How Deviation Check reviews submittals

Deviation Check is built by Aliso LLC. The Deviation Check Editorial Team maintains the per-division deviation taxonomies, the division and category guidance, and the content library on this site. The team's focus is narrow on purpose: reviewing construction submittals against CSI MasterFormat specifications the way a General Contractor's Project Manager does, section by section.

This page explains how a review works, what it covers, how we test it, and where a person stays in the loop.

What the review actually does

A review takes two inputs: the project spec section and the subcontractor's submittal package. From there it runs five steps.

1. Identify the section and division. It reads the CSI section number and maps it to one of the 23 MasterFormat divisions.
2. Load the division's taxonomy. Each division has its own deviation taxonomy: the six categories below, the severity scale, and the domain signals that matter for that scope of work (HEPA filtration and abatement licensing for Division 02, compressive strength and rebar grade for Division 03, and so on).
3. Compare submittal against spec. Every difference is classified into exactly one of the six categories and assigned a severity: Blocker, Fix-and-Resubmit, or Note-Only.
4. Write a structured report. The output is a top-line verdict (Approved, Revise and Resubmit, or Rejected), a deviation table that quotes the spec and the submittal verbatim and states a suggested action for each row, and the redline passages a PM would mark up when returning the package.
5. Hand it to a person. The report is written for the Project Manager to verify and act on. The tool does not approve or reject anything on its own.

The six deviation categories

Every finding maps to one of six categories, which keeps reports consistent across divisions and reviewers:

1. Manufacturer or Product Substitution
2. Performance Specification Gap
3. Missing Certification or Compliance Documentation
4. Aesthetic Deviation
5. Detail or Installation Mismatch
6. Submittal Package Incompleteness

Each category has a default severity that the review escalates or de-escalates based on context. For the full definitions with field examples, see the six categories of submittal deviation.

What it covers

Deviation Check covers all 23 CSI MasterFormat divisions that carry construction submittals, from Division 02 Existing Conditions through Division 33 Utilities. Each division pairs with its own taxonomy, and each of the six categories has a division-specific deep dive, which is 138 division-and-category combinations in total. You can browse them from the CSI Divisions index.

How we validate it

We keep a reference set of construction submittal cases with known deviations that a reviewer has graded by hand. We run the engine against that set whenever we change a division taxonomy or the underlying model, and we score each report against the known answers for verdict accuracy and for recall, the share of known deviations it surfaces.

In the most recent internal run, across 35 cases spanning all 23 CSI MasterFormat divisions, the engine returned the correct top-line verdict (approve, revise, or reject) on all 35. It surfaced about 0.97 of the known deviations on average, meaning that for nearly every problem a hand grader had flagged, the engine flagged it too. We also track a stricter score that credits a catch only when the engine files it under the same one of our six categories the grader chose; that reads about 0.80, because the same deviation can sit honestly in more than one category - a missing test certificate is both a missing certification and an incomplete package. We watch the stricter number for regressions. On a clean submittal that genuinely meets spec, the engine returned Approved with no invented deviations.

These are internal test cases with known answers, not field results from live projects. They exist to catch regressions when we change the taxonomy or the model, and to keep the engine honest about what it can and cannot see in a document.

What Deviation Check is not

Deviation Check is AI-assisted review, not an autopilot. Every report is written for a Project Manager to verify before it goes back to the subcontractor. It does not approve submittals, and it does not replace the judgment of the PM, the Architect, or the Engineer of Record.

It is also built to fail safely. On a scanned or low-quality document it lowers its own confidence and asks for a clean copy rather than guessing at values it cannot read, and it flags the specific items a reviewer should confirm against the original. A first pass that tells a PM where to look is the goal, not a verdict no one checks.