NHAI made you use Aconex. CivilBolt is what you actually need to deliver the project.
Aconex is good at what it does: drawing transmittals between owner, consultant, and contractor with a court-grade audit trail. The trouble is, that's all it does. Your BOQ, RA bills, daily logs, EOT claims, mob-advance recovery, and Civil Brain Q&A live somewhere else. CivilBolt is that somewhere else.
9
CivilBolt wins
2
Ties
2
Aconex wins
Feature by feature
| Capability | CivilBolt | Aconex | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Indian civil contractors: internal project execution | Inter-party document collaboration on mega-projects | |
| Licensing model | Per-organisation flat fee: entire team across all active projects | Per-project, $10–50K/yr. 10 projects = $100K–$500K/yr. | |
| BOQ + RA bills + IPC | First-class objects. BOQ → progress → RA bill → IPC → final settlement → DLP, native. | Not modelled. Contractor maintains separate Excel. | |
| Document transmittals (drawings, RFIs, submittals) | Project-internal drawing repo with version control + RFI workflow | Industry-standard external transmittal with audit trail accepted by NHAI/PMCs | |
| Daily field logs | Mobile-first. 10 min on Android. Offline drafts, geo-tagged photos, auto weather. | Not in scope. Site engineers don't use Aconex from the field. | |
| AI letter drafting | Show-cause, EOT, variation, RFI in 2 min with project-specific clause refs | Not available | |
| AI document Q&A (Civil Brain) | Clause 12.3 → answer + page reference in 2 seconds | Search 12,000 transmittals manually | |
| Mobile experience | Mobile-first; site engineers, PMs, contracts managers all use it | Web-only; mobile app is read-only and rarely used | |
| Indian financial integrations | Tally, Zoho Books, RazorpayX (priority roadmap) | None, built before Indian SaaS ecosystem matured | |
| EMD / BG / mob-advance / DLP tracking | Native: return-due dates, recovery schedules, BG expiry alerts | Not in scope; tracked in contractor-side Excel | |
| Audit trail for owner submissions | Full action history per artefact, exportable | Court-grade transmittal log; the standard NHAI/DMRC PMCs accept | |
| Implementation time | 2 weeks with our team: contract upload, project ready | 3–6 months; usually rolled out by the owner's PMC, not the contractor | |
| Coexistence with Aconex | Designed to run alongside: Aconex for owner transmittals, CivilBolt for everything else | N/A |
Aconex for the audit trail your PMC requires. CivilBolt for everything you actually do.
On most NHAI, DMRC, and metro contracts, Aconex isn't optional. The PMC mandates it for drawing transmittals. We're not asking you to fight that. We're asking you to stop running BOQ, RA bills, daily logs, claims, and correspondence in a parallel Excel + WhatsApp universe. Run Aconex for what your owner needs. Run CivilBolt for what your team needs.
The hidden cost of the status quo
Per-project pricing that multiplies fast
Aconex bills per-project, typically $10–50K per project per year. Most Indian contractors run 5–20 active projects. That's $50K–$1M annually in Aconex licences alone, before consultants, training, or the inevitable Excel side-project the team builds because Aconex doesn't model BOQ/RA bills.
A drawing transmittal tool, not a project management tool
Aconex was built for the moment a drawing leaves the consultant's office and reaches the contractor's site. That's a real workflow on mega-projects. It does not model BOQ items, RA bill cycles, EVM, daily logs, mobilisation advances, performance BGs, DLP defect liability, or anything resembling internal contractor execution.
Owner-mandated, contractor-funded
On most NHAI/DFCCIL/metro contracts, Aconex usage is mandated by the owner's PMC. The contractor pays the bill but the workflow is shaped around the owner's audit needs, not the contractor's productivity. Your team uses Aconex because they have to, not because it helps them ship.
No AI, no mobile, no Indian financial integrations
Aconex has no AI letter drafting, no document Q&A, no mobile field app, no Tally/Zoho/RazorpayX integrations. The UX is from a pre-mobile era; site engineers don't open it from a phone. Civil Brain answers Clause 12.3 with a citation in 2 seconds; Aconex makes you scroll through 12,000 transmittals to find the one you need.
Questions we hear on demo calls
Run BOQ + RA bills + Civil Brain alongside your Aconex workflow.
Per-organisation licensing: entire team, every active project. 14-day pilot on a live project. No PMC sign-off needed; we run alongside Aconex, not against it.