DIY · No AI
Do it yourself
Your people run the job in the same system. No AI model touches your documents.
Platform
Construction contract redlines, negotiated inside the document.
Contracts Connected Redline Negotiation: the construction industry's first end-to-end redline negotiation workflow. Closed loop, AI-assisted, e-signature included.
SOC 2 Type IIU.S. hostedAI optional
In one paragraph
Construction contract redlines shouldn’t mean emailing marked-up PDFs back and forth. In Contracts Connected the vendor marks up your subcontract right in the app. You accept, reject or revise each change. Initials go on what you agreed to, and it goes straight to signing.
Redlining: ElectricalSubcontract 26-014 · Onyx ElectricalRedlinedExecuted
Article 7
Payment
Payment
7.1 Progress payments Contractor shall pay Subcontractor each month for Work performed, less retainage, on approved pay applications.
7.2 Time of payment Contractor shall pay Subcontractor within thirty (30)fifteen (15) days of an approved pay application.
LOPK7.3 Retainage Contractor will hold ten percent (10%) five percent (5%) of each progress payment until final completion.
Luis OrtegaOnyx Electrical, Inc.
Priya K.Westshore Builders, Inc.
Suggestions
Luis OrtegaOnyx Electrical
Can we do 15 days? Our suppliers bill us net 15.
✕ Reject✎ Revise✓ Accept
Luis OrtegaOnyx Electrical
It’s a four-month job. Can you hold 5% instead of 10%?
✕ Reject✎ Revise✓ Accept
2 / 2 reviewedFinalize redlines✓ Finalized
The Problem
Construction contract negotiation lives in five tools and three formats.
The document bounces between Word, PDF, and e-signature tools, each handoff a chance for version confusion, lost context, or tampering. Nobody knows who's holding the ball. Nobody remembers why clause 12.3 got softened three weeks ago.
And when the contract finally gets executed, there's no clean record of how it got there.
How it goes today
PDF
Subcontract_Onyx_markup_v4.pdfRound four of their markup, emailed back
EMAIL
RE: RE: FW: Onyx redlines“Which markup is the current one?”
XLSX
Contract_Tracker_2026.xlsxOnyx on site Monday. Still in redlines.
Five formats. Four tools. Zero version integrity.
Meet Redline Negotiation
One system, from first draft to final signature
Redline Negotiation in Contracts Connected is built around a different premise: the contract never leaves the system. Every markup, comment, approval, rejection, initial, and signature lives inside CC, with AI watching over the shoulder of every proposed change, and a full audit trail built automatically as negotiation unfolds.
Closed-loop
The document never leaves CC. No Word attachment. No DocuSign round-trip.
AI risk insight
Every proposed change gets analyzed in plain English before you approve or reject it.
E-signature included
The same system that hosted the negotiation executes the final signature.
Audit-ready
Every action, actor, timestamp, and reason, recorded automatically.
How It Works
Seven steps, one system, one document
From the moment the contract is drafted to the moment it's countersigned, one surface, one audit trail, one source of truth.
- 01Prime contractor sends through the vendor portal
No Word file. No download. No attachment. The vendor opens the contract in the browser.
- 02Vendor proposes redlines inline
Every insertion, deletion, and substitution becomes a discrete, trackable item with an attached reason.
- 03AI risk insight fires automatically
Plain-English explanation of what the change means, what it exposes you to, and how it compares to industry norms.
- 04Prime contractor team reviews in a structured queue
Approve, reject, or counter. Internal chat runs alongside the redline for team debate. Reasons are required.
- 05Initials drop at the moment of agreement
Dynamic initials from both parties land on the exact page at the exact location where the redline was approved.
- 06Ball-in-court updates in real time
The system always shows whose turn it is and what's pending, document level, redline level, task level.
- 07E-signature executes inside the same system
The document that gets signed is the document everyone negotiated. No export. No upload. No handoff.
See a vendor’s redlines worked out on a sample contract.
How It's Built
The seven pillars of redline negotiation.
Each one earns its place. Each one was built because the alternative, email, Word, DocuSign, Teams debates about clause 12.1, fails in practice.
Pillar 01
Closed-loop contract workflow
The contract never leaves CC until it's executed.
No Word attachments. No DocuSign round-trip. No 'please find attached the revised draft.' The document lives inside Contracts Connected from creation through execution, viewable and editable in the browser by both the prime contractor team and the vendor, with role-based permissions controlling who can see what.
Because the document is enclosed, it's tamper-proof by design. There is no 'other version' floating around in someone's inbox. The only version that exists is the version inside CC, and every change to it is tracked, attributed, and timestamped.
What this replaces: Five formats. Four tools. Zero version integrity.
Pillar 02
AI risk insight on every requested change
Every redline gets analyzed before you approve or reject it.
The moment a vendor proposes a change, AI Risk Insight generates an inline explanation in plain English. It answers three questions: what does this term mean, what does this change expose you to, and how does it compare to industry norms.
This runs on every proposed change, clause edits, limit changes, date shifts, defined term substitutions, payment term adjustments, notice period modifications. Project managers without legal backgrounds can make informed decisions instead of forwarding everything to outside counsel.
Trained on construction contract language. Not a general-purpose CLM retrofitted.
12.3 IndemnificationDone with you
…shall indemnify Contractor from any and all claims claims caused by Subcontractor’s negligence.
What it meansOnyx covers only the claims it causes
ExposureShared-fault claims could land on you
ComparedNarrower than your standard subcontract
The AI explains it · you make the call
Pillar 03
Dynamic initials on every approved redline
Initials drop automatically at the exact spot where each change was approved.
This solves one of the most tedious and error-prone parts of traditional redline negotiation: the manual initialing of every agreed-upon change. In paper or traditional PDF workflows, initialing is either skipped entirely or done in bulk at signing, where nobody actually re-reads what they're initialing.
In CC, initials are dynamic. Generated from each party's verified signature identity. Placed at the exact location where the redline was accepted. Stamped with the date and time of approval. By the time the contract reaches final signature, every negotiated change is already initialed by both parties.
Page-level initialing is an enforceability fundamental. CC makes the chain continuous instead of retroactive.
Pillar 04
Full audit trail with reasons
Every action on every redline is recorded, what, who, when, and why.
The audit trail is not a passive log. Each entry captures the action, the actor, the timestamp, the reason, and the prior and new state of the document. Reasons are required fields at each step, not optional.
The trail is fully time-navigable. Pull up an executed contract a year later and rewind the negotiation: the original draft, the vendor's first counter, the prime contractor's response, the legal team's internal chat on clause 12.1, the eventual compromise language, and the initials that sealed it.
When a dispute arises, the question is never just 'what does the contract say?' It's 'why did we agree to this?' The audit trail answers that.
Pillar 05
Internal team chat on the redline itself
Your team debates each change in a thread attached to the redline, without sending a single email.
When a vendor proposes a change, the prime contractor team often needs to discuss it before responding. Today that discussion happens in Teams, email threads, hallway conversations, or phone calls, entirely outside the contract workflow, with no record of what was considered.
CC moves that conversation inside the platform. Each redline has its own internal chat thread, visible only to the prime contractor team. The coordinator can tag the CFO on an indemnification clause. The legal reviewer can weigh in on a liability cap. The vendor never sees any of it.
Decisions on contract terms shouldn't live in Teams messages that disappear after 90 days. They should live next to the clause they were made about.
Team thread · 12.3Onyx can’t see this
Miguel S. · ContractsOnyx wants indemnity limited to their own negligence. @Priya, OK with that?
Priya K. · VP OperationsPush back. They cover their share when fault is shared.
Kept next to the clause it’s about
Pillar 06
Clear ball-in-court status
At any moment, everyone knows whose turn it is and what's pending.
The system maintains an unambiguous ball-in-court indicator at three levels: the document (is the contract with the prime contractor for review or the vendor for response?), each redline (who owes the next action on this specific change?), and the task (which named person on the prime contractor team owns the next step?).
The auto-chase engine uses this same data. When the vendor has owed a response longer than threshold, reminders fire automatically. When an internal reviewer has been sitting on a redline too long, the system escalates to their manager. Paperwork doesn't stall because someone forgot to follow up.
In construction contract negotiation, the single biggest cause of delay is ambiguity about whose turn it is. CC eliminates it.
Pillar 07
Built-in e-signature, front to back
Once redlines are resolved, the same document is routed for signature inside the same system.
No export. No upload to DocuSign. No 'please sign the final PDF I just attached.' The contract that was negotiated inside CC is the contract that gets signed inside CC.
The signing workflow reads from the same document, uses the same identity verification that powered the dynamic initials, and routes to the correct Authorized Signer and Vendor Signer roles. One document. One audit trail. One signed PDF at the end.
The near-universal current workflow is negotiate in one tool, finalize in another, sign in a third. Each transition is a potential failure point. CC collapses the three into one.
AI-first. AI optional.
What each level does here. You decide how much the AI does.
One setting on your account. Change it any time.
DWY · AI analysis
Done with you
The AI reads what comes back and tells you accept or reject, with the reason. You make every call.
DFY · AI agent
Done for you
The AI agent chases, reads and files from its own inbox, Human in the loop or Auto mode, on the record.