For small civil and MEP firms
Your engineers answer the comments. AI handles the retyping.
Lunan sets up the AI tools you already pay for around your firm's paperwork: plan-review comment logs, response-letter drafts, proposals and minutes. A licensed engineer reviews every draft, and each one carries a record of who approved it.
Among 644 engineering firm leaders surveyed, AI use was 81% in marketing and sales but only 36% in design and project delivery. Source: ACEC Research Institute and BST Global (survey of 644 firm leaders), via HPAC, Jun 2025
What gets in the way
Comments get retyped before anyone engineers anything
A review comes back as a PDF letter, a set of Bluebeam markups or the owner's own form. Someone copies every comment into a spreadsheet before the first answer gets written.
Resubmittals lose the thread
Round two renumbers old comments and adds new ones. Slip-sheeting and Excel exports help until sheets change, and then the history lives in one person's head.
AI is in your marketing, not your delivery work
Staff may already be pasting project text into free tools. Nobody has written down what is allowed, or what the seal requires when AI helped draft something.
What we set up
Plan-review comment log and draft response letter
Drop the reviewer's letter, email or Bluebeam markup export into the project folder. The assistant splits it into one comment per row, tags each by discipline and sheet, matches it against the previous round, and drafts a response in your letter format or the owner's form. Anything that needs judgment is marked for an engineer instead of guessed.
Before: comments retyped and reconciled by hand each round. After: a sorted log and a draft letter your engineer marks up and approves.
Proposal and SOQ first drafts from your past jobs
Your past proposals, statements of qualifications (SOQs), resumes and project sheets are organized so a principal can ask for a first draft of a new one. Every paragraph points back to the past job it came from, so nothing is claimed that you didn't do.
Before: starting from a blank page or last month's proposal. After: a sourced first draft to edit.
Minutes, design memos and the review record
Meeting notes or recordings become draft minutes and memos for the engineer to correct. Each AI-assisted document gets a short record of its inputs, the tool used, the reviewer and the approval, kept in the project folder.
Before: minutes written late, if at all, and no trail of who checked what. After: a draft to correct and a record that supports your claim of responsible charge.
How it works
- 1
Free conversation
Pick one real comment letter or a recent proposal and describe it. We walk through how it moves through your office today and tell you plainly where AI would help, where it shouldn't, and whether it's worth doing at all.
- 2
Build one workflow on a live project
We set up the first workflow inside your own folders, templates and tools, on a project your team picks. Your engineers review every output, and we time it against how you work now.
- 3
Train your people, then extend
We train the staff who use it, put a one-page AI use policy and review record in place, and only then add the next workflow.
Ways to work together
Each is scoped and quoted after the conversation.
Learn
Firms whose staff are already trying AI and need rules before anything gets built
- 2-3 hour workshop built on your own document types
- One-page AI use policy: approved tools, what never goes in, who reviews what
- Review-record template for AI-assisted documents
- Written course outline and an attendance list for your own records
Build
Firms with steady plan-review or proposal work and one clear first workflow
- Comment log and draft response letter on a live project, or proposal first drafts from your past jobs
- Accepts PDF letters, email and Bluebeam markup exports
- Templates in your letter format and your clients' required forms
- Engineer review step and approval record on every draft
- How-to guide and handoff session
Run
Firms that want it kept working as jurisdictions, owners and tools change
- Monthly check of outputs, with fixes
- New jurisdiction and owner formats added as they come up
- Template and prompt updates when your tools change
- Monthly review call with a principal
Guardrails
AI drafts; your licensed engineer decides and seals. That matches ASCE Policy Statement 573 (July 2024), which says "AI cannot be held accountable," and the Florida board's October 2025 reminder that AI "cannot replace your professional judgment or accountability." We found no Utah board guidance on AI, so we follow North Carolina's July 2025 board guidelines as a working standard: every AI-assisted draft is logged with its inputs, the reviewer and the approval, and the engineer must be able to redo it without AI. We keep AI off calculations and code-compliance decisions, and project files stay in your own storage under business plans whose terms exclude training on your data.
Questions
Can a PE seal work that AI helped draft?
Every board statement we found, and ASCE's policy, say AI is a tool and the licensed engineer stays accountable; none bans AI drafting. North Carolina's July 2025 guidelines say you may only seal work you were in responsible charge of, and ask you to keep records of AI inputs and how you checked the output. We found no Utah guidance as of October 2026. This isn't legal advice, so check with your board and your liability insurer.
Will this replace my staff?
No, and it shouldn't try to. It takes retyping and reconciling off your engineers so their time goes to the answers. In the 2025 ACEC and BST Global survey, 74% of firm leaders expected to hold staffing flat while producing more, and that is the honest goal here.
Where does our project data go?
It stays in your own file storage. We set up AI tools on business plans whose terms exclude training on your data, limit who can see each project, and keep a record of what was drafted and who approved it. Your contracts may restrict some client data, and we build those limits into your policy.
What software does this work with?
It starts from what you already have: PDF comment letters, email, Bluebeam markup exports, Word letter templates and shared folders or SharePoint, with Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude business plans. We work alongside Bluebeam and your project accounting software rather than replacing them.
Does the workshop count toward my PDH hours?
We sell it as a plain workshop and make no claim that it earns PDH (professional development hour) credit. In Utah, PEs need 30 hours per two-year period ending March 31 of odd years, so the next deadline is March 31, 2027, and rule R156-22-304 judges courses against its own standards, including the presenter's qualifications. If you want to claim it, check it against the rule or ask DOPL. This is not legal advice.
Reading list
- AI for small civil and MEP engineering firms: where it fits and who signs
A sourced overview of how engineering firms use AI today, which delivery documents suit AI drafting with PE review, and why calculations don't.
- Can a PE seal work AI helped draft? What the boards say in 2026
A plain-English summary of every board and society AI statement we found, and the record-keeping routine they point to.
- How to track plan-review comments across resubmittals
A practical comment-log template and setup steps for tracking reviewer comments across rounds, with the parts AI can draft and the parts it can't.
- Nomic, Bluebeam Max, Deltek or what you already pay for: choosing AI for a small engineering firm
A sourced comparison of dedicated AEC platforms, upcoming features in Bluebeam and Deltek, and setting up general AI tools a firm already owns.
- What a comment letter costs your firm: a worksheet for principals
A step-by-step worksheet that prices comment-letter and proposal time at your billing rates and gives a simple rule for whether to act.
Talk through one comment letter. Leave with a plan.
Start a free conversation. We'll walk through one real letter or proposal with you and say where AI helps, where it shouldn't, and whether it's worth doing.