Design Review for Owners

Why Owners Need Design Review

Overall project budget, schedule, and risk exposure is what Owners are on the hook for. And a recurring problem is absorbing the cost and schedule impact of design errors that surface during construction, often well after they could have been caught cheaply.

That's exactly where Design Review comes in. It runs during design development, before drawings are finalized, and the point of it is to catch issues early, while they're still cheap to fix, instead of after documents are further along.

What Structured AI Checks for Owners

For owners running design review, Structured AI uses Document Chat paired with Custom Checks, so the team can interrogate the drawing set as it evolves and run firm specific checks throughout design. Findings are scoped to what this role is actually on the hook for, not a generic error list, but issues organized around overall project budget, schedule, and risk exposure.

A 30-minute AI-powered check running on every project set, in place of what used to take days of manual review, is the kind of shift documented in Structured AI's work with Syska Hennessy Group, one of the largest MEP firms in the US, and it's the same shift that protects an owner's schedule and budget from downstream rework.

Where This Fits in Your Workflow

Design Review for owners usually happens during design development, before drawings are finalized. Structured AI works on .pdf, .dwg, .rvt, and .ifc files, and for Revit modeled projects, the Revit Add-In runs the same checks directly against live geometry with element level results, no export needed. Findings can be exported and assigned by trade or discipline, so the review step slots into the existing document workflow instead of adding a new one.

FAQ

How is design review different from a general plan check? Design Review is scoped to what actually matters at this stage of the project and for this role: catch issues early, while they're still cheap to fix, instead of after documents are further along. It uses Structured AI's deterministic checks rather than a confidence-scored, probabilistic flag.

Do owners need special training to use this? No. Upload the relevant drawings and specifications, or connect the Revit model directly, and findings come back organized the way owners already review work. Teams can also build Custom Checks in plain English without writing any code.

Can findings be shared with the rest of the project team? Yes. Every finding links back to the exact sheet and location, and can be exported and assigned by trade or discipline for team wide visibility and follow up.