What Procore does well
Procore's submittal module is built around workflow management. It handles submittal creation, routing between team members, approval tracking, revision history, and the submittal log. It tells the project team who has a package, what stage it is at, and whether the ball has been dropped. Procore integrates with the broader project — RFIs, drawings, daily logs, and change orders — giving PMs a single-pane view of project activity.
For teams that need to track hundreds of submittals across multiple trades and keep the approval chain moving, Procore is effective at what it does.
Where Procore stops
Procore tells you a submittal is pending review. It does not help you review it. When a Project Engineer opens a submittal package in Procore, they still need to:
- Find the relevant specification section and locate the applicable requirements
- Open contract drawings, schedules, details, and addenda separately
- Compare the submitted product data against those requirements line by line
- Determine whether the submittal conforms, deviates, or is missing something
- Document findings with citations to the source material
This is the most time-consuming part of the submittal process — and Procore does not address it.
What DECK adds
DECK picks up where Procore's routing ends. It reads the submitted documents and the governing project requirements — specifications, drawings, schedules, addenda, revisions — and surfaces potential discrepancies as cited findings. Each finding links to the exact page in the spec and the submittal so the reviewer can verify in seconds instead of searching for hours.
DECK then turns each finding into an assigned action with an owner, a response, and a decision record. The reviewer stays in control of every disposition: Approved, Approved as Noted, Revise and Resubmit, or Rejected.
Side-by-side comparison
| Capability | Procore | DECK |
|---|---|---|
| Submittal log and tracking | Yes — core strength | Yes — with review context |
| Routing and approval chains | Yes — configurable workflows | Not the focus |
| Requirements comparison | No — manual process | Yes — AI-assisted with citations |
| Cross-document gap detection | No | Yes — specs, drawings, schedules, addenda |
| Cited findings with evidence | No | Yes — linked to source pages |
| Issue assignment and tracking | Basic comments | Yes — owner, response, resolution |
| Decision trail | Approval stamp | Full review record with rationale |
| Resubmittal comparison | Revision tracking | Comment-to-change comparison |
Complementary, not competing
Most teams that use DECK also use Procore or a similar platform for project management. The two tools address different parts of the submittal lifecycle:
- Procore manages the workflow: who needs to review, when it's due, what the approval status is
- DECK manages the review: what the project requires, whether the submittal meets those requirements, and what needs to happen next
You would not stop using Procore to adopt DECK, and you would not use Procore as a substitute for the technical review DECK provides. They sit at different layers of the same process.
When to consider DECK alongside Procore
If your team experiences any of the following, DECK addresses the underlying problem:
- Reviewers spend hours searching specifications and drawings for each submittal
- Requirements get missed because the spec, drawings, and addenda are in different places
- Review comments lack citations to the contract requirement
- Resubmittals don't clearly address the original comments
- There is no record of why a submittal was approved or rejected
Learn more about how the full review workflow operates in How to Review Shop Drawings Against Specifications, or explore DECK's submittal management capabilities.