PDF Processing for Construction

Overview

Adapted from Anthropic's PDF skill for construction document workflows.

Construction Use Cases

1. RFI Processing

Extract structured data from Request for Information documents.

from pypdf import PdfReader
import re

def extract_rfi_data(pdf_path: str) -> dict:
    """Extract RFI fields from PDF."""
    reader = PdfReader(pdf_path)
    text = ""
    for page in reader.pages:
        text += page.extract_text()

    # Parse common RFI fields
    rfi_data = {
        'rfi_number': re.search(r'RFI\s*#?\s*(\d+)', text),
        'subject': re.search(r'Subject:?\s*(.+?)(?:\n|$)', text),
        'from': re.search(r'From:?\s*(.+?)(?:\n|$)', text),
        'to': re.search(r'To:?\s*(.+?)(?:\n|$)', text),
        'date': re.search(r'Date:?\s*(\d{1,2}[/-]\d{1,2}[/-]\d{2,4})', text),
        'spec_section': re.search(r'Spec(?:ification)?\s*Section:?\s*(.+?)(?:\n|$)', text),
        'drawing_ref': re.search(r'Drawing\s*(?:Ref)?:?\s*(.+?)(?:\n|$)', text),
    }

    return {k: v.group(1) if v else None for k, v in rfi_data.items()}

2. Submittal Package Creation

Merge multiple PDFs into organized submittal packages.

from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader
from pathlib import Path

def create_submittal_package(
    cover_sheet: str,
    product_data: list,
    shop_drawings: list,
    output_path: str
) -> str:
    """Create organized submittal package."""
    writer = PdfWriter()

    # Add cover sheet
    writer.append(cover_sheet)

    # Add bookmarked sections
    page_num = len(PdfReader(cover_sheet).pages)

    # Product Data section
    writer.add_outline_item("Product Data", page_num)
    for pdf in product_data:
        writer.append(pdf)
        page_num += len(PdfReader(pdf).pages)

    # Shop Drawings section
    writer.add_outline_item("Shop Drawings", page_num)
    for pdf in shop_drawings:
        writer.append(pdf)
        page_num += len(PdfReader(pdf).pages)

    with open(output_path, "wb") as output:
        writer.write(output)

    return output_path

3. Specification Extraction

Extract specification sections for analysis.

import pdfplumber

def extract_spec_sections(pdf_path: str) -> dict:
    """Extract specification sections by division."""
    sections = {}

    with pdfplumber.open(pdf_path) as pdf:
        current_section = None
        current_text = []

        for page in pdf.pages:
            text = page.extract_text()

            # Match CSI MasterFormat sections
            for line in text.split('\n'):
                # Match section headers like "03 30 00 - Cast-in-Place Concrete"
                match = re.match(r'^(\d{2}\s?\d{2}\s?\d{2})\s*[-–]\s*(.+)$', line)
                if match:
                    if current_section:
                        sections[current_section] = '\n'.join(current_text)
                    current_section = match.group(1).replace(' ', '')
                    current_text = [match.group(2)]
                elif current_section:
                    current_text.append(line)

        if current_section:
            sections[current_section] = '\n'.join(current_text)

    return sections

4. Drawing Sheet Extraction

Split drawing packages by sheet.

def split_drawing_package(pdf_path: str, output_dir: str) -> list:
    """Split drawing package into individual sheets."""
    reader = PdfReader(pdf_path)
    output_dir = Path(output_dir)
    output_dir.mkdir(exist_ok=True)

    sheets = []
    for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
        # Extract sheet number from page (if text-based)
        text = page.extract_text()
        sheet_match = re.search(r'([A-Z]+[-]?\d+)', text[:500])
        sheet_name = sheet_match.group(1) if sheet_match else f"Page_{i+1:03d}"

        writer = PdfWriter()
        writer.add_page(page)

        output_file = output_dir / f"{sheet_name}.pdf"
        with open(output_file, "wb") as f:
            writer.write(f)

        sheets.append(str(output_file))

    return sheets

Integration with DDC Pipeline

# Example: Process RFI and add to tracking spreadsheet
import pandas as pd

# Extract RFI data
rfi_data = extract_rfi_data("RFI_045.pdf")

# Load existing tracker
tracker = pd.read_excel("RFI_Log.xlsx")

# Add new entry
new_row = pd.DataFrame([rfi_data])
tracker = pd.concat([tracker, new_row], ignore_index=True)

# Save updated tracker
tracker.to_excel("RFI_Log.xlsx", index=False)

Dependencies

pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab

Resources

• Original: Anthropic PDF Skill
• PyPDF Docs: https://pypdf.readthedocs.io/
• PDFPlumber: https://github.com/jsvine/pdfplumber