Documents and plans

Every project keeps its own documents — drawings, consents, contracts, invoices, photos, certificates. Beyond storing them, QSME can read a consent pack: it splits the PDF into its real sections, transcribes every schedule and table, and from then on answers questions about the job with the page it came from.

This page covers both: the filing, and the reading.

Where documents live

Documents, inside a project. Providers also have My Business for their own templates and paperwork, kept out of any one project.

Every project starts with folders you would have made anyway — Drawings, Compliance, Invoices, Proof of Work, Certificates, Contracts — and you can add your own, nested as deep as suits.

Getting files in

Drag files, or a whole folder, straight onto the page. Or press Upload and pick several at once.

Versions

Uploading over an existing document makes it version 2 rather than a second file: same name, same folder, same links, with the history kept. Anything pointing at that document keeps working and now points at the newer version.

A document's Knowledge panel holds its version history and the text pulled out of it.

Finding things

The search box looks at file names and what is inside them — the text extracted from every version — and shows you the matching snippet, not just the file name.

Sharing outside QSME

Public links do not expire — they last until you make the document or folder private again. If that matters, use the private invite instead.

Reading the plans

Uploading a consent pack gives you a filing cabinet. Reading it gives you something that can answer questions.

Press Read my plans — on the upload prompt, from a file's ⋯ menu, or Read a document on the Plan index card at the top of the Documents page.

What it does

It works through the PDF and splits it into the sections that are actually there — site plan, floor plans, elevations, sections, structural, bracing, drainage, plumbing, electrical, specifications, schedules, consent paperwork — and writes each one out in full, with every schedule and table reproduced as a table and dimensions kept exactly as drawn. Anything it cannot read is marked "not shown" rather than guessed at.

You watch it happen: "Finding the sections…", then "4 of 11 sections ready", section by section.

What it costs

It has to be a PDF, up to 300 pages.

What you get afterwards

• Ask the plans anything. In chat, every figure in an answer is labelled where it came from — "From your documents (Architectural set, p.12)", "From your project", or "My estimate" with its basis. It will say a number is not shown rather than invent one.
• Draft the SOQ from the plans. Draft SOQ with AI reads the sections first, so it prices what is drawn rather than what is typical.
• Point bidders at the right sheets. When you make a tender, tick the sections the work is about; bidders see Referenced drawing pages — the label, the document, and the page range — so nobody prices the wrong sheet. If the document is replaced later, they are warned the pages may have moved.
• A connected AI assistant can ask too, through query_drawing_knowledge — see QSME for AI assistants.
• Take the index with you: copy a section, save one as a text file, save the whole index as a single file, or save a page range as its own PDF.

When a read finishes, QSME tells you what it found — and what it did not: "no bracing or drainage found in this pack" is worth knowing before a tender goes out.

Reading it again

Upload a new version and QSME nudges you to read it again. The old sections are retired rather than left to answer with stale pages.

Project facts — the quiet one

Separately, and free, QSME takes in every document you upload: a summary, the project's facts, scope items, quantities, specifications, exclusions and risks. That is what feeds the SOQ's suggestions and what the chat knows about the job without being asked. The Project facts strip only appears when something has not been taken in, is out of date, or could not be read.

Other places documents come from

If something looks wrong

Still stuck? hello@qsme.co.nz, or +64 27 338 8500.