The multidisciplinary planning and engineering group PLANIUM, comprising seven specialised companies at eleven German locations with approximately 350 employees, is utilising the AI agent DeltaPlan from the German-Norwegian technology company WAIYS. This agent is employed for reviewing plan revisions. The introduction of DeltaPlan took place as part of the implementation of project control within the PLANIUM group and was jointly developed and deployed. WAIYS's solution aims to optimise the plan review process in construction projects.
Plan changes represent a regular component of almost every construction project. Traditionally, reconciling new drawing statuses with previous versions required manual effort, especially in projects without BIM systems. This process generates a significant need for review and coordination in construction planning and project control, particularly in extensive projects with a high number of plan statuses during execution planning. DeltaPlan automates large parts of these activities.
Functionality and Process Optimisation
WAIYS's DeltaPlan uses AI-powered visual analysis to identify changes between drawing revisions. It detects revision and annotation clouds and juxtaposes changes in focused sections. The system automatically assigns associated comments to the identified modifications. Furthermore, the solution extracts structured information from technical drawings and plan documents, making it usable for further analysis during project execution. The final quality check remains the responsibility of the specialists. The tool specifically directs focus to relevant areas and clarifies where plan statuses or planning updates are inconsistent and require consolidation.
The structured provision of information significantly reduces analysis effort. This minimises the risk of errors and frees up capacity for project participants to tackle tasks that explicitly require experience, such as assessing standard compliance, estimating the impact on costs and deadlines, and the contractual classification of planning changes. Marie Andrea Stenfeldt, CEO of WAIYS, emphasised that errors or delays in complex planning processes often do not result from a lack of expertise, but from the necessity to review and reconcile large amounts of information in a short timeframe. She highlighted that AI can relieve project teams and reduce the risk of overlooking relevant changes, without automating planning decisions. The goal is to provide professionals with the necessary information for decisions quickly and transparently.
Strategic Implications and Outlook
Barbara Vagt, Managing Director of PLANIUM GmbH, pointed out that for a plan revision, it is crucial to quickly identify relevant changes and evaluate their impact on deadlines, costs, and further planning processes. She noted that relieving specialists of manual comparison work through AI allows them more time for this essential evaluation. The deployment at PLANIUM is regarded as a promising pilot project. In addition to the joint further development of the planning review software, add-ons for other review processes are under development. The overarching goal is to reduce standard processes for engineers using AI to create scope for analysis and strategic consulting.
In addition to comparing plan revisions, the solution can also integrate planning law information for properties, for example, regarding types of use, zoning, or building restrictions. For this purpose, it accesses official planning data in Germany and Norway. Technologically, DeltaPlan is not based on a single AI model, but combines classic graphical analysis methods with specialised AI agents. These agents are used where complex plan elements need to be reliably identified. Text, table, and graphical information are first structured and then processed contextually. Identified plan elements are compared across plan statuses and presented in a structured overview – from the general overview to the individual changed element. The selection of the AI models used is performance- and cost-optimised depending on the task.
- —PLANIUM: Multidisciplinary planning and engineering group with seven specialised companies at eleven locations in Germany.
- —WAIYS: German-Norwegian technology company, developer of the AI agent DeltaPlan.
- —DeltaPlan: AI agent for the automatic detection and structuring of plan changes between revisions.
- —Application: Optimisation of plan revision review in construction projects, reduction of manual effort.
