Wire include a $35 million Series A led by 8VC.
Related reading: Buildertrend’s AI Submittals drafts the submittal log from an uploaded spec book.