Construction litigation is complicated enough without trying to make sense of old, messy, or unreadable documents. And it’s no secret that these technical, inconsistent, and image-heavy files are by far some of the hardest to process in a traditional document review workflow. Between legacy PDFs, bad scans, handwritten notes, and CAD drawings, legal teams often spend more time managing the format of documents than actually reviewing the content.
Over the past two years, TCDI has partnered with industry leaders to build tools and workflows that tackle common challenges in document review, including the challenge of having too many documents and not enough time or budget. While our Semi-Autonomous Review workflows address these concerns, they don’t completely solve the underlying data problem that we see in construction data. That’s where SMART Data processing comes into play.
Introducing SMART Data Processing
SMART stands for Scalable, Measurable, Adaptive, Receptive, and Transformational. More than a single tool, button, or feature, SMART Data represents the evolution of decades of experience in solving complex legal data challenges for our clients.
When dealing with construction litigation data, we are often faced with documents that are image-heavy and filled with blueprints, handwritten notes, drawings, and photos. To truly streamline eDiscovery, we needed to make this complex data more usable. We needed to make it smarter.
That’s why we developed these new Gen AI processing workflows. This advanced approach to eDiscovery goes beyond the simple means to produce documents. It ensures that processes and technologies work together to deliver meaningful insights.
Construction-Specific Data Type Turned Into SMART Data
Uniquely suited for complex documents such as those in construction matters, our SMART Data approach transforms even the most unstructured content into review-ready intelligence:
- CAD Drawings and Blueprints: SMART Data can identify, classify, and extract data from CAD files and engineering diagrams, helping you trace where change orders or design conflicts began.
- Handwritten Site Notes and Inspection Logs: OCR and transcription tools convert handwritten notes into searchable text, allowing legal teams to pinpoint issues in safety logs, site inspections, or daily foreman reports.
- Non-Searchable PDFs and Scans: Older contracts, permits, subcontractor agreements, and field reports can be digitized and not only made searchable, but also automatically summarized and classified by issue.
- Spreadsheets and Project Databases: SMART Data, partnered with Semi-Autonomous Review, can analyze data tables, cost tracking sheets, and project schedules to identify scope changes, billing anomalies, or inconsistencies in reporting.
- Foreign Language Documents: Cross-border construction projects often include documents in numerous different foreign languages. SMART Data translates these files into English automatically before search and analysis, eliminating translation delays and costs.
Common Construction Use Cases for SMART Data
Whether you’re navigating delay claims, cost overruns, safety violations, or construction defects, SMART Data quickly unlocks the insights hidden deep in your files. Specifically, you can address:
- Delay Claims: Summarize daily logs and compare them with updated schedules and RFIs to build stronger arguments about project timelines.
- Design Defects: Extract and summarize changes across multiple versions of drawings, revealing key shifts that led to failure.
- Safety Incidents: Run OCR on handwritten safety reports and field logs to surface previously hidden patterns of non-compliance, supporting OSHA-related defense or liability claims.
- Contract Disputes: Summarize contracts, subcontracts, change orders, and communications to find misalignments between contract scope and field execution.
The Takeaway
SMART Data Processing doesn’t just convert documents. It has the power to transform how construction legal teams work. By combining OCR, summarization, translation, transcription, and document classification, SMART Data gives attorneys faster access to the truth hidden in complex data sets.
With TCDI’s new solutions for legacy problems, our clients can experience faster reviews through optimized approaches to case strategy. SMART Data gives your team the firm foundation to build your case, allowing you to quickly interpret the facts to achieve the best possible outcome for your construction matters.
Caragh Landry
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Caragh brings over 20 years of eDiscovery and Document Review experience to TCDI. In her role as Chief Legal Process Officer, she oversees workflow creation, service delivery, and development strategy for our processing, hosting, review, production and litigation management applications. Caragh’s expertise in building new platforms aligns closely with TCDI’s strategy to increase innovation and improve workflow. Her diverse operational experience and hands on approach with clients is key to continually improving the TCDI user experience. Learn more about Caragh.
