Submittal packages for every line you quoted, in the order of the contractor's fixture schedule.

Once the award comes in, the contractor asks for submittals on everything you quoted. Someone on your project desk works down the quote: the current spec sheet for each catalog number, the lighting package from the agency, gear drawings from the factory, and the warranty letters and certificates the spec asks for. Then the pages go in fixture schedule order and by spec section, behind a cover and an index, for the contractor to send on.

For the test, AI reads copies of those quotes, schedules and spec sections with the documents your team pulled, and drafts the whole package: the index, the sheets in order, the quote line each page belongs to, and a list of documents the spec calls for that your files don't hold. It changes no catalog number and sends nothing to anyone.

The spec decides the paperwork, the quote decides the parts. On federal work, the Unified Facilities Guide Specification for submittal procedures, updated in August 2026, defines product data as catalog cuts, illustrations, schedules, diagrams, performance charts, instructions and brochures. It wants each section's product data bound as one volume, with a bookmarked table of contents listing pages and catalog item numbers, and every product marked with the section number and the paragraph number and title it answers. Dimensions go in the contract's units, on a separate sheet when the catalog uses others. The draft builds that index straight from your quote lines.

Certificates are written for one job. The same guide spec wants certificates on the manufacturer's letterhead, signed by its responsible officials, dated after the contract award and naming the project. Test reports must come from testing within three years of award unless another section says otherwise, and where a product must meet a UL or NEMA standard, its label or listing counts as proof; otherwise an independent lab's certificate, approved by the contracting officer, is needed. A generic letter from a manufacturer's website can't meet that, so the draft lists each letter to request, from whom, and what it must say.

Lighting brings the longest list. The federal interior lighting guide spec has the drawings' luminaire schedule give each fixture's symbol and type designation, light source, voltage, input watts, delivered lumens, efficacy, color temperature, CRI, driver, dimming, mounting and BUG rating, with accessories such as emergency battery inverters, remote drivers and sensors listed separately. The same guide spec then asks for the luminaire family's safety certification and file number from a lab OSHA recognizes, such as CSA, ETL or UL, lumen maintenance projections under IES TM-21, a TM-30 color graphic, a certificate that drivers and dimmers work together without flicker, and a written replacement warranty of at least five years with return instructions. One schedule row can call for every one of them.

The sheets come from several places. Some manufacturers publish their own tools: Hubbell's Canadian site has a Submittal Builder that takes pasted catalogue numbers, offers catalogue pages, specifications, installation manuals and sales drawings, and returns one PDF to download, email or share. Lighting controls can run on a separate track. One distributor's controls division needs the construction documents, Title 24 forms and fixture schedules to propose, issues layout drawings and submittals after a hold-for-release PO, and sends sales an official bill of materials only once the approved submittals come back. The draft records where each document came from and its revision date.

Who approves it, and what your reviewer watches. On federal jobs, a submittal marked G or S needs government approval, with a code after the G naming the office that reviews it, while the rest stop at the contractor's quality control. Your reviewer, usually the inside salesperson or project coordinator who builds packages, checks that every quote line has its sheet and no sheet lacks a line, that pages follow the schedule, that each document is current and dated for the job, and that the gap list is complete. The draft never marks a product as meeting the spec. It shows what each section asks for and which page in the package answers it.

With a yes from your reviewer against the success criteria, packages for newly awarded jobs get the same draft for about 30 days.

Your salesperson checks and sends every package, requests each letter from the manufacturer, and answers the contractor's questions. Any change of product stays between the contractor, the engineer and your team.

That month carries a fixed price you see before signing. Another product group, or another job, is quoted and decided separately.