Microsoft 365 for construction
Private AI and Microsoft 365 automation for construction companies
Construction firms already run on Microsoft 365, but drawings, contracts and supplier invoices scatter across sites, and approvals stall in email. We build a private assistant that answers from your project documents with the source, and Power Automate workflows that move approvals in days, not weeks. After rollout, everything runs in your own Microsoft 365 and Azure, audit-ready.
20 years with SharePoint · data stays in the EU · Azure OpenAI in the EU Data Zone
How does Microsoft 365 automation help a construction company?
Microsoft 365 automation lets a construction company centralise project documents in SharePoint and route supplier-invoice and change-order approvals automatically across sites with a full audit trail. A private assistant answers questions about any contract or site document with the document, page and version, with the data kept in the EU. In our construction deployment the approval cycle went from 5 days to 3.5 and about 260 hours a year came back (client team’s estimate), with every decision traceable for audits.
The construction document problem
A growing contractor running several sites hits the same wall, not a lack of tools, but a lack of flow between them.
- Drawings, RFIs, contracts, and permits live in inboxes and local folders, not one source of truth.
- Supplier invoices and change orders wait days for approval because the chain runs on email.
- No reliable audit trail when a client, auditor, or dispute asks “who approved this, and when?”
- Site managers and the office work from different versions of the same file.
- Finding last quarter’s subcontractor contract, and knowing which version applies, still means asking a colleague.
What we build for construction firms
Three connected layers on your existing Microsoft 365 and Azure, nothing to rip out, no parallel platform to maintain. The Answergrove pilot runs in our EU Azure environment; after rollout, Answergrove runs in your own Azure subscription.
Answergrove for project knowledge
A private assistant that answers from your SharePoint contracts, site records and supplier documents, with the document, page and version behind each answer, and shows each person only what they may see. In production at a construction group across 865 SharePoint sites with about 400,000 documents in four languages.
Coming in the next version: Answergrove prepares e-mails, tasks and meeting invitations from the chat. You check each one and send it yourself.
Explore Answergrove →Invoice & approval workflows
Multi-level approvals for supplier invoices and change orders, routed by amount and project across sites, with reminders, accounting codes, and a complete audit trail built in.
SharePoint document control
One governed home for drawings, RFIs, contracts, and permits, organised by project and phase, with version control, so the office and the field always work from the same record.
Invoice approvals, automated across three countries
This is the exact problem we solved for an international construction group, anonymised under NDA, but real and running for 5+ years.
About 500 supplier invoices a month, approvals stuck on email
An international construction group was processing about 500 supplier invoices a month across sites in three countries, with approvals stalled in email and no reliable audit trail. We designed a 12-flow Power Automate and Azure solution: a custom approval app, automated reminders, and SharePoint-based tracking with accounting codes and budget validation built in.
What does it cost, and what does it pay back?
Answergrove starts with a two-week pilot on one SharePoint site: €1,500 fixed, credited toward the rollout. Rollouts start from €4,950 depending on scope and are installed in your own Azure subscription. Invoice and approval workflows are scoped and priced in writing before we start. See full pricing →
Client team’s estimate: approval time down from 5 days to 3.5 and about 260 hours a year back to the office, at about 500 invoices a month, five years in production. Put your own invoice volume and hourly cost against those numbers.
Why a specialist, not a generic product or dev shop
Construction FAQ
Does this work if our documents are messy and spread across sites?
Yes, that is the normal starting point. The assistant works on unstructured content and does not depend on perfect metadata or folder hierarchies, and the SharePoint foundation gradually brings drawings, contracts and site records into one governed home. We start with a two-week pilot on one site, so you see it on your own documents before anything bigger.
Can it route invoice approvals differently by amount and project?
Yes. Approval chains can branch by invoice amount, project, site, or cost code, for example a small subcontractor invoice goes to the project coordinator, while a large change order requires the project manager and finance. Every step is logged with approver, timestamp, and comments.
Will our project data stay private?
Yes. During the pilot, the index, document excerpts and logs are in the Microsoft Azure environment of SIA KSJ in Sweden Central (EU), with SIA KSJ as your GDPR processor, and they are deleted within 30 days after the pilot ends. After rollout, the index, the AI and the logs run in your own Azure subscription. Drawings, contracts and site records stay in SharePoint. Language models are Azure OpenAI in the EU Data Zone; your documents, questions and answers are not used to train models. Your data protection officer gets the full data flow in writing before the pilot.
Can it connect to Procore, Sage, or our ERP?
Approval workflows can hand results to another system that has a REST API, through Power Automate or Azure Functions; the scope and price are agreed in writing first. Answergrove itself answers from SharePoint documents and lists.
How fast can we see results?
The pilot is two weeks on one site. At a construction group, 865 SharePoint sites with about 400,000 documents went live in about eight working days. A Starter rollout is deployment plus two weeks of tuning; invoice workflows are scoped in writing first.
Start with one site, in writing
Send the address of the site or library you would start with, or tell us where approvals stall. You get a written two-week plan back: what happens on which day, what you provide, what you receive. No call needed.