Our Bold, New Vision: Zero Disputes and Stronger Relationships in Construction
By Josh Levy, CEO, Document Crunch
This is reproduction of Document Crunch CEO Josh Levy’s newsletter, CrunchTime, which you can read and subscribe to it here.
The construction industry is built on bold ideas. We imagine buildings that don’t yet exist. We create extraordinary feats of engineering. We bring together a complex network of stakeholders to execute with precision and on seemingly impossible budgets and timelines.
However, there's one conventional idea that construction has accepted for far too long: the belief that disputes and claims are just part of the business. At Document Crunch, we believe that’s no longer acceptable.
In fact, we believe the future of our industry is one with zero disputes and stronger relationships.
Here’s why, and how we get there...
Our Industry is Ready for a New Type of Safety Culture Movement: Zero Disputes
The construction industry didn’t always have a strong safety culture, but over the past few decades, it has undergone a transformation: safety is now a non-negotiable, core value—woven into every process, tracked obsessively, and celebrated when progress is made. Why? Because leaders recognized that even one incident was too many. So, they rallied behind a bold, industry-wide goal: zero safety incidents. And while our industry has yet to achieve this ambitious goal, this focus has led to major improvements in safety across just about every measure imaginable.
At Document Crunch, we believe it's time to bring that same mindset to project alignment, decision-making, and dispute prevention. Just as the safety movement helped reduce incidents, save lives, and strengthen jobsite culture, we believe construction is ready for a similar transformation—this time focused on knowledge clarity, risk reduction, and relationship strength.
This is why we have further clarified both our vision and mission as follows:
OUR VISION: A construction industry with zero disputes and stronger relationships
OUR MISSION: Empowering construction teams to confidently make informed decisions that reduce risk and deliver better project outcomes
The Turning Point in Our Journey: Our Original Mission Around Awareness Isn’t Enough
In my former life as a construction attorney, I saw firsthand how painful, damaging, and wasteful disputes can be. This pain was contextualized in a 2024 Arcadis Construction Dispute Report, which found the average value of a construction dispute in the U.S. is a whopping $43M. Importantly, there is a common root cause. As the report cites, one of the primary reasons for disputes is project stakeholders “failing to understand and/or comply with contractual obligations.”
This is why...
Our initial mission was to empower teams to understand what is in their contracts. Co-founder Adam Handfinger (also a construction attorney) and I intuitively understood that knowledge was power for our industry, and we wanted to prevent unnecessary risks.
Our initial contract intelligence product was a game-changer. We helped construction professionals review overwhelming contracts and documents, streamline the risk review process, and simplify complicated legalese so everyone understood what was in their contracts.
But something important happened as we grew. We realized that awareness was just the beginning. Knowing what your contract says is great. But what really moves the needle is getting ahead of decisions and making the right ones when things go sideways on a project—and they will. We cannot control things like weather, pandemics, supply chain shocks, or labor challenges, as we know that construction is inherently variable. The question isn’t if something will go wrong. It’s how you respond when it does.
Our expanded risk reduction platform will catalyze an industry with no disputes. We have broadened our platform and are continuing to innovate across the entire project lifecycle. We arm construction teams with tools to REVIEW documents in seconds, GUIDE decisions with built-in best practices, and ASSIST with on-the-job questions and tasks.
These tools are proven to help construction companies across the project lifecycle by supporting the following:
win the right work during bid pursuit
accelerate and support their teams during pre-con
provide real-time risk control throughout construction
Just like hard hats and safety talks, Document Crunch is the proactive layer of protection that helps teams stay aligned, make informed decisions, and avoid costly misunderstandings.
Why are we the ones to do this, and why now?
Document Crunch is uniquely equipped to lead this movement because of where we started—and how far we’ve come. Our AI risk reduction platform was built by construction professionals who understand the industry’s challenges firsthand, and it’s now informed by real-time data from thousands of users. That means we don’t just see the risks—we see the patterns behind them. With deep subject matter expertise and the most advanced construction-specific AI, we’re in the best position to help the industry drive disputes down to zero.
The Mindset. The Mission. The Movement.
We’re not saying disputes will disappear overnight. Just like zero safety incidents, it's an ambitious goal—but one worth striving for. Because behind every dispute is lost time, strained relationships, and unnecessary cost. And just like safety incidents, most disputes are preventable when the right tools, knowledge, and behaviors are in place from day one.
We know that with the right tools, the right data, and the right mindset, mission and movement, the people who love this industry can build anything together. Just like our safety transformation, this isn’t one person’s job. It’s a culture shift. We’re here to lead that movement.
—Josh
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