RoughCheck

Idea

RoughCheck turns a phone photo of rough-in electrical work into an instant, code-cited pass or fail, before the inspector ever shows up. A small electrical subcontractor photographs a panel, a box, or a run of cable, and RoughCheck's AI flags NEC violations by code section (box fill, AFCI/GFCI circuit placement, cable stapling and support distance, grounding and bonding) with a plain-language fix. It is built as a fast, standalone field self-check for the crew, not a pre-construction plan-review platform sold to a municipality or a general jobsite documentation suite.

Market gap

Every current "AI plus building code" company reviews pre-construction drawings or BIM models and sells to municipalities, plan reviewers, or large general contractors, not to the trade crew doing the work. CodeComply.Ai is embedded inside CivicPlus's permitting platform for 850+ local governments and just raised $2M to speed up permit approvals. PlanCheckPro.ai and UptoCode both review design drawings against NEC and NFPA for architects, builders, and building departments. Constructable.ai gives general contractors a manual pass/fail checklist for internal inspections, still no photo analysis. None of them look at what a rough-in actually looks like after a crew installs it, and none are built for a subcontractor who wants to check their own work before the AHJ inspector arrives.

Meanwhile trade contractors already photograph their rough-in work every day. CompanyCam has tens of thousands of trade customers, a 4.7-star rating across 3,200-plus Capterra reviews, and raised a Series C in August 2025. Its own users describe manually photographing code violations for documentation, but the product has no AI compliance detection at all. The gap sits exactly between the plan-review AI companies, who never see the finished work, and the photo-documentation companies, who never analyze what is in the photo.

Timing: a failed inspection is a routine, budgeted cost, with flat reinspection fees running $55 to $150 in the counties checked, plus 2 to 7 days of schedule delay and $200 to $600 a day in carrying cost per one construction-cost breakdown. Licensed electricians are already trading advice on how to fix or fight failed inspections on public forums in real time. The "AI plus code compliance" investment thesis is proven fundable at the plan-review layer. Nobody has built the field-photo layer yet.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up, US only, long-term addressable population across the trades this expands into (electrical first, then plumbing and HVAC):

• Electrical contracting establishments: approximately 83,300 (AnythingResearch industry report, Census-based).
• Plumbing, heating, and air conditioning contracting establishments: approximately 111,200 (AnythingResearch industry report).
• Combined population: approximately 194,500 US businesses.
• Anchor ACV: $1,800/year (the Solo tier at $150/mo equivalent blended across tiers, benchmarked against CompanyCam's existing $19 to $79 per-user monthly pricing that trade contractors already pay for jobsite photo software).
• TAM = 194,500 x $1,800 ≈ $350 million/year.

SAM: 89% of electrical contracting establishments have fewer than 20 employees and the average firm runs 14 employees and $3.1 million in revenue (ECMag's 2026 Profile of the Electrical Contractor), so assume 60% of the combined population is a small, smartphone-tool-adopting business already paying for something like CompanyCam. SAM = 194,500 x 0.60 x $1,800 ≈ $210 million/year.

SOM: RoughCheck launches with one trade (residential electrical rough-in) on the 2023 NEC baseline in a small number of states, not the full combined population. A realistic 24-month beachhead target is 200 to 300 paying electrical subcontractor accounts at a blended $1,200/year (mostly Solo and Crew tier), for roughly $250,000 to $360,000 ARR. That is under half a percent of SAM, in line with a narrow, single-trade launch before the plumbing and HVAC rule packs exist.

Sources and assumptions: AnythingResearch electrical and plumbing/HVAC industry reports, ECMag's 2026 Profile of the Electrical Contractor for firm-size distribution, CompanyCam's public pricing and customer-base claims as the ACV benchmark.

Monetization strategy

Flat monthly SaaS subscription billed to the trade company, tiered by number of field users and jurisdictions covered. The company pays because a single failed inspection costs more in reinspection fees and schedule delay than a year of the entry tier, and because trade crews already pay for jobsite photo tools like CompanyCam, so the willingness to pay for a phone-based field tool is proven. Retention comes from the accumulating per-project violation history, which becomes the crew's own evidence log if an inspector or a homeowner disputes what was actually installed.

Pricing strategy

• Solo, $49/mo: 1 user, unlimited photo checks, one state's code baseline. Entry point for a solo electrician or a two-person crew.
• Crew, $149/mo (anchor): up to 8 users, multi-state rule packs, full violation history and audit log per project. Sized for the median small electrical contracting firm.
• Company, $299+/mo: unlimited users, priority access to new trade rule packs (plumbing, HVAC) as they ship, and export of violation reports alongside existing jobsite-photo tools.

All tiers include the code-section citation on every flagged violation, so the contractor always sees exactly which rule is at stake, not just a generic warning.

Lead magnet

A free, no-signup "Will This Pass?" tool: a contractor uploads one rough-in photo and gets an instant pass/fail read with code citations, no account required. It proves the core value in under a minute, at the exact moment of anxiety before a scheduled inspection, mirroring the free-tier hook that plan-review competitors already use one layer up the stack.

Social proof that the problem exists

1. Mike Holt electrical forum thread, "Bad Inspection," a working electrician describing a disputed failed inspection and other electricians weighing in with conflicting code readings in real time: https://forums.mikeholt.com/threads/bad-inspection.76261/latest
2. Mike Holt electrical forum thread, "Re-inspection fee?," electricians discussing being charged to come back after a failed inspection: https://forums.mikeholt.com/threads/re-inspection-fee.37969/
3. Anne Arundel County, Maryland published fee schedule showing a flat $150 reinspection fee, evidence this is a routine, budgeted line item, not a rare event: https://www.aacounty.org/inspections-and-permits/fees/permit-fees
4. Rhode Island's published electrical permit fee schedule showing a $55 reinspection fee, a second jurisdiction confirming the same recurring cost: https://rigov.org/DocumentCenter/View/19315/2024-Electrical-Permit-Fees
5. CodeComply.Ai's $2 million raise to bring AI plan review into CivicPlus's permitting platform for 850-plus local governments, showing real investor appetite for "AI plus code compliance," entirely at the pre-construction plan-review layer: https://refreshmiami.com/news/with-2m-in-tow-ai-startup-codecomply-ai-aims-to-accelerate-construction-approvals-and-reshape-compliance-checks/

Competitors

• PlanCheckPro.ai: AI review of electrical, mechanical, and plumbing drawings against NEC and NFPA, sold to AHJ plan reviewers and private plan-review providers, not to the trade crew.
• CodeComply.Ai: AI plan review embedded in CivicPlus, the permitting software used by 850-plus local governments, aimed at speeding up municipal permit approval, not field self-checks.
• UptoCode: $225/mo AI review of design plans and BIM against code, sold to architects, builders, and councils, reviews drawings, never as-built photos.
• CompanyCam: general jobsite photo documentation software, tens of thousands of trade customers, 4.7-star rating on 3,200-plus Capterra reviews, no AI code-compliance detection of any kind.
• UpCodes: a code research and reference lookup tool, useful for finding the text of a code section, does not analyze a photo or a jobsite at all.

What competitors offer now

The plan-review companies (PlanCheckPro.ai, CodeComply.Ai, UptoCode) all analyze drawings or BIM models before construction starts, and all sell into municipal plan-review departments or large design and build firms with formal procurement processes. They never touch a photo of the actual finished rough-in work. CompanyCam and similar jobsite photo tools solve documentation and organization, letting a crew store and share photos, but stop there: nothing in the product looks at what is in the photo and tells the crew whether it will pass. UpCodes helps someone manually look up a rule after they already suspect a problem. None of them give a two-person electrical crew an instant answer to "will this pass inspection" from the phone already in their hand.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Build for the field crew's own self-check moment, not a plan-reviewer's desk. Start with one trade (residential electrical rough-in) and the 2023 NEC baseline in a handful of states, so the rule set is narrow enough to be accurate and fast to ship. Lead with the free "Will This Pass?" single-photo tool so a contractor's first experience is a real answer with zero signup friction, at the moment they are deciding whether to call the inspector today or wait. Distribute through the same forums and Facebook groups where the pain already shows up daily (Mike Holt forums, JLC Forums, local electrical trade association chapters), not through the RFP-driven municipal sales channel the plan-review competitors are stuck in.