AI in Plan Review: Supercharging the Plan Reviewer in 2026

Key Takeaways

• The high stakes of safety and compliance in plan review require a human-centric approach. AI’s true value lies in eliminating the friction of repetitive, low-level tasks so reviewers can focus their mental energy on high-stakes judgment calls.
• Beyond saving time, AI in plan review delivers three specific benefits: reducing rework, preventing misses, and streamlining resubmittals. 
• While completeness checks are helpful, the most significant efficiency gains happen when AI is integrated directly inside the reviewer’s active workflow.

The Problem with Automation in AI Plan Review

In 2026, most conversations about AI in plan review start with the wrong premise: the idea of replacement. This often leads to questions like: 

• Can AI review plans faster than people? 

• Can it reduce headcount? 

• Can it eventually eliminate the need for human reviewers altogether?

That framing misunderstands what the work of plan review actually is. Plan review isn’t a clerical exercise. It’s a judgment-heavy role with real consequences. Reviewers are accountable for safety, for compliance, and ultimately for whether something gets built the way it should. 

Why AI in Plan Review is About Support, Not Replacement

The reality of electronic plan review leads to a simple but important belief of ours here at e-PlanSoft: there is no large language model or AI tool that exists today (and likely will not exist anytime soon) that replaces the work of a plan reviewer. There is no LLM or AI tool that’s also a certified engineer. Reviewers still have to touch every plan, no matter what technology sits around them.

Once you accept that, the role of AI in plan review becomes much clearer. The goal of AI isn’t automation. It’s augmentation. 

AI’s job isn’t to replace human judgment, but to remove the friction-points that make applying human judgment harder than it needs to be.

An Important Fact: Plan Review Is a Judgment-Heavy Workflow

When you actually spend time watching plan reviewers work, a few things become obvious very quickly.

Reviewers carry an enormous amount of institutional knowledge in their heads. They know local building codes reflexively because they’ve applied them hundreds or thousands of times. They’re used to catching subtle issues that aren’t obvious at first glance. And they operate in an environment with real stakes, in an environment of professional and legal accountability.

This is also why “speed” is such a misleading promise in electronic plan review.

When you ask reviewers whether they want to go faster, the answer is almost always yes — but with hesitation. They want to save time, but they also don’t want to rush. They want to be efficient but safe. They want fewer mistakes, fewer re-reviews, and fewer situations where something gets missed and comes back to haunt them later.

Basically, reviewers don’t want to shave minutes off a review if it increases the risk of missing something important. Managers don’t want faster approvals if it leads to more resubmittals or downstream corrections. And applicants don’t benefit when a “fast” review ultimately leads to delays later in the approval process.

The real goal of AI in plan review shouldn’t be more speed. 

It’s less waste, more predictability, and fewer unnecessary cycles.

 

Connect with an Expert to Explore Effective Plan Review Solutions Today!

 

3 Ways AI Can Actually Help Plan Reviewers

AI in plan review creates real value when it removes friction and wasteful rework and delays from the plan review workflow — not when it tries to replace the reviewer.

1. Using AI to Reduce Rework

Reviewers constantly answer deterministic questions: how many of something exist, what scale a plan is drawn at, whether a required element is present. These aren’t judgment calls. They’re necessary steps that happen before judgment can even begin.

AI will be able to handle this work reliably. It doesn’t get tired, it doesn’t miscount, and it doesn’t skip a sheet because someone is rushing to clear a queue. By taking these tasks off a reviewer’s plate, you’re not replacing expertise — you’re protecting it, and conserving your team’s energy for more nuanced and high-impact evaluations of other aspects of submitted plans.

2. Strengthening Code Compliance and Preventing Misses 

Modern building code compliance is often about complex “if-then” relationships—not counts.

A few examples: If a shower or tub is within a certain distance of a window, that window may require safety glass. A change in square footage might trigger a different requirement elsewhere in the plan. Experienced reviewers know these rules instinctively, but no one can remember every code at every level all the time. 

Here, AI will be able to act as a second set of eyes for plan reviewers, surfacing relevant code relationships, highlighting potential issues, and prompting reviewers to “look here”  before something slips through. The reviewer still applies their expertise and still decides. The AI simply reduces the chance that human attention misses something important - and helps people conserve their energy and cognitive calories for more intensive, high-impact analysis.

3. Streamlining Resubmittal Management

Resubmittal management is where time really disappears for plan reviewers.

When a project stretches into a third or fourth pass, reviewers lose hours re-reading entire plan sets just to determine what changed, what stayed the same, and which comments still apply from past drafts.

AI can lend a hand here by automatically detecting differences between plan versions, matching sheets across submissions, and carrying forward relevant comments automatically. That turns plan resubmittals from a scavenger hunt into a focused review, shortening the work by eliminating unnecessary repetitive tasks.

How We’re Prioritizing AI at e-PlanSoft

When we talk about AI internally, the first question isn’t “what’s easy?” or “what demos well?” It’s “does this make a reviewer’s day meaningfully better?” If the answer is “no” (if it doesn’t reduce rework, prevent misses, or support judgment in real workflows)  it doesn’t move up our priority list, and it won’t make it into our product.

That’s why our approach to AI starts in the hands of the reviewer and works outward from there. We’re far more interested in the unglamorous problems that hold teams back every day — resubmittals, missed relationships, repetitive checks — than in big but spurious claims about automation. 

The Limits of Pre-Submission AI in Plan Review

This is also why so many AI conversations in our market today feel shaky or unsatisfying.

Many tools marketing AI in plan review today focus heavily on simple pre-submission checks — making sure a plan submittal is “complete” before it enters the system. That work is useful, but it doesn’t meaningfully change a reviewer’s day. Pre-submission AI happens upstream, before judgment begins. It’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient. And many AI tools making big claims perform nothing more than shallow checks of basic document fields and attachments - which means incomplete, unworkable plans still land on your review team’s deck (and which leaves buyers feeling unsatisfied and frustrated when the time savings and quality-of-life-improvements they were promised never materialize). 

Here’s what we believe: The real leverage starts when AI lives inside the reviewer’s workflow, supporting the actual work of plan review rather than pretending to replace it. 

Basically, If AI never makes a reviewer’s job (and day) better, it’s not solving the core problem.

A More Responsible Way to Use AI in Plan Review

All of this leads to a simple principle that’s easy to state and harder to execute: When it comes to plan review, AI should remove friction, not responsibility.

If it makes reviewers faster but less confident, it fails. If it creates a false sense of progress or undermines trust, it fails. But if it reduces rework, prevents misses, and helps reviewers focus on what actually matters, then it really works. If and only if reviewers feel the difference.

That’s what “supercharging the reviewer” really means. Not replacing judgment, but creating the conditions where good judgment can happen more consistently, with less friction, and at scale.

Talk With Us re: AI, Plan Review, and What We’re Building

If you’re sorting through AI claims in plan review and trying to separate what’s valuable from what’s performative, we’re always happy to share how we think about it — including where we see the most meaningful opportunities, what we believe matters most, and what we’re building into our product first. 

Want to hear more? Get in touch. We’d love to share where we’re seeing success and what we’re prioritizing in 2026.