What a custom agent looks like inside an A/E firm — the ten roles in your language, and what each plugs into in a practice running Deltek, BQE or Monograph alongside Revit and a document platform.
last reviewed
An A/E firm sells hours against fixed fees, which makes two administrative facts decisive: whether time is captured accurately, and whether scope creep is caught while it can still be billed. Both are usually discovered late, in a review of a project that has already lost money. Meanwhile proposals get written from scratch, submittals get reviewed by hand, and the knowledge from a finished project stays with whoever worked on it.
The honest version of "does it integrate with my software." These are the systems this industry actually runs on, and what each one means for a build.
The system of record in mid-size and larger firms, covering projects, time, billing and resource planning against fee.
The common alternatives in smaller practices, generally lighter and more integration-friendly.
Where the work is produced. Mostly a source of files, model data and revision information rather than an integration target.
Where submittal review, redlines and coordination markups actually happen, producing documents other agents can read.
Where RFIs and submittals arrive during construction, on the contractor's platform rather than yours, with response clocks attached.
SharePoint or a document system holding every drawing set, specification and report the firm has produced.
RFQ and RFP responses, including the standard qualification forms that get rebuilt for every submission.
Each of these is a real build, not a feature of a product you already pay for. Follow one through to see how it works in general.
Nothing you are owed gets dropped.
Whatever arrives, in whatever format, becomes a clean record.
Writes the recurring document from your own past work.
Knows what expires, renews or comes due — and says so first.
Answers from your own records, not from the internet.
The conversation becomes the record, without anyone typing it up.
Assembles the recurring report from systems that do not talk.
Matches two sets of records and queues only the exceptions.
Two systems that do not talk, now talking.
Applies your rules, escalates only what needs judgment.
If that is a job in your business, the next step is half an hour on a call. Bring whatever you know about the volume — how many a month, who owns it now, which systems it touches. That is enough to scope it properly and quote it flat before anything starts.
Everything in this library is built to order rather than bought off a shelf — and whatever I build, I host and maintain. The rest of the library is here.