Data Governance and the Cloud in AEC

Join Randall Stevens and me in this episode with special guest Aaron Vorwerk from Egnyte. Aaron tells us about Egnyte's role in AI and machine learning within the AEC industry. He shares his background, discusses data governance, the evolution of cloud platforms, and Egnyte's focus on cybersecurity. Listen as we explore how Egnyte enhances workflow efficiencies and manages content lifecycle, making it an indispensable tool for AEC professionals.

Episode Links

• Aaron on LinkedIn
• Egnyte on LinkedIn
• Egnyte website

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Listen to this episode

In this special Campfire Series episode, Don Jacob joins the podcast to tell us the Bluebeam story.

We discuss Don’s fascinating journey from working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to co-founding Bluebeam and transforming the AEC industry along the way. Don talks about the origins of Bluebeam, its impact on AEC, and hear his thoughts on the future of technology in these fields, including the role of AI and mobile. Our conversation reveals how Bluebeam has evolved over 23 years to become an industry-leading tool that has wildly succeeded at elevating project collaboration and document management in AEC.

Episode links:

Books and Philosophies

• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
  • Wikipedia Overview
  • Explores human-centered design principles, aligning with Don Jacob's focus on creating intuitive software tools for the AEC industry.
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
  • Amazon Link
  • Discusses the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) concept and iterative development, relevant to how Bluebeam's early software evolved from a PDF print driver to a powerful collaboration tool.
• The Pixar Touch by David A. Price
  • Amazon Link
  • Explores the creative and technical innovation journey of Pixar, relevant to Bluebeam's focus on user experience and iterative product development.

AI Tools and Emerging Technologies

• Bluebeam Official Website
  • Bluebeam Official Site
  • Learn more about Bluebeam Revu and Studio for AEC collaboration, including the latest AI-powered features like Auto Align and Intelligent Drawings.
• ISO Standards for PDF Technology
  • ISO Official Site
  • Explore the international standards that ensure consistency and reliability in PDF software development, which Bluebeam contributes to.
• Canvas Site Safety and Field Data Tools
  • GoCanvas Official Site
  • Learn how GoCanvas supports field data capture and integrates with platforms like Bluebeam for project collaboration and documentation.

Visualization & Design Tools

• Autodesk AutoCAD and Revit
  • AutoCAD Official Website
  • Revit Official Website
  • Bluebeam originated as a plugin for AutoCAD, emphasizing the importance of CAD integration in AEC workflows.
• SOLIDWORKS for Mechanical Design
  • SOLIDWORKS Official Website
  • Bluebeam's early integration with SOLIDWORKS highlights the importance of sharing CAD data across disciplines.

Psychology and Personal Development

• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
  • Amazon Link
  • Explores intrinsic motivation and mastery, concepts mirrored in Bluebeam's focus on user-driven design and continuous improvement.
• Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
  • Amazon Link
  • Lessons in fostering creativity and collaboration, reflecting Bluebeam's approach to iterative software development and customer feedback integration.

About Don Jacob:

Currently serving as the Chief Innovation Officer of Bluebeam, Don Jacob has had a 3 decade+ career "rolling up sleeves" and building teams that deliver services and software that have a global impact. As part of the original startup team, he's spent the past 20 years building Bluebeam into a leading global brand in the AEC industry. With previous executive-level stints at PetSmart.com and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, his broad range of experience makes him quite adaptable to the ever-changing needs of the industry.

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Episode Transcript:

174: ‘The Bluebeam Story’, with Don Jacob
Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel. In this episode, I'm talking with Don Jacob. Currently serving as the Chief Innovation Officer of Bluebeam, Don has had a three decade plus career rolling up his sleeves and building teams that deliver services and software that have a global impact. As part of the original startup team, he spent the past two decades building Bluebeam into a leading global brand in the AEC industry. Maybe you've heard of it. In this episode, we explore Don's fascinating journey from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to co founding Bluebeam and transforming the AEC industry along the way. Today Don shares the origins of Bluebeam, its impact on AEC, and his vision for the future of technology in these fields, including some new things that they're cooking up.
Our conversation reveals the story of how [00:01:00] Bluebeam has evolved over 23 years to become an industry leading tool, achieving its original mission of elevating project collaboration and document management in the AEC industry.
Before we get into today's conversation, I would very much appreciate your support by subscribing to the show, wherever you watch or listen, and please leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify- that always helps the show find new people. If you'd like to receive an email from me when new episodes are published with all of the links and other information as those come out, sign up for that by becoming either a free or paid member at trxl.co. Just click the big join button in the lower right hand corner.
One of the paid membership perks are my episode analyses that I publish in my Leadership Edge newsletter. These episode briefs provide key insights for forward thinking leaders who are seeking innovation in AEC, but are also short on time, offering the context of each conversation without the [00:02:00] need to listen to the full episode. They're really designed to keep you updated, spark your interest and encourage you to tune in if the ideas resonate. Leadership Edge newsletters are only available to paid supporters of TRXL+, and you can become one at trxl.co. To get a taste of what's on offer, you can search for Leadership Edge over at the website for previously published examples.
All right, thank you for helping me pay the bills around here. Now let's get back to the episode for today. Okay, so grab your favorite beverage. Find a comfortable seat around the campfire, relax and settle in, and enjoy listening to Don Jacob as he tells us the Bluebeam story.
​
Evan Troxel: Don, welcome to the TRXL podcast. Great to have you. And
Don Jacob: Thank you. I've been looking forward to this for a while.
Evan Troxel: I'm really [00:03:00] interested to hear your story. You have been in the software AEC tech side of things for quite a while. So maybe you can just take us on the journey that you've been on and tell the story about how all that happened.
Don Jacob: Okay. Well, yeah, I'll, um, you know, share a little bit, uh, kind of the, the medium length, background a bit. But so, Bluebeam, we've, uh, been at this now for year, uh, we're on, uh, year 23. Hard to believe it's been that, um, that short, that long, that longly short of a time. Um, And, uh, yeah, we started back in, in, in 2002 and, uh, you know, originally the, kind of the, some of the, the core work, uh, came out of, of work that was going on at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Uh, so there was, um, Bluebeam based in Pasadena, Southern California. That's kind of, it's the, the, where the, the core is. And then now, of course we have offices around, around the world, but, [00:04:00] uh, that, that's been kind of our, our core base for, uh, uh, for a long time. But we, you know, back in, back in the day, so I personally worked at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for, um, back for about 11 years back and started back in 1989 and it, it was an amazing.
Amazing time to be there. Um, and kind of had two lives there. Uh, half my life was working in the, the deep space network, uh, working with all the, uh, part of the, um, on a project where the radio signals that were coming back from the spacecraft, we'd actually be able to do science off of the, uh, the radio signal, be able to figure out what the, uh, the makeup of the atmosphere was of Mars and, uh, all these other planets.
And that was, you know, by far just an amazing, amazing, um, experience. But then the, the latter half of my, my time there, uh, we were working on the data systems around, Spacecraft design. And the challenge in the mid nineties [00:05:00] was JPL was going through this period of, instead of working on one large mission every decade or so, it had to evolve its way of working to do many more smaller missions in parallel, and that triggered off a whole And Whole new way of, of thinking about, okay, well, how do we build the tools to be able to support that better where we can do a bunch of missions in parallel.
And at the time, this is, you know, the mid nineties, you know, back in the day, hard to believe, but, um, it was an era of sun workstations, 30, 000 a seat for, uh, for that, that, um, that hardware and then, uh, just as much for the software, whether it's computer vision, pro engineer and, and such. And so you had these, these designs that you had to share throughout the, um, throughout the project.
And how do you make that where you don't have to have everybody having to have access to the, the [00:06:00] CAD systems? And how do you make it where you're not having to print, um, you know, you know, ammonia prints, you know, three, three or, you know, vellums, that sort of a thing. So there was this work to look at how do we do this, uh, electronically and that, that spurred some, some work around the PDF standard as being a really, uh, capable, uh, format for being able to, uh, take, take that, that information and be able to share it downstream, if you will.
Evan Troxel: When did the PDF, you know, it's a little redundant, right? PDF format,
uh, portable, portable document format, like really arrive on the scene because I think before that it was really EPS and file formats like that, that had kind of vector data stored inside them, but that's what Illustrator would write to if you wanted to write a vector drawing file to something, you know, and transfer it something and not lose that vector fidelity.
But what, when did PDF show up on the scene?
Don Jacob: Yeah, so, um, it really, yeah, [00:07:00] a lot of PDF has its beginnings and origination from PostScript. It was the 97, 98, uh, John Warnock, one of the, the, uh, founders of Adobe, actually, he, uh, created, um, it was Project Carousel. It was kind of the, the code name for it internally. And it was a way of, uh, being able to be able to provide published content in a consistent web, uh, format.
Uh, and that, that's really what prompted it. And that was, I think, 97, 98, when that, uh, really became, uh, a thing. And so it was right around that time. Yeah.
Evan Troxel: When I was in architecture school, which was 92 to 97, this is the EPS file days, right?
And, and it was like TIFFs, and on the Mac it was PICT files, which nobody, nobody even knows about anymore, right? And, um,
EPS files, and we would save stuff from like PowerCAD or AutoCAD as EPS files to get them into QuarkXPress so we could do desktop publishing, right?
Which was still kind of a new thing back then. [00:08:00] And, Do our large presentation boards and pin them up on the wall because we weren't drafting by hand on vellum anymore. We were, I mean, not, not all of us, but a few of us were really going down this technology roll. And there was this whole world of, um, File formats that we had
to deal with. And it was
like, just the nitty gritty of trying to get from here to there was such a, a thing and, and PDF really changed the game when it came to that, because it really was this fully encapsulated file with all the fonts and the line weights and everything that you wanted as a, as a, for graphical representation in a file, especially as an architect, right?
It was really important to communicate graphically and to have all that information there and be able to. Put all that in one thing and have somebody open it up on the other end and have them see exactly what you would expect them to see and
not have their computer substituting fonts and doing all that kind of stuff that we had to worry about back then.
Don Jacob: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where, um, you went [00:09:00] when Bluebeam first got started. So we, we actually originated out of, um, another company. So some people left JPL to start, um, this company, uh, Alliance Space Systems. Um, and they basically were known for making every Mars robotic arm that's on the surface of Mars.
And it was kind of like the A team of the JPL Mechanical Design Division people left, started this, uh, this org. And, um, they wanted to have a better way of, of doing, uh, work. and instead of, you know, why would we print paper out? We're, we're, we're putting robotic arms on the surface of ours. There's gotta be a better way.
And so that's really what prompted the work. But, you know, out of that, there was, Hey, we, we've got to get better. We've got to get smarter, more efficient at doing this, but we need the quality. I mean, this is highly precise engineering type stuff we're doing.
And so that's where, you know, PDF is a, um, You know, as a format [00:10:00] for dealing with line weights, line, uh, thickness, uh, uh, shrinking, uh, you know, making sure the scale is right.
All of these things are, uh, important when, when you're working on large, uh, format drawings and you're, you're making critical, you know, decisions, whether that be, you know, building, uh, stadiums or, uh, working on, uh, robotic arms on the surface of Mars. And, um, That's really where the first three years of Bluebeam.
So we, you know, it was a technology, um, that was incubated, kind of developed in house at, at, uh, this company ASI. And then, uh, there was a decision made, uh, we started to recognize, well, the, the, the work that they did work for, uh, JPL for, it was, uh, Hughes Space and Com at the time. And these people started saying, this is great.
We would love to, uh, to be able to use, you know, the, the, the workflows that you've developed [00:11:00] where using PDF as a way to be able to take that design, embed the analysis in that, use a version of the model that's embedded in the PDF as the, the, the, the, the master for building the CNC tool paths off of being able to then run a, uh, a coordinate measuring machine and validate the AS design versus the AS built and embed that back in the PDF.
And this becomes this, this, this, effectively digital twin kind of, uh, representation of a fully dimension drawing with all the, the entities around that, making up that part actually, uh, incorporate that in in the PDF. So you've got the physical thing, and then you've got the, the drawing, uh, that has all this encapsulated information as your, your configuration record.
And so that concept, um, is really what, what prompted, uh, us to spin out Bluebeam as a, as a separate entity. And so the, the first. Three years of Bluebeam. [00:12:00] It was step one. How do you create a high quality, easy to generate drawing out of that, that CAD application? So
for the first three years, our, our, our product was push button PDF for AutoCAD and push button PDF for SOLIDWORKS.
And, and that really, um, helped to get the industry over the hump of going from paper to CAD. to paperless. I mean, it sounds so trite now. It sounds like, oh, that, that's cute, you know, but, but I mean, that really, it was a big issue. The amount, I mean, the, the amount of money that was spent on document sets, you know, on, on any project, you typically would have to do You know, three to five to ten different release sets of those 500 seat sheet stacks of drawings of large format drawings and then heaven forbid you get revisions and then you got to print those out and integrate them.
And so it was a really, [00:13:00] um, tedious, expensive process that, uh, we were helped. Helped not only the cost of printing paper, um, but also just. Lowering the friction of being able to get information from the designer, the, the creator out to the people that were actually building, um, being able to lower that, that time, uh, hurdle, if you will, because it was able to get transmitted out so much quicker.
Yeah,
Evan Troxel: to me like, okay, if I've got AutoCAD and you've got AutoCAD, no big deal, send me an AutoCAD file. But you're probably actually talking about it where they didn't have a seat of whatever that app was, whether it was SolidWorks or AutoCAD, right? And so they needed another way to view this stuff without purchasing an expensive seat of mechanical CAD software.
Don Jacob: exactly. Like being able to, uh, yeah, that was exactly it, you know, so that whether I'm in, you know, my, my browser and I can. Uh, be able [00:14:00] to very, uh, consistently view that, that, that really was the, um, the need.
Evan Troxel: yeah. And I also think about kind of who's doing the reviews, right? It's usually the person who's been around the block a few times and knows what they're looking at, and they're not going to be the one who's like a cat operator, right? And so there's
this whole kind of learning curve of learning how to use the software, whether it's zooming and panning or, or actually using the software, it may be two different things, but still there's like this barrier to entry there.
And so just by making basically the digital drawing board version of The output so that they could review it on a monitor and scroll around multiple pages. They're not taking up a ton of desk space. Like there's, there's other things that people should be thinking of when, when we kind of go back in time, another one's file size, right?
Like these are back in the days of. Like, there were still floppy drives in computers, for sure, right? And, uh, bigger media was like CyQuest cartridges or
Zip cartridges. And if you're talking about 500 page [00:15:00] PDFs, you're talking about rather large files, right? Because in the AutoCAD, you know, you're, when you're using the CAD program, you maybe have one or two or three drawings open at a time, depending on which version of the software you're even using.
You don't have 500 sheets open. So, to be
able to combine all that into one package and send that to somebody, This is, was a game changer, right? It really was.
Don Jacob: Right. Well, and it's, um, yeah, I think there's a much bigger, broader discussion about technology adoption and how, how to move the industry forward. And, and that balance of familiar. Hey, we, we, we've got to get the project done, but let's find new ways of being able to do that more efficiently. And so again, it sounds, uh, simple now, but having that That way of working analog, the familiar touch of, of paper, but now able to [00:16:00] do it in an electronic way and then being able to benefit from doing that.
Ooh, you know, Bluebeam, you know, review. So, you know, first, you know, first thing we, we were focused on just getting the high quality dependable PDF files out. Then our, our user started saying, this is great. But now we want to be able to mark up and be able to actually do those technical type of documents, uh, markups that we can have that conversation about.
And so that's really what, what drove us to, to develop what became, uh, uh, Bluebeam, uh, Review, which is our desktop application, you know, the equivalent like Adobe Acrobat, but really focused on technical document markup. You know, the way we talk about it is that anything larger than an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper, if you need to do a graphical markup, that's really what we've, we've tuned the application to do.
Uh, but. But taking that, helping the industry go from [00:17:00] paper to paperless, doing it in a familiar yet forward looking way, um, it's easy to, you know, to talk about, but to actually do, to get the industry forward, it's a, it's a, It's a long journey, you know, you, you think in a, in, in, you know, Oh, Bluebeam, the, you know, that old, all the, that, that 2D company, you know, there, you know, then we moved past that.
And it's like, and, you know, good or bad, that the industry, this is where we are. And I think that's really what's motivated Bluebeam, you know, mission one, get paper to paperless. And then collaborating was, was a whole next phase. Yeah. And then, you know, now we're at a really interesting time given all the, the, you know, the fact, mobile, AI, all the, the wonderful, um, technology renaissance that we're in.
And yet, it's not about the technology. And so I'm, I'm a curmudgeonly, you know, Chief Innovation Officer at Bluebeam, I'm a curmudgeonly [00:18:00] innovator. I absolutely love talking technology, love talking about all the cool stuff, but, you know, What has been the core of DNA of Bluebeam is the user on the project and getting the project done and that being first and foremost.
And how can we help make that better? Innovating one step at a time. And before you know it, you've changed the industry. And so that's really been kind of what's been our motivation for quite a while now.
Evan Troxel: I'm curious where the name came from, going back to kind of the beginning. Where's that name, Bluebeam, come from?
Don Jacob: Yeah, there's nothing magical about it. Um, we, we did, we, we, uh, spent a lot of time, uh, early on, uh, uh, trying to figure out what would be the right name. We, we ended up, you know, it really became kind of internally, you know, we, uh, uh, generated, we hired a company to [00:19:00] work with our initial marketing years, years ago at the very beginning, but ultimately, um, you know, we settled on Bluebeam because Blue, you know, the blueprint kind of the The blue aspect beam has a structural engineering kind of architectural elements to it.
And putting those two, two together, um, I think really, um, resonated with us. And we, at the time we were, you know, housed in Alliance Space Systems offices and we had, you know, some of the engineers come back and come into a room and said, Hey, there were, you know, these are the names, give us your feedback.
We did a, you know, just a little bit of a internal, um, Uh, little study and it, it just, it stuck. And it's one of those things that you think, um, those little decisions, uh, years ago and how, you know, I think what still gets, uh, get us really, really kind of pumps us up, still three of us, um, are, are still there [00:20:00] from the original days of Bluebeam to the original developers, myself, we're still there.
And I think we're still to this day. 23 years plus in, um, it just, it, it brings a joy to us to, you know, be on an airplane or, you know, see somebody using Revu or we go into, uh, our customers offices and everybody's got it. Um, and just know that that Bluebeam name has been, uh, pretty, pretty well recognized world worldwide.
And, uh, it's humbling, it's motivating. It makes us, you know, still want to. Really push, push the industry forward in, in the, the Bluebeam way, the way that we've, um, I think had, have, uh, achieved in the past.
Evan Troxel: curious like what your kind of initial minimum viable product was. We have a lot of founders, a lot of startup developers who, you know, software developers who listen to this podcast. And it's always kind of like this, you know, this quest to get something out there [00:21:00] that you can
sell to customers. Was it really like a PDF print driver for AutoCAD?
Like, tell us, tell us what, how that, how that kind of came about. Decision making went, I mean, obviously it's evolved way beyond that, but what was the initial thing that you went to market with?
Don Jacob: yeah, so the initial product was Pushbutton PDF for AutoCAD. It was a, you know, three buttons, showed up in AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. Uh, it is effectively a, a, a print driver. Um, it, it handled batch PDF creation, but it, it really was, um, The pain point, you know, I, I think every, every, um, innovator, every, uh, entrepreneur, you're, you're solving problems, right?
You're, that, that, that's the, the, the thing that will get people to, to write a check is you're helping to solve, uh, uh, a pain and having to deal with, um, consistent, uh, PDF creation was the challenge at the time. And so we, you know, spent, um, um, [00:22:00] Three years, uh, really honing that, developing that. We, we did, uh, we actually were OEMing, um, the PDF creation out of SOLIDWORKS.
So early on, we, um, we, we worked with the SOLIDWORKS folks and, you know, had a great experience with, with, uh, with, with SOLIDWORKS and that was, um, another. Uh, path, but, and we had done, um, yeah, I think that really was, you know, kind of the, the, the main motivator. But then as, um, There's always this, uh, balance of focus and then growing the market.
And I, and I think there, there came a time when we, we probably could have spent another five plus years really honing that, um, that plugin. But obviously there, the, the window on that, um, it would prevent, you know, expansion and growth. And, and that's where as. You know, working with, with customers and, and understanding now, okay, [00:23:00] PDFs are created, um, now we want to be able to, to collaborate on them, be able to mark up with them.
It, it really drove, uh, an internal effort to say, okay, well, maybe let's, um, let's see if we can, you know, render PDF. Let's see if we can, uh, you know, provide a way of marking up that just isn't out there. And I think there was a, it felt like, uh, you know, there was a little bit of a R& D effort internally, and we, we proved ourselves that we could do it.
And that motivated really our next decade of work. So, you know, 2005 up through, um, you know, really 2014, 2015, we, we had been, you know, developing, uh, review and, and adding capabilities. I used to, and, and it took a long time to really get it to, um, To a point where it was, Oh, we hit product market fit with that, you know, as we, I would joke, like I, Be one of the guys going out, you know, demoing, uh, you [00:24:00] work with the engineering teams.
Like my, my role was head of engineering in, in in chief technology officer for most of the history of Bluebeam. But then, uh, when you're, you're small, you know, you're doing everything. And so part of the, the, the gig was going out and demoing the, the software and there was always this, that first release of, of, of review, you demo it and there was always this, um, interaction where.
Oh, you know, can, can it do this? Yeah. Can do, can do that. Can it do the next thing? Oh, sorry, I can't. So you go back, you, you develop, you come out with another, um, version and then, you know, there, there comes a time. Can I do this? Yeah. Can I do that? Yeah. Can I do that? Oh yeah. And let me show you one or two different ways of doing that.
And then you, you start to build, um, where you can get further into the demo before you, you can say,
Evan Troxel: you say no,
Don Jacob: Before you say no, and, but there was a magical point, you know, Review 7 in that era where it's like, Oh my goodness, this was, we, we hit it, you know, you knew, and it became [00:25:00] this, um, I used to love to do demos because it was almost like a revival, you know, sort of a thing.
Can I do this? Oh, let me show you. And then, you know, customer says, Oh, I found another way to do this. And, and, uh, I just really enjoyed that, that interaction and seeing that you're, you're, you're meeting a, a, a need. It really, um, really motivated all of, all of us. And, you know, always try to bring that back into the, um, To the office and really motivate us to do even better with that next release.
We, we, we, we, we had a joke, um, you know, review, you know, next, whatever. It's going to be the best release ever, you know, because it's always going to be, um, always better. Yeah.
Evan Troxel: one was the worst one.
Yeah.
So, so who was your initial customer set? Was it really all in the aerospace industry? I mean, you said anything larger than eight and a half by 11, and then immediately I start thinking of, okay, who's, who's, who's who? Who's printing sheets, right? And obviously architects, contractors, and things like that.
But I'm curious if you had AEC in [00:26:00] your lens, in your sites in that initial time period, or, or
where'd you, where'd you go?
Don Jacob: So it was a, it was a pivot early on. I think we, um, You know, manufacturing aerospace, it's interesting looking back to look forward now, and we're going to have a whole conversation about model based design, like it, the, the, the challenges we, um, we're facing in aerospace 25, 30 years ago, you see echoes of it, you know, here in our industry.
And I think there's a huge, huge opportunity there. But, um, but we realize that architecture, engineering, um, design A lot larger opportunity now consider when we're a plugin, you looking at, okay, well, what do we plug into there at the time, the industry was very fractured in the manufacturing world, you had pro engineer, you know, tens, hundreds of thousands of seats of software, and then you had AutoCAD.
And so realizing that, oh, well, if we're going to be a plugin initially, we want to, you know, target that, um, [00:27:00] that larger audience. Um, opportunity and our, our, uh, one of our, our original, uh, CEOs, his family was in architecture and we, we started really understanding the architecture market and we realized that there was a real need in, in that space.
And as we started to, uh, introduce and beta test, we, our first testers were architects, primarily engineering, uh, firms as the, really the creators of the, um, beta test. you know, those, those drawing sets that we're going to be built off of. And so that really is kind of where we focused on that.
Evan Troxel: Interesting. I'm curious if your early customers surprised you with the way they were using your software. I mean, did they, obviously they're asking for features.
Was there anything where you're like, what are you're doing? What in Bluebeam?
Don Jacob: all the time to this day, even, Hmm. you know, a, a funny story. It, it, it was, [00:28:00] um, it, uh, it was just one of those things like, wow, that's really a blending of analog and we went to a, uh, uh, a customer and they had the Cintiq, uh, The, those touch, um, the, the large format screens and,
Evan Troxel: Yep. Yep.
Don Jacob: and, um, they have review open and one of the, the gentlemen, one of the reviewers was saying, man, what I, what I love about your software is that, you know, I've got all these markup tools.
I can, you know, uh, uh, place them on, on the drawing. And then when I need to draw a straight line, um. I just take my T square, and I put it on the edge of this, uh, Cintiq, and I can draw a straight line, and it's like, oh my goodness, this, um, that's a very unique application of, um, of Bluebeam, but, you know, but I, I think, you know, we're, um,
our software, it's in an odd, we're in an, weird, not, I won't say weird, but it's a bit of a unique [00:29:00] situation, where, um, It's like, like Word or Excel. It has such a broad usage. It's used across design, engineering, build very deeply, owners, operators, out completely outside of the industry, shipbuilders and in all sorts of other applications.
And so we, we, we don't force a workflow. We enable however you want to work to be able to get that, that, that. design that project completed again. Um, I think it's a common theme. And so, you know, that, that's a, you know, kind of a funny example, but then, you know, we're, we're used of all things with, with, um, with review and studio, we're, we're used for poll planning.
You know, people found a great way to be able to use, um, you know, set up a studio session, which is the thing that enables us to collaborate on, on drawings and, and, and projects. And then you can lay out and, and poll plan. Your project or phases [00:30:00] of the project. Did we design our software to be used like that?
Absolutely not, but it's an amazing application. And so I think we've always, um, had those examples of, you know, our, our, our customer is surprising and motivating us to, um, to think a little, little different Outside the box, right? Yeah. Yeah. I remember when Steve Jobs announced the iPad, right? And he's sitting on the leather chair on the white stage and he pulls out this iPad and like, he's reading the paper. Right. And, and it was interesting because they had like some ideas about how you would use this device. But I'm pretty sure during that presentation, he's like, we have no idea how you're going to use this really.
Evan Troxel: We have some ideas, but, but we don't know all the ways you're going to use it. And we don't know, he's talking to software developers too. Like what. What would you do with this thing? Right? And I
think that there's something really neat about technology when it comes from this initial seed of an idea.
And then your customers are taking that and [00:31:00] saying, what if, and how about, and well, I figured out this weird work around that does this really cool thing that solves my problem. And then you can like take that and build it back in so that more people can benefit from it. But there's, there's this neat give and take that happens with software over its evolution, you know?
Don Jacob: Yeah. And we, we, we internally, we, we've talked about it, how, um, yeah, as the company grows and evolves, you always have new, new, um, new people joining and, you know, how, how do you kind of carry forward
Evan Troxel: Hmm. Yeah.
Don Jacob: company, you know, the, the soul, if you will, of, of Bluebeam and, and one of the, the discussion points has always been, it's like, um, it's like two strands of that helix, a DNA helix.
You've got us. And then you've got the customer. Like, we're intertwined and working together to really advance the work that's done. We're software developers and we've been, um, just invited to come [00:32:00] on these amazing, amazing projects over the last couple of decades. And it's moving when I think about it.
And the relationships we've been able to build and these people doing amazing things. And. that we, we, we cherish that. We recognize a certain sense of responsibility to when we develop software, like people depend on our software to be able to get their job done. And we don't take that lightly. And it, it just been such a neat journey over, over, you know, this time period.
And it's still, you know, 23 years in now, I'm still. Excited with the work that we do every day, the cool stuff that we're doing now, and you know, what's on the horizon, um, it's really just been an amazing experience so far. And every day it's different, and it evolves, and it changes, and the industry changes, and the [00:33:00] complexity of projects changes, it's just such a dynamic environment that, um, how we can help.
be a part of solving that is, uh, really the, the fun part of, um, of the journey. So,
Evan Troxel: I've, I want to talk about what's on the horizon and where you're going, but I want to also, before we do that, talk about this evolution that's happened. So you've got, you go from print driver to then you, you've, you've dropped some hints about, you know, review and studio and things like that. But maybe you can take us through kind of the medium version of that as well to just talk about how the software has grown up over the last 23 years.
Yeah.
Don Jacob: yeah, so, I mean, you know, plug in, um, and then, uh, we developed review, the, the desktop application and, uh, that really, uh, there, there were kind, there were, there were a lot of things that we were So a core combination of [00:34:00] capabilities that I think really made it stand out. So having the tool chest, you know, the way to be able to define your own custom markups that you could share within your organization.
So, um, you know, people, you know, people use this for, you know, building out, um, uh, almost using it like a CAD application where you can design effectively these stencils to be able to represent markups. And then, uh, extending, you know, that, that graphical markup, there's, there's a graphical representation on the page.
And then there is the, something we've introduced is, it's actually, it's in, Acrobat to the markup list, but really pushing that forward. So with every graphical element that you have and you can customize, you know, you can make your own symbology that you can share within an organization, share across a project.
There's a mini database of information that resides in that markup. So that [00:35:00] markup has a, it has an author, it has a date that it was placed. I can, you, Give measurement properties to it. You can set status. You can set custom statuses on it. We, we have examples of using our software to shut down a, um, uh, an oil rig where, uh, as you change, you know, the valve, the valve goes from open to close, it goes from, you know, green to red and we know who did that, that shut, shut off and when.
And so you can start to really build in elements of workflow. within that, that drawing that you can then capture and be able to preserve as to, you know, what, what was, you know, what, what were you attempting to accomplish on the, um, on the project or the design. And so that, uh, the, the, the tool chest, the markup list, and, you know, being able to use those in, in concert, and then being able to do the, um, the document, um, uh, properties, being able [00:36:00] to, you know, use things like visual search to be able to find, uh, graphical elements on the drawing in addition to text is all this unique combination of, of, uh, capabilities that really shaped the next decade or so of, um, of our technology developing it.
Really became, you know, kind of the, the, the, the cycle that we were on after that, that, that creation challenge, feel like we had kind of licked that and it's like, okay, well, now, now let's make this, this, um, this, this back and forth interaction work very, um, uh, efficiently.
Evan Troxel: It seems like the starting to focus on really pro users and like power users, right? Like that's one thing that's always struck me about Bluebeam over something like Acrobat, right? Was like, The tool chest is a good example, doing batch editing, right, to very large PDFs, being able to number all your sheets or apply your stamps or do, remove something off of every sheet that, you know, we've [00:37:00] spent so much time creating this PDF.
It's like, well, it's faster just to fix it in Bluebeam than it is to go back and fix it in the CAD and then spit it all back out again, right? And, and I'm curious, like, did you always have that focus on kind of the power user? It feels like you do with, because it looked like a pro app, right? It had the.
The dark interface from very early on. And, and it just felt kind of like this really cool UI. I mean, it was, it was definitely cool back. I don't know if people still feel like it's cool, but it was definitely, you felt like a power user when you were using this app, it felt very CAD like, obviously you have this strong linkage to, to CAD as well.
So, so tell me, tell me about kind of who, who you idealized as your user. Were you really pushing for that pro power user? Mm hmm.
Don Jacob: Absolutely. We built high, very, very deep, deep features, but, uh, uh, another part of, of how we thought about [00:38:00] review is also, you know, going back to the, the days, make it, you know, help, help the industry is in as broad of a way, get comfortable with paperless. Um, you know, how do we make it simple? And so our interface, um, We, we have profiles where you can set it up very, you can tune it to that power user.
We have the, you know, the Uber, um, uh, way of turning on every bell and whistle that, that's in, in our software. But then you can also really bring it down to like a reader like, um, uh, interface. So there's a lot of flexibility in, uh, how you can make the, the, the interface, um, appear. So, you know, a lot of our larger customers, they'll, they'll, they'll, you know, push out a profile for more of the administrative user, kind of the, you know, the, the light user versus the, the, the, um, you know, the deeper power users and, and that, that can be the standard view.
So you're not, you know, just inundated with, with [00:39:00] buttons out the wazoo, but, um, you can very much configure and control. That, that look and feel depending on the type of person that's using it. And I know that's something that we, we built into the software, um, fairly early because exactly that, you know, we did get feedback.
Wow, this is, it's great, but oh my goodness, there's a lot of stuff here. So how do you, how do you balance that with once again, the motivation being, we want to, We want to, we want to bring everybody on that digital transformation journey, not just, uh, the power users. That, I mean, that was a problem back in the day, you know, you, you want to get it off the, the cab jockeys, um, you know, environment.
Like, make it, make that project as accessible for as many people as possible, no matter where they are. That was really a, a, a big motivator of, um, of us. And that, that really, you know, so there was the plugin. there was review the desktop application. And then, uh, in, in the 2010 era, we introduced [00:40:00] studio, which was the, the, the way that you can dynamically collaborate no matter where you are.
So, you know, I'm, you know, here, uh, some nondescript place in Montana and you're in Oregon. We can load a, a, uh, a project set and then be able to seamlessly collaborate on that. Uh, again, I mean, this is a very common practice now, but 15 years ago it wasn't so easy to do. And it really, uh, enabled us to take that, that next step of, of elevating collaboration to a new level, going away from, you know, having to email files back and forth, having to, you know, put things on the, the, um, Uh, you said it earlier, the, the site, not the site, Sys, SysQuest drives, CyQuest drives, uh,
CyCrunch, yeah, and, and, um, and, and also the cartridges.
Yes, uh, I unfortunately lived through that too, but, um, but how do you, um, how do you, how do you [00:41:00] again, make it, you know, less friction between the people that, that have to make the decision on the projects. And that, that's really what, what motivated. The development of, uh, of studio getting, you know, everybody in that, that virtual space where you can be collaborating.
Evan Troxel: for needing collaboration, like where that came from. So obviously, I mean, there, there's this technology that, that's starting to like break into this, what we now call the cloud. I, I don't know if you, if we even referenced it being called the cloud back then, but like this idea of you hosting the drawing, or I don't, I don't remember it.
Was it on premises for the, the, the, the firm, or was it hosted by you, Bluebeam,
for was, it was hosted by us. We did have an on prem version of it too, but, uh, much broader used, um, uh, on, you know, in the cloud, if you will. So.
So when you're, you're talking about collaboration, like, like, I'm sure you heard that a lot [00:42:00] from people,
right? Like, especially in, in an architectural firm, right? That, that would happen just by the nature of the studio. There were drafting tables, there were monitors, whatever, whatever era you're from, there was collaboration because everybody was in the same place at the same time.
But we had consultants who would, who would publish drawings or email us files or whatever. And there was kind of this. You never knew if you had really had the most current PDF, right? Or you
never knew if you really had, because it was this one way, it was this export and it was just this snapshot in time. And then it was basically a dead document at that point, because somebody was still working on that file,
right? And, and they were going to send you a new version of it. And this started to shift that paradigm of like a living document, right? Like it still wasn't, it wasn't like bi directional. It wasn't pushing this information back and forth.
back into the CAD or the, the Revit or modeling system, but it was collaborative and it was editable and you could start to track who did what, when, and who was taking care of these issues and [00:43:00] all of these things. So we started to see this paradigm shift and I, I'm just curious, kind of like what you were hearing through all of that and how groundbreaking that was for people when it came to reviewing, marking up, uh, collaborating on drawing sets.
Don Jacob: Yeah. I mean, again, this is where, um, we, we designed it with the intent. Like we, we, the studio sessions, which was the, the idea was you, you have a, um, uh, a virtual project, you know, conference room. So you take the drawings, you put them, you know, on the wall and we could be right now meeting, you know, three people.
You know, adding, marking up and having a call and discussing, I'm adding comments and you're adding your comments and we see we're getting a track of who's doing what and when. But then, you know, after this, you know, I go home and I have a thought, oh man, I forgot to [00:44:00] mention this to Evan. Let me go hop back in the session, add this comment so tomorrow we can chat about it.
And so the idea was that, you know, you could have this, um. This space where you're putting this information, you, um, we could be. you know, synchronously at the same time collaborate or asynchronously add that information. And then it had a time period. Like we thought, you know, sessions, they, they exist for two weeks at a time, like, you know, two weeks.
That was kind of the default, the end of the day, you stop it and you finalize it. And then it goes back into, you know, your, your file system for, you know, archiving that, that discussion or that, that time period. Well, we find out, you know, people have sessions, it's exactly what you said. They, they end up.
Just keeping that open The session the whole the whole time, you know, they they get a new revision They swap out the new new version and it becomes the the live You know project [00:45:00] snapshot of what's going on now I Is that the right thing to do is? We're not, again, we're, we're not going to judge on that.
We were enablers for helping that project to get done on time and, and, and faster. And so, you know, giving, creating the technology, meeting the need, and then letting our, our users and customers decide what they want to do with that. I mean, that, that's where, you know, you, you surprise us and tell us how you find what's most fitting for your, your project.
I mean, the other part of it is that, um, the unique part about our, our industry perspective is, um, you know, in the manufacturing aerospace, you, um, you know, a, a, a Boeing or you have a big auto manufacturer, they're building up a very, you've got the same players, you've got a very deep [00:46:00] supply chain and building up a highly rigorous, um, um, process.
You have a, a, a, a, a, a, a very well defined path. Every, every project we do, it's new, right? Like a building is only going to be designed and built once. A roadway will only exist, One way and every product is going to be different. Are there similarities? Absolutely, but it is unique and this is to me What was what's really interesting about like JPL we used to always say we fly our prototypes like a mission you know, you go to Mars or you put a You know, they're working finally, you know, literally, this is 25 years ago, we were talking about it, um, this, uh, submarine that basically goes on Europa, um, you know, every mission is so different with all the, the different parameters that at the time, like, I see a lot of [00:47:00] similarities to, you know, how much do you invest in the CAD and the processes because it, because everything may be different, the requirements change.
And, you know, what we've, what happened, you know, back in the day, I know it's different now, but, um, you know, you, you, you had to put the spacecraft on the launch pad to hit a launch window. And so the joke was you do the design, you get the parts built, and then you deliver an apple box of all the marked up red line drawings as your actual configuration control, uh, document for what actually went into that spacecraft.
And so, you know, premier stuff, right? You're putting, uh, uh, uh, spacecraft on other planets and orbiting planets. That's what you do. And I think there's a lot of equivalence here where every, every project is different and giving people flexibility to. to collaborate, to, you know, bring in those players, whether, you know, the design team, the engineering teams, the, [00:48:00] you know, the thousands of people and players that are involved.
How do we provide a very easy to spin up, tear down, capture a record of that project getting done. The technology is not the thing we're shooting after. It's getting that project done as efficiently as possible. So.
Evan Troxel: Yep.
Don Jacob: That was a little preachy, sorry.
Evan Troxel: No, that was great. That was fantastic. So, so let's talk about where things are headed and what you're excited about. I mean, it's, you've been at Bluebeam for 23 years and you say you still show up and you're excited to do things. Obviously, there's There's something hanging out there that, that you're excited to show up to the office to work on.
So, um, I know you guys have made some acquisitions recently, you know, fairly recently. And, and so obviously we're maybe seeing some, some stars off in the horizon here of, of where you're headed. But I'd love to hear you talk about those now because this is still like a heavily under development product, right?
And you're, you're still cranking forward.
Don Jacob: Yeah, [00:49:00] heavily underdeveloped, plenty of opportunity, I mean, you know, the industry, uh, it's been, um, there's so much vitality, so much opportunity, you know, exactly for that reason I talked about, where you have, um, so many different players, the, the, it's evolving so quickly with the type of projects, the, the, um, this ever changing environment, the, the, the, you know, world concerns, you know, building more sustainably, all of these factors, you know, we, we, again, as an industry, we have a, a real responsibility.
Um, you know, there is so much, so much opportunity. We, you know, so yes, we, we be about 10 years ago, we became part of the Nemechek family. And so, uh, again, you know, Bluebeam, where, you know, I think we, we're, we're focused in the, the build division in that, you know, really helping to bring the, the design [00:50:00] and the, you know, kind of sitting in the middle of design, build, operate, um, we have such a broad user base.
I think we, we touch on all of those, um, different aspects and we, um, We have a lot to do in all those areas. And so to, to, to help, uh, help do that. Yeah, we've, we've, uh, we as Nemechek make investments in, in, in different, uh, startup, um, programs. We have a, uh, uh, a corporate venture program that we've been, you know, fairly active in.
It's been exciting. I've been, you know, part of that, uh, for a while is actually involved a bit at the Nemechek level in some of the, um, venture work that we've been doing. Um, but then we, you know, recently Nemechek and Bluebeam, we, we acquired, um, GoCanvas. And so that really is bringing the, the field, uh, you know, the, the field environment into, um, into the forefront.
So we're [00:51:00] getting the design build aspect. We've built great solutions there. We, we have a mobile, you know, way of being able to work with, um, uh, mobile and, and, and web. We're, we're, we're developing that technology and where GoCanvas has really helped in, in different, uh, specific areas. Like they have something, site docs and GoCanvas for, uh, site safety, Um, and being able to really just get a easily be able to track what's going on in the field.
You know, that's an area that as you bring the design to the reality and make it as easy to, to, to bring the two together and be able to capture as efficiently, as quickly as possible. I think that's where GoCanvas is really going to help, you know, fill a much needed. Uh, niche that, um, that's needed. So, so I think Bluebeam and us working together, I think over time, you're going to see, you know, I think some really, some really interesting, [00:52:00] um, you know, partnering there going forward.
Evan Troxel: It's interesting from kind of a data capture standpoint, right? Because not everything like Bluebeam is really graphical, right?
And you're also tracking kind of some metadata that goes along with all those graphic, those stamps, those markups, all those things. There's like the, who did it and when, and what are the properties and all those things, but, but there's this other side of, I think the go canvas thing really is like, you're basically dropping these fields of, for data capture into a form.
Let's just call it for now. And. It enables you to kind of build this database of information that is linked to something else. Is that, is that really how you see this working? I, I'm, I'm curious just like where, where does this actually go potentially in the future if we just had to throw some darts at the board?
I, I know you guys have, I'm sure you have this all figured out. But, but from a user's standpoint, like
what are we, what are we going to see come out? What are we, what are you thinking is going to happen with this collaboration?
Don Jacob: Yeah, I think you definitely hit on it. You know, it's [00:53:00] the. And I'm by far not the first person to say this, um, you know, this evolution, um, and expansion of, you know, data and information is really the underpinning for, for that, you know, where, and, and this is, you want, there's a different aspect to it when you think about it in terms of dimensions, right?
You've got the, the two dimensional drawings, you've got the, the 3d models. Of course, this is, Models, model, you know, model based design, behavioral, there's many dimensions even to the, the type of models and that we're, we're, we're, we're working with, but underlying all of that is capturing the data, capturing the information as close to the source as you can, whether that's design side, whether that's in the field, on a mobile device, like that That experience of being able to, to do that in, again, is least of a [00:54:00] friction way of doing it, I think is a real, real challenge, you know, so, you know, to your point earlier, you know, people, you know, starting up, you know, startup entrepreneurs, um, you know, kind of a perspective on that.
Like, it's easy to talk about it, but to actually do it. That's the challenge. And, and I think is again, as you know, early days of Bluebeam, you know, making that analog to digital transition, you want to make it as straightforward, as simple to do as possible. And so you have different mechanisms for doing that.
And like with, yeah, GoCanvas, you know, primarily running on mobile devices. There's a lot of, um, technology sitting on those mobile devices. Also. out in the field, it's a freaking war zone. You know, when you, when you go, I can't tell you how many job sites I've been in and it's just amazing to see it, it, it, not that I've, you know, luckily not been in, in, in, in a true war environment, but you, you've got, you [00:55:00] know, cranes dropping, you know, steel beams, you've got all of these, you know, people and it's loud and we're all wearing, you know, PPE equipment and how do you make it easy?
To situationally aware the people that have to make the decisions on the project that need to capture the, the, the status, the, what's going on, you know, there's some real opportunity there. And I think GoCanvas is, is, um, you know, a part of that. Bluebeam, I think we, we still have a really, So that's a really interesting part to play.
Um, there, you know, how do we, how do we bring that, that, that, that project data out into the field and field back working with GoCanvas? There's, I think, some really interesting opportunities there.
Evan Troxel: Yeah, I mean, the whole idea of having to, I mean, having the opportunity to capture it at the edge with the person in the environment versus, you know, a phone call or an email and somebody translating that data, [00:56:00] right? Between what, what am I hearing? What am I seeing? Is, is a different thing than the person who's actually there putting that information into a system potentially, right?
Like
there could be a very big difference there. That whole. I mean, there's data loss in those transmissions of, like, where I'm trying to graphically or verbally or written communication does lead to somebody having to translate that in some way, and there's potential for data loss in that situation. So by putting the ability into the hands of the person who's closest to the scene of that happening seems like a big way to get, um, Over that, get through those challenges of potential data loss.
Don Jacob: Right. Great way. I love the way you said that, that being able to get it as close, um, to the, you know, where, where the, the situation, if you will, is. And then also the, um, The multimodal form of that information, you know, I think we in the industry [00:57:00] for a long time, it's like, oh, the world's going to models and, you know, when are we going to get away from, from, you know, drawings is it's a, it's a, it's, it's a bad thing.
It's a snapshot in time and all these reasons. And I don't ever. I'm not going to tell, you know, a project engineer what they need to get the project done. I don't think, you know, it's a little presumptuous of us in, in, in technology to, to do that, but to partner with, um, with the customers. Um, I think that's really the way we, we, we advance.
Yeah, I think it's not an, an, an, or, but it's an, and, you know, how, how do we. You know, you get this information and then you present it, whether it's, you know, a, a, a, a field that shows up, you know, on your phone, whether it's part of a drawing, a model, that, that information together to give me the contextual understanding that I need [00:58:00] or my team, we need to make to get, The issue resolved, the project done faster.
That's the, the, the core of it. And so, you know, that's an area that we're exploring, you know, with, with Bluebeam, um, We, we opened up our, our labs environment, um, earlier this year to start to, uh, invite people in to look at some of the work we're doing with that, blending the 2D and, and, and 3D, um, uh, environments.
You know, if we take, you know, the drawings and then we can see them in a, in a 3D mode, you know, we orient the, the different drawing views, kind of reconstruct the project in 3D. You say, well, that's weird. Don't you have the models. It's like, well, you don't necessarily, you know, you think about that poor, you know, construction administrator, they may not get the model and, but they have the drawings.
And how do we, how do we start to highlight different ways to assemble what the information they have so that they can look at it in a new way to be able to [00:59:00] make the decision. Uh, another thing we're calling, um, uh, connected drawings, being able to relate the model and drawing information, but using the drawing.
as the window into the model, you know, flipping it a little bit. Everybody, you know, we, we, we think the model's intuitive. Yeah, sort of,
Evan Troxel: If you know how to read it,
Don Jacob: if you know how to read it, right. And, and so again, you know, we're not, we're not going to force away. We're going to offer hypotheses. We're going to offer, you know, new ways of engaging with your, your project information, your project data, your drawings, your models, and then.
That's when we take that, that next step, you know, collaborate, collaboration elevated even more now, uh, you know, we did that from paper to paperless, paper, and then into studio, and now I think we're at the cusp of that, that next era when you, when you talk about new ways to be able to interact with the, the different dimensional data, [01:00:00] um, and, and, and project information.
And then, oh yeah, that, uh, he heard, uh, AI, that the term is that,
Evan Troxel: everywhere. So yeah, talk, talk about what, what you guys are doing with, with, on the AI side of things.
Don Jacob: yeah. And I, and I think with AI, it really, the, the approach we're, we're, we're taking is I think very, uh, true to our, to our approach in the past. Like how, how do we again, help move the industry forward. How do we responsibly introduce new technology in ways that help the project get, gets done, to get done?
Um, We're, we're taking a very mindful approach to that. So, you know, some of the, the things in, in, in general sense, you know, an assistive, uh, approach is really, [01:01:00] uh, how, how we're, we're, we're introducing, starting to introduce some of the, the capabilities. Um, So, uh, as an example, something we introduced, um, uh, earlier this year, There's a capability we've had in review for a long time now.
Drawing, overlay, and compare. So you have,
Evan Troxel: I was gonna, I was gonna bring this up later because I was gonna ask you what your favorite feature is and
I will still do that, but this was always one of mine. It was just like, Talking about this constant revision that's happening, right? And it's like, Oh, I got a new version of that sheet, A3. 2 or whatever. And what changed? It's like, it's all black and white, right? And so this was an amazing way to just see the differences between these two drawings. It would color code the, the changes and things. I thought that was so cool. So I'm glad you brought it up.
Don Jacob: you know, We took, again, this is something where we took two approaches to it. Where you [01:02:00] can overlay the drawing and have it automatically cloud, Good. You know, automagically we used to always say, you know, cloud, and then you could do a report after. And so people would use that for design reviews all the time.
Hey, let me Rev A, Rev B, cloud, export that, that report. And now we've got our design discussion. And so that's one way. And then there's be the, the visual, Yes. uh, red green, you know, just, and, and, and so that's great. And it's cool when Rev A and Rev B, the drawing. the, the, the particular floor plan is registered on the face of the drawing between revisions.
Well, that's not always the case.
Evan Troxel: Mm hmm. Mm.
Don Jacob: auto align, which is an extension of, uh, to our overlay and compare capabilities automatically finds where the, the, that floor plan or that, you know, that, that drawing element is, and then automatically lines it up so that then you can do a true. [01:03:00] comparison between the two revisions.
And so it's one of those things where it's like kind of like, no duh, like, well, why not? But, or of course, but to me, it's a really good indication of, you know, using computer vision and other techniques to really take out precious minutes out of the day. So you can focus on higher order work. So auto align is, is something that we've, um, We, we, we've introduced, um, there's some other work that will be, uh, uh, uh, rolling out, you know, early January, the little preliminary, but, you know, I think along the same lines of being able to, um, you know, just kind of a little, Just taking some of the drudgery out of the work that you're doing, uh, day in and day out, um, that work that I, I talked about earlier in our labs, you know, the, the relating the, the 2D drawings and, and connecting the models to the drawings, that's using [01:04:00] computer vision and different, uh, AI techniques for being able to register that information.
And, and so, you know, I think that this is, uh, representative of our, our, our approach. AI, there's a lot of noise. There's a, especially like on the design, you know, uh, uh, front, you know, concern about, oh, is this going to replace my, my, my, my, my job? And, and, and I think we see it as, an assistive, a way of helping you make sense of the data.
So we, we, we have two main thrusts is what we're calling intelligent drawings. And so it's this, this labs work, the auto align is, is representative of, of that, the auto align work, uh, intelligent search, you know, being able to make sense of your, your project data and have a bit more dynamic interaction with that, that data.
These are the, really the, the, the two areas that we're, um, We're focused on, but also we don't, [01:05:00] you know, as, as software providers, part of our job, not responsibility is to, um, make it so that you don't have to think about what is driving, doing this, you know, that, that we want to help make sense and act almost as a buffer between the, the technology and, you know, you doing what you're hired to do to get your job done, to get the project done.
And so how do we start to introduce some of this in a way that enhances your, your work helps you to focus on the work you want to do versus you have to do. And that's really our philosophy and our, our approach to working with that. And so,
Evan Troxel: Yeah, that's a very human centric kind
Don Jacob: Mm hmm.
Evan Troxel: point of view, perspective. And, and I'm, I'm just curious, maybe we, we wrap up. I still want to hear maybe what your favorite features are, what you, [01:06:00] what you hear from your customers. But, like, just talk about the human centric relationship side of the business and how,
I mean, I mean, obviously it's been important and it's been a focus for you, but, Is it really the driving force?
Like, how does that fit in? You know, there's a lot of software companies out there that are really seeing the AI gold rush and they're just shoving it down everybody's throat. And I mean, you guys have been around for a long time. You've built a lot of relationships. You've worked closely with a lot of customers. This is a bi directional relationship. You're feeding off them. They're getting work done with your tools. You're an enabler for them in many ways. So just, just like give us kind of the overall blue beam philosophy about people and these relationships and things. I know that that's something that you've talked about being really important in the past.
Don Jacob: Yeah, we like most people. No, um, no, absolutely. And I,
Evan Troxel: Trademark. Put that on t
Don Jacob: right. Yeah.
Evan Troxel: Yeah. You
Don Jacob: Um,
no, absolutely. And, um, I,
again, it's so many, um, it, once again, it's [01:07:00] kind of moving sometimes when I, when I really reflect on it, but it's just such, uh, in so many different ways, like Bluebeam. Internally, you know, the, the, the, the amazing people that have been with us on the journey and like this, um, the company that we were able to build collectively, it's been just an amazing experience and, and, and what, you know, over the years, people, they, they come and go, but, you know, everybody, um, Kind of being a little bit of the, the, almost like the grandfather of the company.
You always get that, um, call, Hey Don, you got a second to talk. And it's like, okay, I know what's coming up. Yeah. But, but, you know, what, what I, what I share with our, our, um, you know, people who, who move on is that, that's awesome. You know, that, that's a great, you know, like take my ask is take a little bit of what, what you've experienced here at Bluebeam and help pay it [01:08:00] forward.
And, like, when you look across the industry, like, all, there's so many people in Bluebeam. So there's many different ways to impact an industry. And, yep, you introduce the, the software, and that, that helps, and that's mission one. But then, I think there's this whole other dimension of, um, you know, the people that have come through Bluebeam's ranks, and then they're in amazing roles in developing, um, Their career in wonderful ways across the industry from startups to, you know, the old, you know, all the companies we know, and it's just, it's so fun to me to see them bringing the industry forward and knowing that we've, we've had a little bit of an interaction and able to influence a little bit about how they see the world, how they're approaching the industry.
And I feel like, you know, we all as, as vendors, as, you know, tool makers, but then also, you know, architecture firms, like it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very big, small [01:09:00] community, um, AEC and we're doing amazing things, right? We're, we're building the world that our kids, our grandkids society is going to inhabit going forward.
And it's all like it's We all get to be part of that. And I think really stepping back, it's easy to get, you know, sucked into the day in, day out rigmarole of stuff, but like connecting with the people, realizing we're working on cool stuff like that is a big motivator. And I think we've got a, if we can keep a lot of that in our, um, frame of reference, it really, um, motivates me and motivates a lot of the, you know, people.
People are still around at Bluebeam, and I know the people that I still keep in regular contact with that have, um, uh, you know, that have gone on to other things. But then also, you know, sorry, I'm going a little long here, but, you know, I think in the other aspect on projects, you know, seeing [01:10:00] it's a team sport, right?
Innovating and building projects, all of these things, they're, they're team sports. And, you know, working together on, on these efforts. It's all about, it's all about the people. It's about the equipment, of course, it's about the materials, but people are what, what gets it brought together. And it's easy to lose sight of that, but I, I, I hope Bluebeam, we've, we've done a part of, like I said, you know, to kind of keep the, the humanity in it.
And, and maybe this is kind of, as I've talked about helping to, Lead the industry forward without losing the customer on the journey, like introducing technology in a mindful way that keeps the focus on the project and the individual on the project. It's a hard thing to do again, and there's no right answer, but I think it's easy to get sidetracked.
Um, but if you don't keep that [01:11:00] first and foremost is your North Star.
Evan Troxel: Absolutely. It's it's that as an architect, I'm in this industry to create things for people, right? Architecture for people, environments for people, experiences for people. It's not to use technology, right? I, I'm a technologist, but my, it's, that's not why. I do what I do. It happens to be how I do what I do, and I can leverage it in really interesting ways, useful, valuable ways, but that's not why we do what we do.
Right. And it sounds similar to what you're talking about here. Like you're enabling people to do the thing,
which is, is this is just a tool that you're using to help you. Do the thing, right? Like, and, and that's an important distinction to make. It's like, we don't wake up in the morning to use this piece of software, right? That's not, that's not good enough, honestly, right? And so that to me is a, a really great thing to say out loud and to remind people, because I think we can just get kind of, you know, [01:12:00] really narrowly focused on, on what we're doing on a day to day basis. And it's great to kind of take a step back and remember.
Oh yeah, like, uh, why did I get into this in the, in the beginning? Why did, why do I still show up to this? And, uh, to kind of take stock and really think about the bigger. Vision and values that happen to be the, the actual thing leading us down the path rather than, than these other things that we kind of get stuck on day to day, because they're
sticky, like they are
right now.
We step in stuff all the time. Right. Um, so just, just, I'm glad that we kind of ended with that. I actually. Don't want to end with that. I want to just hear like, what are the favorite things that, that are, you know, features,
you know, of
of these tools that, that, I mean, you've got your favorites, you know, what do you, and what do you hear from a few customers?
I know we don't make turning this into a long thing, but, but like, there's definitely some cool things that, that the software
Don Jacob: Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I think, you know, the, um, my, [01:13:00] the nerdiness of me really comes out here, but, you know, the, one of my favorite features when we introduced, uh, curved annotations, you know, bezier curves, you know, the ability to. You know, uh, mark a curved area. That was a big deal. Um, I have always liked that.
That was something that where we We've actually been part of the PDF ISO standard committee for a long time now, and that was, you know, something we we've advocated introducing into the standard and so when we got that, um, in there, I always thought that was cool and, you know, all the poor landscape engineers that nothing's ever straight and, you know, we went from boxes to curves.
And so I think that was a really fun. Uh, thing when we, when we introduced that, um, we, we, we introduced something years ago, um, a few years ago now, um, called Dynamic Fill, like where you, it, it, it's almost like a video game where you very quickly need to, um, uh, find, uh, Uh, an area of a room, uh, is an example [01:14:00] where, and everything, you know, a lot of times it, it can be tedious if you have to pick the edges to, to get that area or, and this, it uses this, you know, a way that where you drop effectively a paint bucket and it kind of dynamically fills in the space and then you can very quickly do a perimeter area measurement, that sort of a thing, and just these things where it just, you know, Fun to, to use and, and there's that, that delight factor.
One thing that we talk about in Bluebeam, like this, this, you know, people use Bluebeam because, not because they have to, but because they want to. And, and like, when, when we hear that and like the, this amazing customer response, like we love Bluebeam, you know, talking about a little earlier, animated, like, you know, seeing it on everybody's computer.
You know, in an office, um, and the, the positive reaction, um, because it's the how, again, you know, how, how do you get people to get comfortable using an application? And then [01:15:00] even more, how do you make people want to use it? We've always had a way of, um, you know, Walt Disney always talked about plussing, you know, how do we plus this?
How do we take an experience and make it a little better? Um, we didn't even get into this. Um, a huge, uh, fan of Walt Disney and just like entertainment technology and computer graphics and the history of that there could have a whole follow on about that, but But the idea of, you know, making these easy to Delightful to use is, has been kind of another theme.
So, um, yeah. You know, the be eight Curves, a dynamic fill visual search is, is, you know, something where, you know, I could just grab a rectangle and automatically see where all those elements are. Those are probably some of my, my, um, uh, favorites if you will. What about yours?
Evan Troxel: Yeah. I, well, the, the compare one was the
one that really like formed that thought. I, I always thought that and just again, like you, you said, I'm going to get, this is like, it shows your nerdier side. [01:16:00] Right. But being like using computers for what computers are really good at, right. Like
the whole batch. Application of something to 500, a thousand sheets and changing something. It was like, you know, I grew up in the day of early visualization and rendering where it would take 18 hours to do our 3d rendering. Right.
and and then what happened if you made a change? Well, you went back and re rendered it.
Well, we quickly learned how to use Photoshop because it was so much faster to tweak colors or just paint something in, in Photoshop and not have to re render. Right? And, and so it became like this power tool and, and I really feel like that with, with tools like Bluebeam as well, right? It's like you're applying, I do batch processing stuff to text all the time.
I mean, I have a podcast, we do transcriptions. I do
all kinds of stuff where I'm going through and formatting and. Multiple documents and database stuff. And, and it just, you feel like a, like you're actually operating computers when you're doing that, right? Because they're so good at doing that kind of thing.
So I love that kind of stuff when it comes, [01:17:00] even with graphical applications, like Bluebeam, being able to just plow through a set of documents and make modifications to everything. You really feel like a power user when you're doing stuff like that.
Um, but you also have this layer of like artistic tools and, you know, as an, uh, growing up in the day of, you know, hand redlining things, right, with an actual red pen on a, you know, like you're, you can, you can still do that, but digitally now,
and, and so I appreciate that, that layer of things in these tools as well.
So I think there's a lot to love about it. I'd really do feel like this application sits on the list of. Software I like to use for a lot of people, right? And not just personally, but for a lot of people. And there's only a handful of, of applications out there that I think really fall into that category.
So kudos to you and thank you for telling the Bluebeam story today. This has been a really great conversation.
Don Jacob: Cool. Thank you. I had fun. Appreciate it. Uh, the time.

Cody Winchester joins the podcast to talk about insights from his recent case study he presented in the Fall of 2024 at Autodesk University, discussing the evolution of digital literacy and technology implementation at HMC Architects. We explore the importance of bridging the gap between practice and technology, the role of training in modern architectural education, the critical need to capture and transfer knowledge from experienced professionals to the next generation, and the challenges and successes of integrating technology into architectural practice as the underlying technology of practice continues to evolve at a pace that is difficult to keep up with.

Episode Links

Books and Philosophies

• Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
  • Wikipedia Overview
  • Explores how data and digital technologies shape the future of work and personal privacy, relevant to the evolving digital practice landscape.
• Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft
  • Google Books Link
  • Amazon Link
  • Examines the value of hands-on work and its connection to professional expertise, echoing the balance between digital tools and practice in architecture.
• Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
  • Amazon Link
  • Investigates how technology alters the way we think and learn, highly relevant for digital literacy discussions.

AI Tools and Emerging Technologies

• Autodesk University: Digital Practice and Technology Training Case Study
  • Creating a Culture of Digital Literacy (Cody’s AU 2024 session)
  • Explore the case study mentioned in the podcast, showcasing HMC Architects' approach to technology training.
• Grasshopper and Visual Programming for Architects
  • Official Grasshopper Website
  • Learn about Grasshopper's capabilities for parametric design and its role in architecture training.
• Stable Diffusion and AI Art Generation
  • Stability AI Official Website
  • Dive into how AI models like Stable Diffusion are influencing creative industries, including architectural visualization.

Visualization & Design Tools

• Rhino 3D and Grasshopper Tools
  • Rhino Official Website
  • Explore Rhino and Grasshopper for design exploration and data-driven workflows discussed in the podcast.
• Autodesk Revit for BIM Management
  • Revit Official Website
  • Learn about Revit’s use in architectural design, documentation, and collaboration, a key tool in digital practice.
• LinkedIn Learning for AEC Training
  • LinkedIn Learning
  • Online technology and design courses for ongoing professional development.

Events and Networks

• Autodesk University
  • Autodesk University
  • Annual conference focusing on the latest design, engineering, and technology advancements.
• BILT Conference
  • BILT Event Page
  • Learn about design technology best practices and industry innovation.

Psychology and Personal Development

• Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow
  • Wikipedia Overview
  • Explore cognitive biases and decision-making processes, valuable for leadership and training contexts.
• Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
  • Amazon Link
  • Understand how a growth mindset influences learning and personal development.

About Cody Winchester:

I was not born a digital native. I became a convert. While my core sensibilities are rooted in traditional media, over my career I have discovered how technology shapes the lens that design is seen through. Our interpretation of tradition, culture, and aesthetics pass through this lens before becoming our understanding of our world. Where technology interfaces with architecture, I have seen how computation and building information modeling will increasingly dominate the way we create and manage design data. In this way, the idea that "Building = Data" pronounced by CASE has become a profound concept for what I want to explore: Beautiful Data.

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Connect with Evan:

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Episode Transcript:

173: ‘Raising Digital Literacy’, with Cody Winchester
Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel in this episode, I'm talking with my friend and former colleague, Cody Winchester about his journey from traditional practice, into the realm of digital practice and technology training in architecture. My pre-podcast-preamble (trademark) for this episode is a bit longer than usual and for good reason, because today's conversation is near and dear to me, as I revisit my past role as director of digital practice at HMC architects. Cody is HMCs lead technology trainer, where he has embodied my original vision of integrating technology training, and education directly into architectural practice for the benefit of staff development. As we all know, architecture is a profession of continuous learning and technology moves at an incredible pace.
So it just makes sense to directly address and integrate tech training into the daily operations of a firm. Luckily HMC is an organization that also believes that to be [00:01:00] true. It's also worth noting that it's not an easy commitment for leadership to make, as we've seen many firms steer clear of this facet of what I think is table stakes for the evolving practice. Many have naturally asked, and you've probably heard this before. "What if we train them and they leave?" but the question one should be asking is, "what if we don't, and they stay?"
You see, in a previous life, I taught emerging technology courses at the undergraduate and graduate level for over a decade in the architecture department at Cal Poly Pomona in Southern California. And this conversation is really a result of my experience at the intersection of education, architecture and technology.
One of the goals of digital practice at HMC was to continuously raise what we call the digital IQ of the staff by creating a dedicated technology training wing, whose mission was to create and deliver an ongoing curriculum for the staff that included tools, workflows and a whole lot [00:02:00] more.
Cody took that vision and ran with it, creating a successful integrated technology academy within the organization that continues to this day. Fast-forward to mid 2024, where Cody was proposing a talk for Autodesk university to tell the story of how a culture of digital literacy had been created at HMC over the last five years. And once his talk was accepted, he reached out to me and we talked and recounted some of the history of HMCs digital practice that led up to his hiring in 2019. Some of what I shared with him he was just hearing for the first time. And he took some of that and he included it into his talk that he gave at AU.
Cody's curiosity during our chat sparked memories, I hadn't thought of in years. And it was great to have this conversation with him so that it could be shared with all of you through that talk at AU. My hope is that this story that we're sharing today will inspire others to also go down this route. Today he shares insights from his recent [00:03:00] case study that he presented in the fall of 2024 at Autodesk University, which I've provided a link to in the show notes discussing the evolution of digital literacy and technology implementation at HMC architects.
We also explore the importance of bridging the gap between practice and technology, The role of training in modern architectural education and in firms, The critical need to capture and transfer knowledge from experienced professionals to the next generation and the challenges and successes of integrating technology into architectural practice as the underlying technology continues to evolve at a pace that is difficult to keep up with. Before we get into today's conversation, I would very much appreciate your support by subscribing to the show wherever you watch or listen. And please leave a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It really helps get the show out there. If you'd like to receive an email from me when new episodes are published with all of the links and other information as they come out, you can sign up for that by becoming a free or paid [00:04:00] member at trxl.co. Just click the big join button in the lower right-hand corner.
Speaking of paid memberships. One of the perks of that are my episode analysis that I publish in my Leadership Edge newsletter. These episode briefs provide key insights for forward-thinking leaders who are seeking innovation in AEC, but are also short on time, offering the context of each conversation without the need to listen to the full episode. They're designed to keep you updated, spark your interest and encourage you to tune in if those ideas resonate. Leadership Edge newsletters are only available to paid members of TRXL+, and you can become one at trxl.co.
To get a taste of what's on offer, you can search for Leadership Edge on trxl.co for a few previously published examples. So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Cody Winchester.
​
Evan Troxel: [00:05:00] I'm really happy to be having a conversation with Cody Winchester today. So Cody, welcome to the podcast.
Cody Winchester: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you a lot.
Evan Troxel: This is going to be a fun conversation because you recently did a course, what would you call it? A seminar, a
workshop, a class, something, you know, there's
Cody Winchester: Uh, yeah,
Evan Troxel: you do for a living.
Tell me what this thing was.
Cody Winchester: they deemed it a case study. So as a kind of a overview of what we had done around training in digital literacy at HMC, your, your former haunt.
Evan Troxel: That's right. So Cody and I have known each other for a while and Cody was hired within our digital practice team to lead our technology training. And I think people still kind of raise their eyebrows at the whole idea of a company investing in that kind of a thing. So I think we're going to get there, but maybe before we do, uh, tell us about you and what you've been up to in [00:06:00] your career and your trajectory to
become what you have become.
Cody Winchester: Yeah, I mean, that was incidentally a big part of the talk, because I felt to that point, like, how does one end up in a role like this? There's no real, no road map for that when you
go to architecture school. So I was pretty much set on a very kind of traditional path. And I think. One of the key points that I wanted to illustrate, um, in that talk and kind of speak, you know, answering your question, um, kind of where things came from is, you know, I went through four years of college never using anything, um, in terms of like technology.
It was really, it was all drafting tables and may lines and triangles and templates, trace paper, Mylar. You know, we were trained to do that
for four years.
Evan Troxel: I'm getting the [00:07:00] feels. right
Cody Winchester: Yeah.
Evan Troxel: there, there is a nostalgia
to those tools, right? Like still, There definitely is. If you had the opportunity to use them, it's like, we're never going back.
Like, let's not, that's not going to happen. Right.
But I still have them. Like I'm pointing, they're right over there in my
room, in the office that I'm sitting in right now.
Cody Winchester: Yeah, I have a whole,
you know, file cabinet full of stuff and stuff in the attic. I'm like, one day I will never use those things. Um, but yeah, it's, it's still just this important. It's part of like that, that journey, it's still kind of forms the basis for how I think in a lot of ways. So, you know, from that journey, it's sort of like how, you know, finding this, uh, inclination towards using the technology, um, that's become available, um, and how that kind of starts to align in the career path.
And then some ways, like how you come up against. the resistance in the, [00:08:00] in the practice towards using it. And it kind of, in some ways pushed me away from that traditional path. It's sort of like, once you know that you can do it that way, why would you pretend that it's not there? Um, and so that led me to, you know, that this role that I have now as a lead technology trainer, which brought me on.
Um, at HMC, you know, more than five years ago now. And that was never a role that I thought was, that would exist, nor a group such as a digital practice. I had always been a kind of, um, you know, club inside of a larger practice. And maybe you'd have some time, and most of the time you wouldn't, um, to really push that kind of agenda forward.
So that's really led to this kind of open ended way of working in a lot of ways, you know, that you need to be able to [00:09:00] deliver high quality training material, be available for project teams and walk through, you know, how to do things that are best practice and kind of leveraging, you know, that past experience in the practice itself.
Um, but it's still kind of, even at this juncture after five years, it's sort of like, where, where does it go from here, even, you know, we put out or we launched a kind of formal learning management system, and there's a lot of kind of consuming that data around training and trying to, you know, Figure out how to translate that into KPIs for the business, which is kind of hard.
It's sort of, you look back on your own career and like, well, I went to school and I did these things and I know stuff and I'm able to do what I'm doing right now. But like pointing to a particular class or a particular grade or some outcome in terms of like what you do now, um, is still kind of difficult to [00:10:00] gauge.
Um, you kind of hope you see that on the other side of efficiencies in a project team, but that's kind of the culmination is as short as that was, um, of kind of where I've been and kind of what I'm doing now.
Evan Troxel: Yeah. So you went to school for architecture. You've worked
at firms, firm slash firms. And then you were, I think you were at Gensler, right? When I hired you away from there. And then
you came to lead the technology training team at HMC Architects. And I, like I said a minute ago, like that, people still kind of raise their eyebrows.
Like, what, like that, that is an investment that, that the company decided to make, was to actually. Put together curricula and put together stages of software
learning, of workflows, of all of
Cody Winchester: Mm hmm.
Evan Troxel: so that we could really leverage the technology that we were implementing, right? Because you can't, you can't just expect people to know how to do it or to figure it [00:11:00] out on nights and weekends. And obviously there's a lot of resources out there, but they're all real kind of piecemeal, right? It's like, Oh, I could find something about this one on YouTube. I could find this thing out on LinkedIn learning. I could, you know, whatever those, those resources are, but no like real set. for any of that stuff.
And, and I had taught for, I think it was 10 years in a row. And then a few more times after that at the university and it was all technology training. Right. So like, it was like, well, that's the answer to me. It was obvious that that was the answer. Like we have to, we have to do this. And you worked in a really large firm, right?
Um, And, and I can't even imagine what kind of Wild West scenarios were there because I mean really what you're dealing with in a digital practice and kind of making sure everybody's on this from that standpoint of making sure everybody's on the same page with standards and technology use and workflows and those kinds of things is people come with bad habits like students are one thing, professionals are another,
and you've got all [00:12:00] of it, right?
And so I guess we just Kind of decided early on that we were going to take this, this situation, uh, into our own hands and, and, and do something really strategic and structured with that in mind. And it's interesting that this kind of ended up turning into a case study at Autodesk University because, Like you said, there's no playbook.
There's no playbook for your career and your job title. But there was also no playbook for a digital practice
in an architecture firm, right? And
so I think it's really cool that it's actually evolved to the point where you are giving a case study to Start to write that playbook for other people like that's also kind of what this podcast is about too, right?
So it's still it's still working. It's really cool to kind of see how that's
played out over the last five years,
Cody Winchester: It really
is amazing. I, I, I do kind of find myself. pinching myself that this actually exists, that I'm actually working in this role because it's only in a [00:13:00] place or within a group like that that you can even can experiment with these things that are coming down the pike. There's just so much all the time and it hasn't slowed down.
I mean from five years ago we knew like here's some things around standards and workflows for you know classic Revit and Rhino and, you know, rendering, like those things are still true, but it's so much more complicated now.
And it's, and that complexity is kind of, there's, there's no forecasting it. And especially when we get into conversations around AI, like we all know it's going to change everything.
We just don't know exactly how
it's going to do it.
Evan Troxel: that that many
people are just choosing to avoid right like you mentioned a minute ago, right? It's like oh these tools exist Why wouldn't we? Figure that out or play with it or leverage it or, you know, find the business use case for it or, or define the business use cases and then [00:14:00] decide what the right tools are to use for those even may, may or may not be something like AI.
But, but to your point, like, Yeah. like this stuff is just evolving so quickly and you, you can choose to get in front of that with doing the kinds of things that you're doing, or you can choose to just kind of, you know, wait and see, which I think a lot of firms. Are are in that ballpark too. Bigger firms have more resources
maybe to, to put into this. But at the same time, it is a, it is a strategic choice to do that. Right. Um, and, and so I'm curious from your point of view, like where you were before coming to HMC, what kinds of experiences did you see there? So, and that, that really, when you saw this opportunity made you think like, oh, I, I
wanna be a part of that
Cody Winchester: Yeah, I think it was the fact that creating a dedicated group seems kind of self evident, even, you know, eight years ago, ten years ago. Because once You know, working in primarily as [00:15:00] like a BIM manager role, or like a design technologist role, it's like, this guy knows how to do Revit really well, or knows how to run a few scripts to solve these problems, or can handle this entire project from a digital standpoint, is, there's so much time you'd have to, invest in figuring that stuff out.
Like the nights and weekends, like you mentioned, you're just like, I need to know how this works. Otherwise, you know, it's all on me. So like no one else can just figure this out and doing that enough times and not being able to kind of take those lessons out of your experience on a project and really cultivate them into something that could be used strategically.
And. being placed on new projects, you would sort of have to abandon what you learned, because now you have to focus on achieving what needs to be achieved for this project. What you did in the last one doesn't necessarily fit what you're doing [00:16:00] here. So enough of that happening leads to that conclusion, like, I wish we just had time to do that, where I didn't have to work on the project as much as I do.
You know, after some, you know, time, you know, gaining that skill and work with other people that know how to do that. And, you know, you started to find some of those folks and, you know, in my past life and, and Gensler, there was enormous talent. They were just spread around the country. And you kind of find, find them in this kind of like, uh, strange way.
It's almost like you can sense there's this disturbance in the forest. You're like, I know someone also is doing this. I, you can, and you just kind of start gravitating towards each other. It was, it does, it does kind of feel like that. You ask enough questions and enough people start listening. You're like, actually, I am doing that.
Um, but I'm in Baltimore
or
Evan Troxel: kind of this shadow network, right? Like it's this, it
is. real grassroots and, but then there's, there's like these messages that go out, Hey, and then, and, then you [00:17:00] learn kind of
who those people are and yeah, you build connections and over time you build
relationships and then you just know like who to go to that, that applies to lots of different stuff inside of architecture firms, right?
It could be detailing, it could be code, it could be lots of stuff, but, but to your point, like, and on some level, there's even people who are hiding Amazing
skills in this stuff because
Cody Winchester: true.
Evan Troxel: I mean, I mean, there's
reasons there's reasons why, and that that's pretty sad. I think so. It's like it coming at it from this different angle of like really identifying a group of people who is responsible for this.
And then you are actually looking for those people in the firm to identify that can be kind of ambassadors. And potentially trainers or, you know, you just kind of identify who's really good at this stuff and who has the, the capacity to do it, but then it starts to really build a bigger, a stronger
backbone in the company of, of these skills, right?
Cody Winchester: And it worked that way. There was this kind of like [00:18:00] tribal alliances that developed from that. Um, and I, you know, after a while though, you know, you get to a point where it's like, okay, now this is our tribe. And we maybe even like semi formalized with. You know, in our case, there was a design technology group, as it was called, and we would meet regularly and discuss these things, but we were only allowed to spend like 20 percent of our time doing it.
It's like, well, you have 20 percent of any given week that you could do that, and then the rest of the time you're on the project. However, if you do have those capabilities, and you're plugged into that network and you're, you know, solving project issues like that or really taking it to the next level, then people start asking more of you as a result of that.
So that 20 percent quickly evaporates and you might be able to attend the meeting, [00:19:00] but you're not, you're not able to like really take that and turn it into something. So you always keep hitting that wall and you're like, I'm sorry guys, but we really just need to make this like our job. and we can help projects, but we can't be like, um, beholden to them on the kind of same hourly model that is typical of, you know, other project designers.
So, you know, that, that was, that frustration was, was there and it's not, you know, Gensler's fault or anything like that. I think it's, it's our industry's, uh, paradigm around
how we structure the business.
Evan Troxel: Yep. Yeah.
Cody Winchester: well, you know that, and you, you know, you leverage that for this project, but it's just kind of like, um, working on an organ grinder, and you kind of pay the money, and you kind of do your stuff, and there's this performance of, you know, design technology tricks, and then the project's over, and then you have to do it again, and it's never really, like, taken up into, like, [00:20:00] should we be changing the business around this, or should the business kind of reformulate itself around this?
This capability and I think that's what was so energizing and exciting about, um, when I came on board with digital practice at HMC is like, I'd never heard of that before. I knew that we had, you know, design technology and I've seen plenty of firms that do that. Um, but no one that had a group that says, here's our team that just does that.
And especially five years hence. I don't see how we could have done the things that we've done thus far, even the things that we tackle on a daily basis. It's like, how would you even do this if you didn't have a team that was like spending a lot of time figuring out the ins and outs of some new software integration or even asking those questions around, generative AI and using stable diffusion like we were trying [00:21:00] to do, uh, and know it enough to even explain it to an executive committee that's interested in that as a strategy.
So otherwise, I think you just kind of, you're just constantly reacting to what's coming. And I think architects are actually really well equipped to do that. I think that's one of the strengths that we have as practitioners and You know, the pedagogy of, you know, our, um, our training in school. Um, but then we never, like, turn that into, um, a real set of, like, knowledge and philosophy.
It's always this kind of reactive, um, equation.
Evan Troxel: Yeah. Talk about kind of the structure that you've started with and maybe have evolved. You know, I, I have definitely haven't been able to keep current with the story, but so I'm curious to hear where things have come over the last five years when it comes to how you deploy this training and maybe talk about it from the business side, but also the, the doing side. One of the big things [00:22:00] that I think a lot of people are. People again, raise their eyebrows about with this whole digital practice and especially training is like the idea is, is it billable or is it overhead? Right? And,
and so I would love to hear you kind of explain the approach and maybe some evolution of if there has been of that approach as you've, as you've moved through
it over the last five years,
Cody Winchester: Yeah, I think operating primarily as, as overhead is, is key. And that allows for that self motivation and having that oversight that comes in and is asking those questions, but also not like, well, where are these hours for every little thing? Cause I think what is not unlike a maybe software developer track, I can't speak to that precisely, but just having, you know, acquaintances and contacts that have worked in that industry is like you kind of, um, have to like deal with the problems as they kind of [00:23:00] emerge.
Like you never know, like, Hey, we're going to be asked to do this thing. How long is it going to take? It's sort of like, I don't know, no one's ever done that. Um, we're going to have to kind of really get into the weeds with this stuff. And it's not like we're delivering drawings to be, um, reviewed by some agency that has jurisdiction under a budget and things like that.
It's, it's, it's nebulous in that way. Um, but. It does make us wonder still, like, even in that kind of open ended structure, like, where are we spending, like, spending our time? And I think as we've, um, been able to deliver more on just releases of, uh, or adoption of certain workflows or software, Um, we start to get asked to do more than just the design technology things like the bread and butter of modeling a building and documenting a building.
Now it's like we have a whole ERP system or a, a timekeeping system [00:24:00] and, um, our LMS system. like you start to be seen as like, um, cross functional experts on all of those things. So you get aligned to those groups that are trying to, you know, deploy something like that. And then it kind of does congeal around a project, but it's really still kind of an overhead operational piece.
And I think that is the sweet spot for it. Um, and there have been times from like a training standpoint, where you may try to. create a whole curriculum, like, like I've done, like here are the things that we should do. Here's an e learning component that gives you the basics that's published elsewhere that's, it's quite good, um, and kind of has a, a common commonality that everyone can approach.
And then there's a hands on, like live portion of it that we work with things that are relevant to our standards. And that, I think that worked [00:25:00] really well during the pandemic. Um, kind of been crunching some of that, that data now getting towards the end of the year and, you know, seeing these like spikes and when that kind of regularized curriculum of like, it's this course in this order, like there's lots of people that did that.
I think maybe the kind of economic upheaval, the kind of catastrophe of it, the should I be an architect anymore kind of
Evan Troxel: existential. Yeah. Right.
Cody Winchester: It very much, very much was. Yeah.
Then there was like this huge scrum of like, I need to just learn stuff. I need, I don't know what's going to happen from here.
Um, and then as the, um, kind of, economic environment, project building environment, um, settled and actually started doing really well again, and like lots of projects coming in. People didn't really have that, that bandwidth for regularized training, but they still needed to know these [00:26:00] things. So what I've done really in the past year is like, I can't keep pushing this rigorous curriculum.
It just doesn't line up with the, um, the culture of projects right now. And it's more like I'm going to make sure this stuff is still available, um, that there's a lot of it, a lot more of it that's on demand, but then showing up for specific projects, uh, when they need it. I'm just like, okay, do you have time?
How much time do you have? What do you want to cover? Let's just dive into it. And I can kind of. cherry pick from some of the curriculum that's still valid, but then we might invent something new. Um, and that has been a lot more prevalent, I would say in the past year and a half. Um, save for some things where it's like, I don't think we have anybody that knows how to do this.
And then it's like, okay, well I do, I can help with that. Let me jump in and for example, like work on building like custom curtain wall components, which was like a old thing that I [00:27:00] used to do in my, my former role. And then, yeah, I just do that. But that's an, that still was like an investment where on some pieces of it, I could still build to a project, but other pieces were like, you know what?
Actually, this is really valuable for the firm at large. Like this is something that I'm just going to take. and develop further into what could be other curriculum for the rest of the firm. And that kind of helps give an on ramp to the building. So they're not just, you know, charging my time necessarily.
So really it's been kind of, well, not to kind of be hypocritical with what I was saying earlier, but it is kind of reactive in some ways right now. Um, but I think the, Really pulling out the data from the training built upon that learning management system, I think is where we're going to be asking those tougher questions of that, that value, um, that return on investment and like how that's going to, um, really [00:28:00] track our, um, like key performance around training.
Yes. it's like a title of one of my previous episodes with the Slantis crew was AEC
Evan Troxel: is an adhocracy, right?
And, and I, that's how, project work is, right? Like, like you said, like you, you just have to be reactive at some level because it's new problems, it's new context, it's. You, like you said, maybe you have to invent something, right? That's very ad hoc. It's just in the moment. It's like,
whatever the situation requires. And as architects, you're up for the challenge, right? Like that's, you're used to working like that. You're not, you're not like overwhelmed by that idea. That that's kind of exciting in some ways, right?
To show up to work and what,
what's it going to be today? Who knows? Right.
And then, and then there's the other side of it, which is like, there's, there's structure. And there's, there's things that people can rely on that are maybe long, long form. Maybe they're [00:29:00] sequential and maybe they're working their way through some kind of training materials.
But, but it's a balance of all of that. There's stuff that's going to be applicable to a studio or to a team or to an office or to the whole firm. And there's other stuff that's like, man, we're never going to do, do it like this again. But we have to do it for this project kind of a thing. And, and really just understanding that from. An
orchestration standpoint across the firm and being able to translate that to leadership, who wants performance and accountability and ROI numbers and metrics and all these things. It's like, well, you don't, you can't have it for everything. It's like, it's like saying, well, just try to qualify. Qualified the value of design, like
what's the bottom line there? It's like, well, it's a
hard thing to do, right? Like there's certain things that are, that are very difficult to do that on. But, but I, I want to go back to this idea of like risk versus reward for implementing. like this. I mean, and there's other things that you could apply [00:30:00] this to as well, but, but we'll stick with training for now. Like you're constantly kind of evaluating what's the old adage. It's like, well, what if we train them and they leave? And then the second question is, well, what if we don't? And they stay right. and, and
and, and the whole idea of, of trying to, Establish standards and workflows so that people can agilely work on one project and then another and then in this office and then in that office and on this team and on that team without having to re learn how that team does it, right?
And we all know that this happens in lots of different ways. Lots of offices out there. And so there's risk and reward at that level. And there's risk and reward in like the whole, tell us like how much are, what is this doing for our firm? What, how is
this applicable to the business? Right. And,
and, and I'm sure you could, you could pretty easily say, well, man, [00:31:00] here's the benefits, right.
Of, of actually doing this. So I'm just curious from your standpoint, when you're kind of looking at the whole thing and, and, and if you just go back to the beginning and say. If I had to make that argument then, now, knowing what you know now, because people who are listening to this haven't done this, I mean, some
have, right, but a lot haven't,
Cody Winchester: Mm
Evan Troxel: like, what would you just generally say are kind of the risks versus rewards and, and where, I mean, I think you're going to be a little biased here, right?
I think you're going to be more on the reward side, but, but, But just the overall kind of like thoughts and feelings and, and maybe even some hard number, maybe not numbers, but like, like things you can point at and say, man, like if you've already kind of said it, like, man, I can't even imagine if we didn't do this now.
Right? Like, but there's people who haven't done this. And so how, how would you kind of sell this idea as being important enough to really follow through on
implementing?
Cody Winchester: I think the [00:32:00] biggest thing that I could point to, and I kind of pointed to it in my talk is, you know, you started the group, you know, circa 2018. And we got on our feet really by the fall of 2019 on the eve of one of the biggest events that's happened in a hundred years in the world, which, you know, we, we kind of look at it now in the past, like, yeah, you know, this pandemic thing happened.
It's like, you
Evan Troxel: That's how I looked at it. That's
Cody Winchester: Yeah.
Evan Troxel: it right as it was happening. I'm
like, ah, we'll Be back in the office in
two weeks.
www.
Cody Winchester: the effects are still present now, you know, like everything that has transpired on the, on the planet right now, like geopolitically, um, business wise, finance, inflation, like a lot of these things, like guys, you know, there, there is one key event that this all ties back to, like this pandemic was [00:33:00] the singular most affectatious thing that's happened in the world in the last hundred years.
Um, well as far as like pandemics, not excluding world wars, but it's at that scale, it's something that, you know, really wanted to emphasize, like this was such a massive shift in our thinking, in our working, in our doing, and the way that we form community, all of these things that we're affected by. Um, distilling that down to just the simple like, okay, now we don't have project work, I don't think if we didn't have a digital practice, at least up and running to the degree that we did, um, with the folks that were brought on board.
Um, and what we had to do to shift the entire business off of like local servers and like local desktops and move them all up into a cloud infrastructure and set up ways to collaborate [00:34:00] remotely. I don't think we would have been able to do that as quickly as we did. without having the team that we had in place at that time.
In that respect, I feel like we were very lucky. Like, larger firms, I think, you know, like my former firm in Gensler, like, they were already set up to do that in a lot of ways because they're multinational. The remote infrastructure was already there. Um, and a lot of that kind of shift to the cloud happened in like the early part of my tenure there.
And it was, it was very practical in order to work in these different markets and, and, and collaborate with everyone that was in those markets. But for, for HMC, really just localized California firms, like used to everyone just kind of logging into servers and working that way. I don't know. How long it would have taken for that kind of change to, uh, been adopted if there wasn't already a team that had some background and capabilities [00:35:00] around that.
So, I think that's a key point right there, to having that type of group. Like, in terms of risk and reward, it's like, can you respond to a changing technology landscape? Can you, um, adapt to a changing business landscape? Like, Like what we saw in the pandemic, um, if you don't have folks that are kind of already there, like thinking and forecasting and experimenting and testing and working through those scenarios and in some maybe tangential way.
And I'm, you know, even now, like the things that we're trying to do to, um, digitally transform the, the company, it's like all of these, all of the steps along the way, it takes people like full time figuring out how to do that. Yeah.
not just from an IT standpoint. I think that's a, that's a key part. I think a lot of firms will think, well, we have our IT group.
It's like, they are
not architects. Yeah.
So [00:36:00] they're,
they're really great at solving those problems, but they're also going to have to extrapolate a lot from what you're telling them. And in some cases they're just, they're just not going to get it. It's just not the same language. We As a user, Yeah.
Evan Troxel: as a user, you're almost always going to walk away from that conversation very dissatisfied, right? Because they don't understand where you're coming from. And I, I'm glad you brought that up because I think that is a key distinction to make when it comes to technology teams and,
and their, and then training, right? Is. Like, you come from the practice side, I came from the practice side, and that was very much, like, the intended audience of all of this stuff. It was not computer nerds, it wasn't, you know, like, it was, there was five generations
in the office, right? There's very literate, technologically, people, and there's very illiterate, and there's every, the spectrum in between. And, and you have to talk to each one of those. Because the common language that we speak is [00:37:00] architecture. Right? So, how do we translate these things to all of these different kind of languages of, not just generations, but all kinds, you know, there's all kinds of ways you could dissect the demographics there.
Right? Um, it's, it's really interesting to kind of think of it from that standpoint that it really is rooted in the practice side. It's not
IT coming at, at solving this problem.
Cody Winchester: Mm hmm. Absolutely. And it's, it's funny because you do have to have this hybridization. Like, it's not just like, let's just get architects together with IT. It's like, those are, you know, spectrally, like, like mutually exclusive in a lot of ways. like,
Evan Troxel: There's no Venn diagram.
Cody Winchester: Not really, especially if you're, you know, someone in one of these
older generations, even including the elder millennial like myself, it's like, I used, uh, ink and Mylar for four years
and it wasn't really [00:38:00] until
like, uh, yeah.
So it's like, if you have folks that like almost went into their career well, well into their career doing that, like, where is that, you know, where is that then? overlap. So it's like, again, it's like, how do you capture like that, that tribal, um, grassroots assembly of a group of folks that have a technology talent that are, or coming at it from a native standpoint, like, yep, this is the only way that I've ever done it.
Like I started my first year of school using Grasshopper or Dynamo or, you know, Python scripting or what have you. Um, You need those folks that have that tendency in the practice to be able to be an effective interlocutor with IT, like very brass tacks of the technology infrastructure. And that hybridization I think is It's kind of the secret sauce and I've really come to appreciate how we [00:39:00] did that in the last couple years where it's like, this group needs to be part of this group under one technology umbrella.
I don't think it has quite the right name for it. Um, right now we're just calling it technology. We still have digital practice and we still have IT and they still have these like separate identities, but this kind of like, Lovechild, we have that like makes all the other things, you know, come together where it's like, yep, these, these applications are relevant to the practice.
They're going to support our, um, production in Revit or Rhino or what have you. Um, and then we need help to figure out how to implement that from the actual infrastructure. Like, how does this work on, on Azure? How do we set up those permissions? How do we intake users? Um, how do we, um, manage all those licenses?
Because all of that together is what creates that seamless experience for deploying and using the technology. Cause it's, all that effort, it's so easy when it [00:40:00] just minorly fails. Um, people are like, yep, it sucks, I hate it, it doesn't work, and then they don't use it. And you're just like, oh man, this took us months
to get this far.
Um, but having that way to communicate across, um, that, that spectrum is, um, super, super important. You need folks that are learning each other's language and have that, yeah, bilingualist, um, type of approach to working in technology in their practice.
Evan Troxel: Yeah. You brought up Grasshopper and Python scripting and, and, and for, for those people who maybe are in, in leadership roles, who've been around the block a few times, don't
even maybe know what that means. Right. And, and, And, the way I would describe that is like, that is the way that younger generations. Like that's like them pulling out the trace paper with a Pentel kind of a sign pen that they're that's what they're doing there. They're coding it could be actually writing lines of code in [00:41:00] Python. It could be visual scripting like Grasshopper or Dynamo. It could be. You know, using walls and various symbols and things, and, and, and then you have all the generation skipping all the way up to, you know, somebody who is actually rolling out a roll of trace and drawing on that trace is different forms of sketching.
Right. And what I think is interesting about kind of labeling
this technology,
Cody Winchester: Mm.
Evan Troxel: definition of technology. That is, is anything that
changes how you work. It
could be language. It could be a physical pencil. It could be a pen. It could be trace paper. It could be an app. It could be hardware. Right? So technology is everywhere and everybody uses it.
But there are people in firms who are allergic to that term because they don't think like that. And I'm using my
famous podcasting here quotes, right there. They think of architecture as. a one on one conversation with somebody. They think of it as a relationship. They think of, they think of
it in, you know, in, in, [00:42:00] uh, uh, you know, a very analog process potentially, right?
Not a digital process, but technology really is anything that improves a process. And, and so everybody in a firm is a technologist. And I think what is interesting by you guys combining digital practice and IT into this technology group is basically saying. Like this is how we do business and I, that was something that was, I went through the years of sustainability as a checkbox, right?
Sustainability is not a checkbox. Sustainability is not optional. It's how we do things. digital practice or, or design tool, you know, whatever these technology tools are. It's a checkbox. Do you, do you want us to employ those? No, it's just, it's the way we work. You don't even have to care what tools we use.
Like they're, it's what we use to do our work, right? You would never ask a mechanic, like, are you using Craftsman or Snap on? You wouldn't care, right? You would just be like, fix the car, right? So, um, And to me, [00:43:00] it's, it's kind of interesting that you have this approach, which just says like, no, this is just, this is how we operate.
And all of this goes together. Here's the magic fingers coming together to really like bind this stuff into the practice of our, this is how you practice architecture now. Have we, have we delivered a project non digitally? No, we haven't, right? And we're not going to. Like, this is how we do it, right? So, it's a, it is kind of interesting.
I'm curious from your point of view, you, you talked about the, you know, somebody who's a digital native versus somebody who came to it later or maybe not even at all. What, what do you really see from an educational standpoint and architectural education today when it comes to digital training and the skills that, that students are coming to practice with? Because I think we've, we've seen the gamut, right? We've seen it where that wasn't a thing and now it's. It's a thing like, and I know schools are, some are maybe doing some technology training, but many are not. They're just saying, students figure it out, right? This is architecture school 101. Like, we had to build [00:44:00] physical models.
Did they teach you how to build physical models? No, they did not. You had to figure it out. It's the same with digital tools in many educational, uh, you know, situations nowadays. So I'm curious, like, what are you seeing when it comes to that? And then how are you addressing what you're seeing when it comes to You know, bringing some cohesion and, and semblance of standardization to the firm when it comes to like this wild west, like everybody comes with their own good or bad habits and anywhere in
between.
Cody Winchester: I think you pointed to something really important about, just fundamentally by definition what technology is. Um, there was definitely some really good coursework. I, I did in. In, in grad school where, you know, we would talk about some of that stuff and we'd come across different, like, theoretical writings on it, you know, discussing, like, technology in the Renaissance, [00:45:00] you know, the perspective as a, as a piece of, you know, technology and, um, you know, straight edge rulers and things like that, like, I think when you look at it that way, it's like, yes, we are, we're all, you know, students of technology.
We live in the 21st century. We are. Inundated with these things and we, I think the key thing is, is that we lack the self awareness of that in some sense that those things are actually influenced in the way that we even think or do influencing what we even think is possible. So that's why I think traditional architectural education can be really strong in terms of like, Going through that history and seeing like what people were able to accomplish in, in those eras.
Because it also, you should also, I think, include the technology piece of it. It's like, okay, so the Duomo was achieved by [00:46:00] this, um, but that came with their understanding of what was possible and what they were leveraging the technology that they had, that there's always this kind of like technological addendum to that problem.
And the part that always kind of frustrated me when I was in the practice is I'd be trying to use these things to better the, the outcome. It's like, if we leverage these things in this way, we're going to be able to create things that we didn't think we could or manage to think the complexity that we thought.
that we could, but it was so oft just, um, you know, relegated to being just a tool. It's like, well, that's just a tool, but we're doing architecture. It's like, no, you're not. Like this, you are, you are using these tools to do architecture. They're kind of, it has a symbiosis. The things that you think that you're able to do in architecture is a function of what you're using.
And it's like, yeah, but you can do that in AutoCAD. It's like, that is another piece of technology. the [00:47:00] way that you're thinking about this problem and how you are thinking of solving it, even using AutoCAD versus something like Revit. It's like, do you understand that that is your paradigm of design is a function, um, or is at least mediated through the technology that you're used to.
So I think that's an important educational piece, um, to include in this, in this dialogue with larger firms, like looking to implement a technology. program is that you have to have some self awareness of the fact that you are doing the things that you are doing right now because of the capabilities of the technology that you have available.
You know, this is it.
Evan Troxel: Which is where the training comes in,
right?
Cody Winchester: well that's that self awareness component of it, and like, asking an architect for humility may be a bridge too far, in some cases, but, um, I think, I think it's really helpful in having that honest assessment, and it's, it's really just, you know, [00:48:00] taking a, a good business argument.
It's like, what are we doing and how are we doing it? If we had a new way of doing it, would we be doing things differently? And the answer is yes. What is it that is kind of hindering that and what is the things that we would prioritize to ensure that we are maintaining relevance into the future? Um, but yeah, I think that, you know, that technology as a paradigm in and of itself, um, I think is, is an important component to this.
Evan Troxel: I have another question, but I still want you to talk about kind of what you're seeing with, with graduates coming out of school. So I'm going to try my hardest to remember what I, what I want to ask you, but jump onto that, that section of it. Just, just talk about, because I think a lot of firms look at young hires as,
Like they already have the skills that I need.
The schools are doing the training. And then like when I, when I was teaching at [00:49:00] school, that, that might've been the case, but I know, I know the school that I was teaching at got rid of all the digital coursework because they had to fill it with other classes that were required and, and there are so many. resources available out there, good and bad, but, but they just say, you know, have at it, like figure it out. And, and they obviously talk to each other a lot and teach
each other, but that's, I've seen that whole spectrum and I'm curious what you're seeing now when it comes to that and, and maybe what, what advice you give to people doing the hiring when it comes to the skills that you see graduates coming in with. Obviously, they're very prepared and they're at a stage of their life where they can pretty much learn anything, right? And, and that was something that I always thought was so cool about hiring these people and then therefore getting materials in front of them very quickly to say this is how we do it because that's really important, right?
So I'm curious
your take on that.
Cody Winchester: Yeah, we're gonna begin on that. There's [00:50:00] um, a lack of skill in certain, like, core functions of, of architecture from new graduates. In essence, Revit. There's very few people that come out of school that know that. They might have taken, like, a course on it. Mm hmm. Um, you'll find a lot of folks that are pretty good with Rhino.
Um, still some folks that are still pretty good with, with AutoCAD. I haven't come across too many people. I, I always have to ask anymore in my training, especially when I'm talking about Rhino. It's like, well, Rhino, underneath the hood, you know, thinks like AutoCAD in, in many respects. It's like part of its, its, um, kind of lineage.
But, you know, it's like, but anyone in the room remember AutoCAD? It's like, okay, good. Everyone still does. It's actually one of the number one products still for, for Autodesk. Um, but I think the other part of that is, you know, we had, or architecture, the royal architecture, [00:51:00] we have, um, kind of operated as this kind of apprenticeship for ages.
That you come in and you have tutelage under a master designer and you're kind of there to absorb and learn that trade. It's not something that you can be taught in school so much. So, the theoretical framework that comes with a lot of, you know, traditional architecture school I think is really important in order to you know, develop that self awareness, criticality, uh, generalistic, um, framework for, for approaching problems.
But that actual practice of architecture, it's called practice for a reason. Um, we should assume that folks are coming in to learn how to do architecture. And we've seen that most directly too, in more recent years following the pandemic is. You know, we were kind of looking at how we can bolster retention [00:52:00] because, you know, there was this hold on for dear life during the pandemic.
And then there was this kind of like epiphany following that, like, well, maybe I don't have to do this anymore or this traditional path of architecture. I'm not really able to learn as much as I want to. I just have to like do RFIs and submittals all the time. And then my kind of creativity tanks after a couple of years of that.
So what we're seeing and kind of even preparing for the talk that I gave and kind of reaching out to our human resources and kind of discussing some of these things, because we worked on a lot of the learning together, is the feedback around from them was saying, we're seeing people that aren't even sure they want to be in this field anymore.
They went to school, they graduated, they're getting a job here, but they're like, well, Is this what it's going to be though? Like, am I just going to kind of trudge away with that? And there is a greater expectation from [00:53:00] younger generations and the folks that are coming out of school, that they're going to have a pathway to learn and develop, and that that's just going to be a constant.
And I think that, you know, the more that I think about this and try and like plan for this in the curriculum that I'm developing is You know, how do, how does this affect university? Like how does this affect, you know, going to school for that long with that kind of debt like, I, like, I certainly have and probably and will have for probably the remainder of my life.
Um, like what is the value there when I have to learn all of this stuff here anyway? Like, I need to continue this, this journey somehow there needs to be a pathway for me, and that's true of the folks that are going in the traditional line of architecture. But I think, you know, I also speak to this in like, you know, how do you make a digital practice?
Um, that's super important for the folks that have that inclination too. Cause those folks are gonna be the most, um, [00:54:00] readily alienated in a prac typical practice model. Like, I have this interest in technology and applying that to practice. But my leadership or my immediate manager is telling me like, don't worry about that.
Just get it done. Like we don't have time for that. We don't have the hours for that. Like that's going to alienate those folks and they're going to, they're going to feel like there's very few pathways for them to stay in, in the industry. Like their expectation really is like, I'm interested in this. I want to learn more.
I want to be aligned with people that know it so I can learn from them in the kind of traditional respect of like, being an apprentice, um, but also having access to those resources that have, you know, kind of lay out a path for me. Like once I get this, get to this level of understanding technology and the practice, where do I go from here?
It's not just senior project architect. It's not, you know, principal of the studio. [00:55:00] Um, like there needs to be an avenue that like aligns, uh, to that as well. So it is still this kind of. Topic to be explored. I still think about it a lot, but I think the short is that folks are coming out of school, coming into the practice, and they're expecting a firm to have a learning path for them because it's not given to them in school.
School gives them just a framework for thinking.
It doesn't give you practical skills. Otherwise NCARB wouldn't exist, right? So it's like, come on guys, like this is, we built this whole, um, structure of being licensed around this. This isn't that different. You have to invest in the, the teaching and the learning.
And I think that, um, interaction is where there's strain. There's probably because there's not a lot of time.
To do that, like everyone's super busy and understaffed or, um, [00:56:00] under, uh, paid in a lot of cases that they're like, I don't have time to teach you. I just need you to know it. But it's like, that is antithetical to kind of what we're set up to do and kind of what the expectations are.
Evan Troxel: There's definitely a lot of finger pointing there, right? We've all seen that. It's like the schools are pointing at the firms, the firms are pointing, the practice is pointing back at the schools. You're not training them to be effective, you know, workers as soon as they, Get into a cube, right? Um, and like you just said, like it's actually designed this way. And if you don't like it, like redesign it, like actually work together and redesign it. And to me, that's what implementing a training department, a technology training department is actually for. It is to design the future of your company inside your own company. Because one of the things you said earlier was like, well, who, we, Who are we?
How do we get our work done? And usually that comes back to tools and process and workflows. And, but it's also, who do we want to be? [00:57:00] What kind of projects do we want to be known for? What do we want to be known for? Why do we exist? And then designing a path toward that. And this, this module of the company. can be a key leader in making that happen, right? Because you can attract people who are already doing that, or know about that, or people who are apt to learning about those things before everybody else, and implementing them, to then train the rest of your people on how to do that. I think where a lot of things get lost, or broken down, or, however, stalled out along the way, is by saying, how do we just keep doing what we do, but make it more efficient? Like, that's not progress, right? That, you, you might be able to look at a spreadsheet and see something there that makes your argument. But it's not the, that's not why you exist. Like, you're, you're a business for a reason. You're a collective of people for a reason. And so I, I really feel like, like these kinds of groups in a [00:58:00] company are, the purpose of them is to
evolve the company and not just stay doing what you're
doing.
Cody Winchester: Mm hmm. That, I kind of want to go back to one thing that you said about kind of the audience here, like for leaders of a firm that, you know, may be hearing these terms around like, what is grasshopper or visual scripting or things like that? Why does that matter when, you know, we're, Doing drawings with dimensions and sheets to submit to the city for review.
Like, why does that matter? And
to that point of like, where do you want to be? One specific example we had about using Grasshopper by way of Rhino is, the goal wasn't to use Grasshopper for the group. Um, so we had this initiative where, just to back [00:59:00] up, we had this initiative where we said, Okay, we have a lot of people using SketchUp, as you remember, um, and we would really like them to not be working in SketchUp that much.
We'd really like them to be working in Rhino. And the reason why we would like them to be working in Rhino is because you have access to Grasshopper. And Grasshopper has this capability and so on, but it's not just that kind of thing. The business strategy around that is we want to, as a firm, for our project to be able to leverage data and analytics more for the production of our projects so that we can validate sustainability principles, that we can, um, validate, um, the efficiency of a curtain wall system or, um, How this stuff is going to go together, the, the tectonics of the building, um, and that we have a way to interoperate between our other [01:00:00] software more readily.
I think it's not just this import, export, manually convert. It's that the goal is to be able to leverage data more to achieve these goals around sustainability, efficiency, etc. Uh, and then this is the vehicle to, to, to do that. So that's, uh, You know, that's something that I think is really important for setting that mission, um, for, for a forum with this group, and the reason why this group can, can do that is that they're, they're always thinking about how to, um, translate those, those goals via, via the technology.
Like, well, now that we can do this, what could, what else could we do? It's not, you know, to your point, it's not just like making things faster. Cause that's kind of like making an old process better, but that process, you know, is going to deprecate before too long anyway, it's like having, it's like any discussion around line weights that you have in a, in a firm, like, well, you know, Revit line weights, they aren't as good as [01:01:00] AutoCAD.
It's like, well, they, they don't. I hate to say it, but they don't matter that much anymore. And it's in one respect, I mean it's like, they do only from a very kind of rudimentary readability standpoint. But having like 12 line weights as an example. The reason, like, an example there is that those line weights were meant to contain information and translate that in this other way to Um, a reader or a viewer of that, that document who also had literacy in what line weights were so that they could understand the mechanics of a building through this symbolic representation of a floor plan.
That method worked in encoding that information with AutoCAD and even old pen styles. But now that we have robust three dimensional models that contain tons of information and data, like that's actually not serving that purpose anymore because you literally have access to that [01:02:00] stuff now. Um, and you have to start seeing that and then saying like, well, what else could we do with that?
Like, what is, where can we take this now from, um, not only from optimizing our current processes, but like developing entirely new ones.
Evan Troxel: Yeah. I didn't know this was gonna be a podcast about line weights, but now it
is.
Cody Winchester: It's just one of my, one of my tics, cause I hear it every, so often, and it just always just like, ah, just brings up so many bad memories, like what, like, they,
I hate to say it, it doesn't matter,
it doesn't matter anymore, they're already there,
like, however it looks, it's, it's not the most, it's like the 12th most important thing, and like the, the things that you want from your, your project.
I
Evan Troxel: That whole point of digital practice was not so people could just geek out on technology, right? It was, it was to identify the outcomes, identify [01:03:00] where we wanted to go. And then figure out how we were going to get there using tools as leverage to do that.
And, and again, tools is a, is a very, and tools and technology, it's a very wide ranging definition, right? It's anything that helps us get to where we want to go and be who we want to be and serve who we want to serve. And, and to me, I think, like, implementing something like this is a key to actually achieving that, not just staying who you are.
And, and it's not race to the bottom, it's race to the top. Like, how do we get to where we want to go? It's like, aim there, and then figure out how to, how to do that. Uh, I'm, I'm curious from, from an implementation standpoint, obviously there's been lots of lessons learned over the last five years. Um, and, and you got to present this case study at Autodesk University.
Like, I'm curious. about maybe three different things. I'm curious about the kind of feedback that you've gotten from people who have, are in the firm, who have, who have benefited [01:04:00] or, or not. I don't know, you know, you tell me from what you're doing there. The second one is like, what are the lessons learned that you think are worth sharing? And then, and then kind of icing on the cake is like, what, what should people look out for? Like, what hasn't worked? What are the failures of it that people shouldn't waste their time with? I'm sure there's a couple.
Cody Winchester: had to think about that a little bit because I think it depends on the firm in terms of like how much feedback they're willing to give, like some are more forthcoming than others. Um, but I think one of the, I think the lessons that we learned is there, there was a time where. Um, we appeared to be too elite in, in the firm and, and removed from the everyday experiences, um, of folks on, on project teams that we could kind of, you know, sequester [01:05:00] ourselves up into a technologically ivory tower, technological ivory tower, and just kind of noodle on these things and like issue decrees on, on, on standards and processes with, with, with, uh, you know, Kind of little regard to what's actually happening.
Um, so we did go through a kind of, um, Um, process of like deep survey of, of the company. Um, like just to fill out a survey, but also a lot, lots of one on one meetings to just really gather that feedback. Cause we were starting to kind of see this resistance and kind of. almost kind of palpable, um, uh, disdain in some cases, not always.
I think, you know, most people are very professional, uh, and polite, but you could just tell you're like, I don't think you were totally, like, wanting to hear what I just said about X, Y, or Z. Like, you should, you know, here's a process that you should do. Like, yeah, we don't do it that way. Um, it's like, [01:06:00] I think maybe we're, we're kind of missing, we're missing each other here.
Um, and there had been enough of that, um, as well as like, you know, explicit complaints to, to, to leadership to be like, we, we need to kind of assess this across the board and see what's going on. So we, we did those series of surveys and, you know, that's where we started to get some of that feedback that, you know, you guys seem like you're kind of off in your corner and, you know, not really dealing with what we're doing in this kind of high and mighty way.
Um, and some of the adjustments that I. In that we did see there, I know we had this discussion on like, yes, we should, a digital practice should mostly be an overhead type of operational department. I think that's still true. Um, it's, I think the inversion from like a past, like design technology group or kind of informal group where it's like, well, you have 20 percent of your time, um, where you get to work on like technology initiatives.
I think in this case, you have to identify the folks [01:07:00] on your team. Not everyone. Um, but you know, a good portion of it, especially when we're talking about, uh, BIM management and like computational efforts, like folks like that should be a lot more on projects too. not most of their time, because I think that gets, that starts to become counterproductive to the larger goal of a digital practice and the kind of, um, trans like digital transformation of a, of a firm.
Um, but if they're not involved in those projects and they're not able to really sympathize and adjust and tune, uh, workflow processes, um, to the needs of folks, and then they don't have that rapport in that respect. Like you're not in this project, kind of fight with me on this, on this project, because every project kind of feels like a, this kind of slog or this battle.
Um, I think like we have a lot of like war euphemisms in our practice around that stuff. This old warhouse, Welcome to architecture. Yeah,
[01:08:00] uh, warhorses and workhorses doing, you know, doing CA on projects. It's like, you know, people are, it's, it's a lot of work to do architecture. It's really hard. So you need folks that can kind of, you need the people who are coming up with these ideas around technology and trying to initiate some sort of strategy around it, um, to be able to, um, share that pain or share that experience.
Um, I think that's a key component of it and it's, we're kind of humming along in that, in that way. There are some key people that are like, Well, also aligning to work, you know, where your folks on your team want to work, you know, some people do want to just like take problems out of projects and just really noodle on them for a while and like, I want to find the solution to this or at least a kind of hypothetical strategic solution that will affect more projects.
Uh, and other folks are like, I love having this space, but I [01:09:00] really want to be in there working on these problems with the folks on, on project teams. And we found a pretty good balance on that. We have our folks that are like really involved, um, in, in the projects and are able to give us a lot of like real feedback, um, from, from the practice.
So I think that's, that's one key lesson learned. Um, Other things would be, you just, you just don't know what you, what you don't know. And some of this stuff, when it comes to like testing software and deploying software, we've had tons, we've had just tons of like hiccups around that. We have, we have one going on today, um, that kind of took up part of the morning.
It's like, Avadesk, um, desktop connector, we'd been putting it off for a long time. And then now we have to use this new version. Um, or the version that's been out for like, you know, 10 months now or so. Um, and it was a [01:10:00] huge disruption or the installs didn't go right and we just didn't have enough time to like really test every case.
And I think acknowledging what you don't know on that from a digital practice standpoint, you may say like, yeah, we just update to this thing. This is, you know, what we need to, uh, keep this suite of tools running or our app stack kind of, um, up to date. Um, is you really do need to leverage that expertise from your like IT group or like developers, really looking outside that group.
Anyone who has experience in like product management and, and release and um, kind of UI and ux and how to gather feedback, um, from, from customers to deliver, um, an an app, um, so that you can. Get ahead of those hiccups because every little mistake that comes up in the deployment, um, does harm to the reputation of, of the group.[01:11:00]
Like I said earlier, it's like you may be spending all this time to arrange all this thing and get all of this complicated information behind the scenes and connections to this or that to, to work. Um, but as soon as a user logs in and it doesn't work. Um, there should be like, nope, sucks, you guys suck too, by the way, you know, because you didn't figure it out and you're just like that part's really hard because you, you just like, in some ways, because we came out of the practice and we're in, you know, into technology, we just don't have a lot of that, um, understanding of those things either.
It's like, well, what are the steps that we should be taking to like move through like alpha, beta release, you know, of, of a, of an application. So I think that's something that's. We're still kind of learning. And when you're looking at putting together a group like that, it does matter the kind of array of expertise that you're bringing together.
You have your Revit folks, you have your Rhino folks, your Grasshopper [01:12:00] folks, your, um, you know, visualization folks, but don't underestimate the value of like folks that know how product management works, um, that know how, um, development works. alongside even folks that know how to really gather that feedback and market it too.
It's like, well, what is a good communication plan? We've suffered a lot on communication before too, where it's like, we just didn't get the message across. We didn't find the places where people were actually checking, you know, it's like, Oh, we have this post on our internet. Um, we also emailed it to you.
We're like, yeah, but did you show up in person to my meeting? It's like, you have to recognize the culture. Um, of the folks that you're, you're trying to support also, which comes with some of the expertise around like, um, marketing and product management and development and things like that.
Evan Troxel: We can see why some people throw their hands up in the air, right? And like, oh, this just
sounds like a massive [01:13:00] headache.
Cody Winchester: Yep. It's like, I'm
Evan Troxel: Yeah, back to your earlier point lesson, your first lesson learned about just kind of the, the, elitism. Um, you know, I, I've definitely changed my thoughts around this early on. I definitely thought of. especially the design technology team as being kind of a skunk works or a SWAT team, or, you know, a really kind of high proficiency, high performing in and out, like we do black ops. Right. And, but, but to support everybody, but to your point, my thinking has really changed around that because I think the more you treat a group like that, like consultants, that don't own the outcome in the project, you're going to get what you get. Right? And I think that groups cannot operate at like a consultant level, especially inside the firm, because they do need to own it. [01:14:00] They need to own the process and the outcome and be a part of it and understand the nuance of How it fits in the overall workflow of what's trying to be achieved with project delivery, or else, uh, I think you're just, you are going to get a lot of problems there. Um, so I would,
Cody Winchester: your colleagues.
Evan Troxel: right, right, and like to really have each other's back, you, it, it can't be more than just like this,
this incision point, right? It really
has to be fundamentally like a relationship over time. So because everybody, everybody can count on all 10 fingers, right? Like how many times it's gone wrong when we've tried to do something like that. And it's, and it's not that it goes right every time you do it the other way, but the chances are much higher when you have a relationship and when it's not a consultant relationship, it's actually like we're on the same team kind of a relationship and we're really here to support, like support. It is, is [01:15:00] such a interesting word, right?
Because I think we think of like, Oh, I have to make this phone call and go through the telephone tree and have to talk to somebody on another continent with a, and I have a language barrier. Like that's, that's, not the kind of support you're looking for, right? Like
there's all those things that they could be anybody you hire.
Like that, that could be how it is. But at the same time, like, like we're, there's a reason we started with, like. It's important that you came from practice and it was important that I came from practice. It was because of like the understanding of. what the people who did the work needed to accomplish.
And they weren't just reacting to putting out fires all the time, right? Like we put out fires on projects, but we also like, this is why we do projects. Right. So you have to speak that language. And I think you have to be there. You have to be that person who's really like you have each other's backs in
That situation.
That's definitely a great thing to look out for. I agree.
Cody Winchester: that's, that is a crucial, crucial point, is you need your folks that are in [01:16:00] these roles to have come from the practice and have had sufficient time in the practice to have experienced what happens in the practice and how to communicate the solutions and be mindful of the deadlines, too, that people are facing, because That's another kind of asynchronicity with, um, technology and project work, especially in architecture.
Like, your deadlines are coming faster than it takes to develop a solution for that project from a technology standpoint. It can take a long time. It can take weeks or months to, like, build out a, like, formalized algorithm to, like, accomplish something. And it doesn't just work right away. And in some cases, you might have to say, Hey, I need to give you something just off the cuff, but I'm not going to forget about this and still have a way to like, um, um, work on those solutions and your kind of, uh, other digital practice role, but that sensitivity, uh, to the needs of [01:17:00] the team only comes, I think, from having experienced that.
And it kind of reminds me of a key point, um, for, for those in, you know, looking to. To create a group like this or interesting and kind of what that looks like is you have to be able to see this talent, um, happening on your project teams. Um, and, and cultivate them, they're not, it's not some like external hire that you can say here's this person, they're really, they're an expert in Grasshopper, this is all they've been doing their whole career, they work for McNeil or something like that, or they work for MongoDesk and they're gonna come and help us, and like, well, that person is the software expert, but they're not the practice expert, and that would be a mismatch if you're trying to just like, hire that into the practice as a solution.
I think there's ways where this is, this is organically happen, happening. There's kind of, without exception, there are folks that have talent around technology and architecture. It's just, I think it comes with, with our [01:18:00] trade. Cause again, like we are, we're all technologists, whether we're aware of it or not.
Um, but being able to cultivate and have that pathway for those folks to. grow into those positions of leadership from a digital practice standpoint, or even leadership within the studio itself, that, that practice, um, kind of transition is, is key to making a work, uh, a group like that work and be able to provide that support.
Evan Troxel: Nice. Is there anything else that you covered in your case study at Autodesk University that you think is worth mentioning? We'll definitely have a link to that course
that you pre recorded, um, in the show notes for the episode. But is there anything else from your presentation that you feel is worth
pointing out?
Cody Winchester: having Developed a training curriculum, um, placed it onto a formal learning management, plugged it into, um, you know, our, our job functions in the [01:19:00] firm and the kind of, uh, alignment with all the different, uh, stakeholders in the group is, there's a key part that we haven't totally mastered that, um, kind of amplifies and makes this scalable, and I think it comes to like the knowledge management piece of it.
That's kind of like where I, where I end this talk is like, how do we have a way to not only provide that, um, training, but how are we going to capture knowledge from everyone else in the studio, you know, whether it's solutions from a technology standpoint, but also just that expertise in the practice, like someone who's an expert in K through 12 or, you know, and, um, you know, museum design or what have you.
It's like, there's this key part where, you know, I think you, you've said it to me in, in, uh, in passing before, like, you know, architecture tends to be like this pyramid scheme where there's [01:20:00] the person on top, like the expert and everyone's kind of under them. And the only way that you move up is if that person retires or passes away.
Um, but I think not to be so glib about it, but it's like, I think what we struggle with in this industry too is that it takes such a long time to master this trade and you get to that point and once folks are ready to retire. or move on, there's this open question, like, well, how do you capture that, that, that wisdom and that knowledge from those people?
Uh, how do you translate that into a training program that can, like, bolster the next generation without kind of going to the next, uh, tier of, like, old fashioned, you know, apprentice? Like, you're no longer a Padawan, you are now a master. Like, that kind of anointing ceremony that happens in architecture. I don't.
I don't think we have like a real formalized like business operational way to do that.
Um, [01:21:00] so the knowledge management I think is going to be a really interesting next step. I mean, there's definitely platforms out there to support it. But the, the point that I ended on, because so much is in the digital realm now, everything that we do, is mediated by technology somehow.
Like our whole existence is almost like virtualized now through all these different, um, bubbles of, of information and technology interface that we have, that there's so much that we're generating in terms of, of content, uh, and information and knowledge that I, you know, went as, went so far as to propose this notion that, you know, I put it out there and I want to explore what this is.
And it, and it borrows from. a familiar phrase that knowledge equals data. And it's how we can capture all of these streams of information and data that make up [01:22:00] our business knowledge, that make up our trade knowledge, our expertise, so forth. The things that AI is being trained on right now, whether we like it or not, is how do we make that more symbiotic and leverage it in a way that is in line with how we're moving forward in the future.
That we're, we're not just like sharing it colloquially. We're not sitting next to each other the way that we used to. We're not having that same kind of apprenticeship with like, you know, My boss teaches me everything, I'm there every day, we go on site, and certainly there are still those ways, but, um, anymore, it's all done through some kind of technology.
Technology that can listen, that can transcribe, that can, um, start to create new knowledge, um, out of that. Um, so I think that's kind of where we're at. An important piece to then fold back into what we're going to be teaching ourselves in the future, that we're going [01:23:00] to have to find these ways, um, to capture our experiences through our profession, um, and translate that in a way that, um, can be, um, consumed by this next generation, because it's not going to be done through, um, kind of interpersonal relationships, um, that have happened in the past.
So that's that last, that last piece that, um, I'm curious about going forward.
Evan Troxel: Codifying that wisdom is a key piece of the recipe. And I kind of think of it as this progression right. It's like data, information, knowledge, wisdom. And, and to get to wisdom is where you're really connecting the dots through experience. And those are the The wise
sages in our industry, right? And, and the reason everybody's bummed when they walk out the door is because they, they were put into a box typically of performing their [01:24:00] magic day in and day out. But, but most of it was just translated verbally and
not captured, right? Uh, and, and, and so that's
where the bummage comes in, right? It's like,
Oh my God, what are we going to do without, without that person? Um, because they are walking out the door with so much wisdom, right? I mean, yes, they have knowledge.
Yes, there's a lot of data points. Yes, yes, yes. Um, but it's the wisdom that everybody's going to miss, right? And that is what large language models don't have. Right? What, what large language models understand is that these words usually show up next to each other or these pieces
of words show up next to each other a lot in language or these colors of pixels show up a lot together in this kind of image.
Right? They don't understand space. They don't understand the architectural process. Right? And so to me, like, this is where you really want to leverage tools to capture [01:25:00] wisdom. So that you can employ new ways of knowledge transfer in your firm so that you can get to where you want to go. more effectively and faster, right?
Because if you, if you can't do that and those people do walk out the door, like you're just doing what you're doing, like you're not going to get any better at it. You're probably going to get worse at it because you don't have that resource anymore. And so everybody has to be a teacher. Everybody has to, and you can't just speak it, you have to capture it somehow, right?
So you capture it through writing, you capture it through audio, you capture it through video, and you use that maybe for this training, or, you know, whether you're thinking about training an AI model, or you're training people in a classroom setting, or any of the various ways in between, you have to get to that, or else you're just Like, just feeding the machine that, that isn't going to get any better over time, really, right?
It might actually get worse, right? It's like, it's kind of like the fear of large language models is, like, there's so much junk [01:26:00] content being created now, it's just going to water down the effectiveness of even that, right? So it's like garbage in, garbage out. So if you really If you want to break that cycle, you really do have to figure out ways to capture these incredible human resources that you have in your firm on the wisdom side of things, right?
I mean, that, that to me is, is, that is such a key element. And I'm glad you brought that up at the end because, like, it really is about the people. And you think about
this whole thing, like, we're not doing this To use tools, we're doing this to do architecture, architectures for people, the people who make the architecture have this incredible wisdom, um, that they've built through experience over, you know, four or five, six decades, right?
I mean, um, it's, uh, it's, this is a, a nut that needs to be cracked. And, and, and, and I think what's so interesting is you'll watch startups like. Stop at nothing to figure out how to accomplish their goals. And I just feel like architecture firms are usually like, how do [01:27:00] we just keep doing this for cheaper?
Right. And, and that to me is not, this is a lot of people aren't choosing architecture because of that. They're looking at the leaders and they're being like, well, why would I want to be like that one day? I don't want to be like that. I want to be like. This dynamic, you know, person who goes after challenges and, and really solves interesting problems.
I don't, I'm not interested in trying to figure out how to charge less fees and do more work, right? So we, we're at this crossroads and every firm is kind of has their destiny in their hands and they have to figure out how they're going to do this. And so. I'm so glad that you could come on the show and just kind of talk about the process that we went through to, to really, like,
try to figure that out.
I mean, this is
just one component of that. But,
um, this, this is the kind of stuff that, that, you know, I, I think it's exciting. It's exciting, it's a design problem. And I think that was, you know, talking about us coming from practice. And looking at our own internal way of working and [01:28:00] how, what we wanted to be and how we were going to move forward is a design problem. And as architects, like we're up for the challenge. That's, that's what we like to do. We like to
do, take on design challenges and we just looked at ourselves as one of those. And I think more and more firms
need to be doing that.
Cody Winchester: real live question of how long this industry stays the way that it is. With, I mean, we're looking at a 10 year timescale and it's, it's kind of an open question.
It's like, is there something out there now that exists right now that could consume the entire industry in some way?
The prospects around AI and even just Autodesk has its own competitor to every other architect for that matter. Like the things that they're capable of doing. Um, that's a question that I think every firm should ask themselves is like, just assume that the way you're doing things will not exist in generously 10 years.
What are you going to do now that's going to [01:29:00] move towards a new way of working that still maintains this expertise that we have? I think someone in our firm said it really well. It's like, I don't think architecture will be around in the future, but I do think architects will be. So it's a matter of like, what is it that architects will be doing in the future without architecture as it's come to be?
Uh, and it revolves around these questions.
Evan Troxel: goes back to the whole idea of what is the value proposition of an architect or an architecture firm, right? Like, what do you really do Where's your value truly lie? Is it in production of drawings, right? Or is it in, you know? There's a lot of ways you could kind of stage that question as a framework, but I think it's worth pondering, right?
Who do we want to be? Why do we need, why do we deserve to exist? What, what is our, what is our value proposition in the world? Because, um, you know, somebody said it, really well to me, uh, I mean, something I really latched onto is like, do you want to be a top 500 firm or do you want to be a top five [01:30:00] firm?
Like there's a huge difference in what it takes to be one of those a huge difference. Like, because when you think about how you present yourself to the world, like you, you actually want to say like, we're here. Cream of the crop. Like, if those are the kinds of clients, if those are the kinds of projects you want to do, if that's where your true benefit and value to society is, like, you have to be operating at a very high level, otherwise you're just the same as everybody else, right?
And I think not many people are stepping back enough to say, look at what we've built here. Is this going to get us to where we want to go? If not, what do we want to be? Who do we want to be? Why do we want to be there? And how do we get there? And look at yourself as that design problem.
So.
Cody Winchester: acquired by somebody else that has these solutions or are you going to shut your doors?
Um, but yeah, but
it's time to. Embark on that, that journey through transformation and evolution. Like the practice needs to [01:31:00] answer this question differently.
Evan Troxel: Cody,
thank you so much. We'll have a link, have a link to your LinkedIn so people can connect with you. Thank you so much for sharing what you've learned with the Autodesk University community and this podcast community. It's, uh, it's amazing. I love it. I love seeing this and, uh, I
appreciate you coming on to talk about it.
Cody Winchester: there too. Like we, all this technology, it still comes down to the people that are doing it. And that's where we should always, uh, be cultivating ourselves and making ourselves better and supporting each other too.
Cause it's, it's a weird thing to do inside of architecture.
Um, and we, we need to support each other. So, cheers to that. Thanks so much. This is, this is a lot of fun.
​[01:32:00]

💡These episode briefs provide key insights for forward-thinking leaders seeking innovation in AEC who are short on time, offering the context of each conversation without the need to listen to the full episode. They’re designed to keep you updated, spark your interest, and encourage you to tune in if the ideas resonate.

Episode Summary

My conversation with Phil Read offers a profound exploration of how AI and technology can reshape the AEC industry. From leveraging AI as a conversational partner to redefining workflows, the discussion is packed with insights on how professionals can adopt a forward-thinking approach to technology.

🥳🍾 Happy New Year's Eve!

In 12 hours (in my timezone at least), we'll be ringing in 2025. I honestly can't believe it was a quarter century ago that we (as a society, maybe not you personally) were all very concerned about the so-called Y2K bug!

As the AEC industry continues to evolve, 2024 has proven to be a year of valuable discussions on the TRXL podcast. From artificial intelligence to prefab construction, my guests and I have explored the tools, trends, and mindsets shaping the future of our industry.

The fan-favorite episode this year was undoubtedly “144: The SketchUp Story” with Brad Schell. Brad is not only the founder of one of AEC’s most adored apps ever created (I realize my audience may disagree, but like it or not the numbers don't lie), he’s also an incredibly generous person and a fantastic storyteller. I highly recommend this episode whether or not you’re a fan of the app—I guarantee you’ll learn something.

As a retrospective, I’ve gone back through my notes and have written about some trends across 2024’s episodes. My hope is that you find this both memorable (if you’ve been following along) and useful enough to encourage you to find out more by visiting the links provided. 

Here’s a look back at some of this year’s highlights:

Emerging Technologies: Beyond BIM

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time data emerged as a recurring theme. Episodes like “147: The Era of Spatial Computing” with John Manoochehri and “155: Shortening the Feedback Loop” with AJ Lightheart and Jon Matalucci highlighted how virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) and machine learning are transforming design processes and fostering collaboration across disciplines.

A standout was the Project Phoenix series (Eps. 159-161 with David Benjamin, Ryan McNulty, Andrew Meagher, and Thomas van Haren), which did a deep dive into modular prefab construction and sustainable innovations such as mycelium-based façade materials. They also emphasized the value of integrating project design and delivery through a forward thinking, stakeholder-centered approach.

Just recently I published “171: From Model to Machine” with Brian Nickel and Brett Settles to talk about taking BIM to another level by connecting design intent directly to fabrication using web-based platforms, showcasing how technology and collaboration can lead to safer, faster, and more efficient workflows.

These episodes highlighted the urgent need for design practices that are adaptable and forward-thinking, focusing on user-centric experiences and sustainability goals. 

Leadership, Change Management, and Professional Growth in AEC

As always, change was a cornerstone topic this year. From “158: AEC is an Adhocracy” with Andy Robert and Mercedes Carriquiry to “165: Transitioning to Leading People in AEC Tech” with Phil Read and Adam Thomas, my guests emphasized the importance of cultivating resilience and embracing new methodologies in leadership. Key takeaways included fostering a culture of curiosity and using technology not just as a tool but as a transformative driver for team dynamics and organizational growth.

The Human Element: Communication, Culture, and Creativity

Episodes like “153: Emotional Archaeology” with Susan Young and “151: The Zoo That’s in the Room” with Roderick Bates and Kam Star offered deep dives into how we navigate relationships and communication in a tech-driven environment. A recurring message was clear: Technology should amplify human creativity, not replace it. Guests explored how we can maintain emotional intelligence while adopting advanced tools.

Challenges in AEC: Innovation Meets Reality

The TRXL podcast didn’t shy away from tough conversations, such as in “154: Construction is Sick” with Jim Walker. Discussions revolved around inefficiencies and systemic issues in the construction industry, balanced by optimism in episodes like “163: Confusing Evolution With Innovation” with Nirva Fereshetian in which we talked about how professionals can leverage technology thoughtfully, emphasizing collaboration and learning to drive meaningful innovation.

Member and Sponsor Support Make This Podcast Possible

To the members of TRXL+ and the handful of brands that have sponsored the show this year: I couldn’t do this without you. A heartfelt thank you goes out to ArchIT, AVAIL, Confluence, Enscape, and Guardian for Revit. My hope is that when reading this post you recognize your support has a positive impact on the building industry. 

💡Side note: if you’d like to find out more about how you can partner with TRXL to help make an impact in 2025, get in touch by clicking here. Paid members get additional perks like my Leadership Edge newsletter. 

Looking Ahead

As we close out 2024, the conversations in the TRXL podcast remind us that technology’s role in AEC is as much about mindset as it is about the tools. Whether you’re navigating digital transformation (168: The Challenges of Under-Digitization in AEC, with César Flores Rodríguez) or pondering the ethics of AI (172: Architects in Airports Talking AI and AEC, with Phil Read), the message is clear: The future of AEC is collaborative, innovative, and unapologetically human.

I’m excited to see what 2025 brings and hope you’ll continue along this journey with me. 

The Evolution of 3D Visualization

In this episode of the Confluence podcast, Randall Stevens and I sit down with Phillip Miller from Chaos Group. The discussion navigates through Phil's extensive background in the 3D technology and AEC industry, highlighting his contributions to Autodesk, Adobe, and NVIDIA. Phil introduces Chaos Group’s latest product, Envision, a standalone real-time ray tracing tool designed for the architectural industry. He breaks down the journey of its development, the intended user personas, and its innovative features. Tune in to get a behind-the-scenes look at how Envision aims to revolutionize architectural visualization and animation workflows.

Episode Links

• Chaos Group - Learn more about real-time ray tracing and visualization tools: https://chaos.com
• Chaos V-Ray - Visualize anything imaginable with V-Ray: https://www.chaos.com/vray
• Chaos Envision - Effortless storytelling & unmatched realism with Envision: https://www.chaos.com/envision
• NVIDIA RTX Technology - Details about ray tracing hardware capabilities: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/rtx/
• Autodesk 3ds Max History - Evolution of 3D modeling and rendering software: https://www.autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/overview
• Computer Graphics History - Computer History Museum's perspective on the evolution of CG: https://computerhistory.org/blog/computer-graphics/

Watch this episode on YouTube

Subscribe to the podcast on YouTube

Listen to this episode

💡These episode briefs provide key insights for forward-thinking leaders seeking innovation in AEC who are short on time, offering the context of each conversation without the need to listen to the full episode. They’re designed to keep you updated, spark your interest, and encourage you to tune in if the ideas resonate.

Key Takeaways

• Embrace Technology Integration
  • Bridging the gap between design and fabrication requires eliminating inefficiencies and disconnects through automation.
  • Investing in web-based fabrication platforms can streamline communication between design teams and specialty contractors, reducing errors and enhancing efficiency in project execution.
  • Web-based workflows dramatically reduce context-switching, speeding up processes and enhancing collaboration across the shop floor and design teams.
• Address Skilled Labor Shortages
  • Implementing user-friendly technology can attract new talent to the industry, allowing less experienced workers to operate advanced machinery safely, thereby mitigating the skilled labor gap.
  • Emerging technologies like VR and digital connectivity offer potential solutions for labor shortages while improving safety and training.
• Promote Collaboration Across Disciplines
  • Fostering a collaborative environment between architects, engineers, and fabricators is essential for aligning design intent with on-site execution, ultimately leading to more successful project outcomes.
  • The future of construction is about scalability—creating tools that simplify workflows for shops of all sizes without compromising on precision.

Catch the full episode here.

Episode Analysis

In episode 171, I speak with Brian Nickel and Brett Settles of Allied BIM—a company focused on revolutionizing the connection between BIM and fabrication. Their journey reveals practical solutions for long-standing challenges in AEC workflows, addressing inefficiencies in design-to-shop communication, skilled labor shortages, and process complexity.

Revolutionizing Fabrication Workflows

Traditional workflows are plagued by context-switching—jumping between design tools, exporting files, and manually organizing data for fabrication. Allied BIM’s web-based platform removes these roadblocks, enabling a seamless connection from Revit models to machines on the shop floor, which are becoming much more prevalent for shops to compete in the market.

The platform automates tasks like material marking, cutting, and bending, significantly increasing speed while reducing error rates. As Brian Nickel notes, Allied BIM achieved an 8x increase in production speed, transforming processes that took hours into seconds—without sacrificing safety or precision.

Simplifying Complexity

For many in the trades, new tools often create barriers rather than solving problems. Allied BIM addresses this by developing tools for every stage of the journey:

• Manual Shops: Start with simplified workflows, such as automated material marking.
• Semi-Automatic Shops: Adopt cutting and labeling tools.
• Fully Automated Shops: Implement full work cells for end-to-end fabrication, including cutting, bending, and assembly.

This staged approach makes the technology approachable and allows teams to adopt innovation at their own pace.

The Role of VR in Training and Collaboration

One of the most intriguing topics centered around virtual reality (VR) and digital connectivity. Allied BIM’s platform enables remote machine control and real-time oversight. For a labor-strapped industry, this technology allows senior tradespeople to guide and train teams from anywhere, ensuring knowledge transfer while reducing safety risks.

As Brett Settles explains, VR and connected workflows create scalable solutions—opening pathways for new talent to enter the trades through accessible, safety-oriented training environments.

The Future of Connected Fabrication

Brian and Brett emphasize that the current state of the industry—disjointed tools, manual data transfers, and wasted time—needs to evolve. Allied BIM’s approach integrates design intent with fabrication workflows, ensuring that models are truly machine-ready.

The impact is profound:

• Improved Safety: Automation reduces risks associated with manual tools.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Design teams and trades work together in a connected environment.
• Increased Scalability: Prefabrication workflows can adapt to shops of varying sizes and capabilities.

Conclusion

This episode offers a deep dive into the innovations shaping AEC workflows, particularly at the critical intersection of design and fabrication. Allied BIM’s work represents more than a technological upgrade; it’s a cultural shift toward smarter, safer, and more collaborative ways of building.

Whether you’re a leader looking to optimize shop performance or a technology enthusiast exploring the future of construction automation, Brian and Brett’s insights are a compelling listen.

Listen to the full episode to see how Allied BIM is transforming the industry—and the trades.

Catch the full episode here.

Phil Read joins the podcast to talk about leveraging AI for meaningful work, the importance of curiosity and play in professional development, building personas for better communication and storytelling, rethinking architectural documentation workflows, the evolving role of BIM managers, integrating empathy into design processes, the transformative power of constraints, and how AI is reshaping client engagement, education, and personal creativity in architecture.

Enjoy this special, final episode of 2024 that was recorded in-person as two architects met in the Denver airport to have a conversation about AI and AEC.

Episode links:

Tesla Talk

• Autopilot and Full Self-Driving
• GM Pulls the Plug on Cruise Robotaxi Business

Books and Philosophies

• Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning
  Wikipedia Overview
  Amazon Link
  Deep dive into Frankl’s philosophy of Logotherapy and the search for meaning in difficult circumstances.
• Marcus Aurelius' Meditations
  Full Text Online
  Learn about Stoic philosophy and how it relates to modern challenges like AI, decision-making, and leadership.
• Kevin Kelly’s Writing on Technology
  Kevin Kelly’s Official Blog
  1000 True Fans
  Explore his insights on technology, AI, and societal transformation.

AI Tools and Emerging Technologies

• ChatGPT & GPT-based Tools
  • ChatGPT by OpenAI Experiment with conversational AI tools for brainstorming, creativity, and workflows.
  • OpenAI Advanced Voice Mode FAQ
  • Claude by Anthropic Learn about AI models like Claude, including its ability to interact with on-screen content.
  • Grok
  • Phil’s question to Grok about the cost of what’s on the table
• MidJourney and AI Image Tools
  • MidJourney Explore the intersection of AI and art, especially in architecture and design.
• AI for Personal Productivity
  • Humantic AI Build personal and professional personas for improved communication and sales.
  • OpenAI Whisper Use this for transcription and multi-language audio projects.

Visualization & Design Tools

• Enscape for Real-Time Rendering – Enscape Official Website
• BIM Technology
  • Autodesk Revit
  • BECK Group

Events and Networks

• Built Environment Events
  • Autodesk University Explore presentations and discussions about the future of AEC.
• Roundtables and Leadership Retreats
  • Spring 2025 AEC Acoustics roundtable event Follow Phil Read and Adam Thomas’s roundtable discussions for niche networking and professional development in AEC.
  • Fall 2024 AEC Acoustics Leadership Retreat wrap-up video

Fun & Unexpected Curiosities

• Keith Richards’ Open Tuning Guitar Style
  • Article on Open Tuning Discover how limitations create iconic innovations in music.
• The Role of Constraints in Creativity
  • TED Talk: Embrace the Shake by Phil Hansen How constraints can unlock creativity in unexpected ways.

Related Podcast Episodes

• Archispeak podcast episode 350 - Coffee, Hurricanes, and Leadership
• TRXL 145: ‘The Gordian Knot, Part 1’, with Phil Read
• TRXL 146: ‘The Gordian Knot, Part 2’, with Phil Read
• TRXL 165: ‘Transitioning to Leading People in AEC Tech’, with Phil Read and Adam Thomas

About Phil Read:

Phil is the CEO and co-founder of Read | Thomas - a global BIM/VDC consulting group and go-to-market startup advisor.

In 2020, Read | Thomas founded the AEC Leadership Retreat, an annual event focused on developing good leadership skills for people in the high stress / low control AEC industry.

When not traveling, you're likely to find Phil driving around Charlotte in a vintage 1960's TR3A or hanging out on Holden Beach, NC in a restored 70's beach cottage.

Provide feedback for this episode

Connect with Evan:

• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Twitter/X

Watch this on YouTube:

Episode 172 Transcript:

172: ‘Architects in Airports Talking AI and AEC’, with Phil Read

Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel. Phil Read is back on today's show to share his insights from his unique career at the intersection of architecture and technology, which has spanned his history with Autodesk, his role in reshaping, digital practice, through Revit and Enscape and his leadership in fostering collaborative innovation through events like the AEC Acoustics un-conferences.

Today's conversation, which was once again recorded live and in-person with Phil in the United Lounge at the Denver airport, just like we did last year, dives into leveraging AI for meaningful work, the importance of curiosity and play in professional development, building personas for better communication and storytelling, rethinking architectural documentation workflows, the evolving role of BIM managers, integrating [00:01:00] empathy into design processes, the transformative power of constraints, and how AI is reshaping client engagement, education, and personal creativity in architecture.

Recording this in person with Phil reminded me of our first discussions back in episodes 145 and 146, which I've linked to in the show notes if you want to catch up and hear Phil's fascinating story in AEC tech. And before we get into today's conversation, I would very much appreciate your support of this podcast if it's one of your favorites by subscribing wherever you watch or listen, and please leave a review either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also support the mission by becoming a paid member at trxl.co, just click the join button in the lower right hand corner. And if you'd like to receive emails, when episodes are published with all of the links and other information, as they come out, sign up for that by becoming either a free or paid member at trxl.co. This was a great conversation with Phil and I've [00:02:00] got a bunch of follow-up links in the show notes to hold you over until the next episode of the podcast comes out, which will start up again in January of 2025, so be sure to check those out. They are in your podcast app if you're a paid member or if you're a free member, you can find them at trxl.co. So now without further ado, I bring you my wide ranging conversation with the one and only Phil Read to close out the TRXL podcast for 2024.

​

Phil Read: there's a podcast, there's a Tesla guy in Singapore.

And I have a habit of, if I watch a documentary or see something interesting on YouTube, I'll just try to connect with that person on LinkedIn. And, uh, I connected and then. He said, Yeah, I'm interested. I'll be coming to Singapore and happy to buy a lunch. Would like to learn about what you do. Well, he ended up [00:03:00] putting a podcast together and I ended up, it's out on YouTube somewhere.

Evan Troxel: Nice. So you've been on a podcast before.

Phil Read: yes, before yours, I'm sorry. And, uh, yeah, but he talked about the cars and then, uh, we talked about investing in Tesla and, Well, I thought it was a good investment. And, um, and then we went out and met the president of the Tesla club in Singapore. It's not a very big place. You could drive around the Island in about an hour.

Um, but he had severely modified his car with electric openers and his screen would swivel and all this kind of stuff that they had prepared light shows and it

Evan Troxel: Nice.

My

son bought Tesla stock and it's up 200 a share from when he bought it. He's pretty, pretty thrilled. He's like, he bought 10 shares or something. He's very

Phil Read: Perfect. And, um, yeah, when I bought, So the Model Y, and I've never had a new car. We bought a new minivan, I think around [00:04:00] 2004. But never had a new car. Bought a, bought a new Model Y Performance, and it's, you know, when you buy a used car, you just pay for it. So I've never had a car payment. And, um, so I thought, nope, the car's gonna devalue, but the stock might go up.

So I took the money that I would have paid for the car in cash and just put into Tesla stock, and that was in around the middle of April, which just was fortuitous. And I think it's because of the ecosystem that they have. It's not just the, um, it's not a car, it's an iPad with wheels.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Phil Read: And so that ecosystem of we were, as we were chatting before, instead of hiring just a bunch of developers to try to figure out full self driving, he's effectively crowdsourced full self driving with how people behave when they

Evan Troxel: able to

Phil Read: And, uh, that's pretty interesting ecosystem. So the car that you don't drive, Probably talked about this last time. The TV you don't watch, the phone you don't answer, Those are

usually orders of magnitude very successful [00:05:00] technologies.

We started, I think.

Yeah. Okay.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Little did we know.

Phil Read: We're back where we were last time.

Evan Troxel: That's right. Yeah. What? Yeah. Where are we?

Phil Read: we? Gate 44, Concourse B, Denver.

Evan Troxel: Denver airport. That's right.

Phil Read: Yeah, but this way we get breakfast and lunch and we get to chat about all kinds of things. Yeah, in person. That's,

Evan Troxel: Well, thank you for

Phil Read: an important part of it.

Otherwise it feels transactional or something.

Evan Troxel: So you talked about that in terms of leverage, right? And I just think that's kind of interesting when you put that in the context of our industry, too, right?

Like looking for places where there's opportunities to use that leverage that were maybe unforeseen or, Do you think that was all planned out in advance, this whole idea of crowdsourcing training, and then being able to use that to help build this infrastructure that really has It's, to me, like the analogy I think of is like the overnight ten year long success, right?

It's like the overnight success that actually

Phil Read: Oh, it looks obvious now. Yeah,

Evan Troxel: right, and it's like, well, no, it wasn't obvious back then, it was a [00:06:00] bet, and It paid off. But there's lots of bets that didn't pay off too.

Phil Read: No, the idea that in the future we'll just use everybody to program our technologies.

Like, that just sounds too

Evan Troxel: absurd. That's an absurd idea.

Right.

Phil Read: But in a way that's what they did. They built the infrastructure that trained the system. So the infrastructure in terms of physical electrification, you got to be able to charge. So I think that's why they've been successful. And yesterday was when, yesterday was GM's announcement that they're going to get out of the commercial automation driving business.

So Tesla stock has shot up a bit more today, right? It's like 415 a share. And I think in April it was 450 a share. Um, but I don't think it's because he's making cars, I think it's because they're creating an ecosystem for people that don't want to or don't have to drive.

Evan Troxel: mm-hmm

Phil Read: And so it's that, it's the sum of the parts.

So they've crowdsourced behavior of how people behave when they drive. and in edge [00:07:00] conditions of weird turning constraints. And like right now three 13. 2 is out and I don't have it yet, but apparently you can, you don't have to put the car into drive and then start full self driving.

You put in your destination and select go and it'll back itself out of a parking lot or out of a constrained parking space. And then it will start to go where it wants to go. And

I found it. Even on short trips from the, from Charlotte to the coast, enormously relaxing. To let the car do its

Evan Troxel: But it took a while for you to get there,

Phil Read: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Evan Troxel: just didn't start out

Phil Read: No, it's like getting a teenager to drive and you're trying to

Evan Troxel: I'm right there with

Phil Read: wanna fall asleep and you're just like, every time there's another car you're kind of ready to

Evan Troxel: I'm, I feel so weird not having a parking brake in the middle of the car that we're using for driver's training, like that I had, my parents had when I was a kid, it was like ripped that they could just rip that thing up at any moment because they don't have their own set of pedals on their side. They can grab the wheel.

But, Now with the push button park brake, it's like I'm not just going to [00:08:00] push that button when we're full driving. Right. And so like that level of trust, you have to build up

Phil Read: It's so smooth now. Early on, like in December with the system that they had, when it would go around a corner, sometimes it would hesitate and it would take, it wasn't smooth. It was a little, it was like a teenager, like an experienced teenager like, turn straight, turn straight, turn

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Phil Read: Yeah, overcorrect on and um, but now I've had to, it got so good and there's different modes under self driving. There's like a hurry mode, a regular mode and a chill mode because the acceleration, even a regular mode, I find too aggressive. So if a teenager was driving and you go, Whoa, slow down, don't, when the light turns green, you don't have to be right off the line.

It's

Evan Troxel: way.

Deactivate

Phil Read: So it's in chill mode, but it still accelerates in a very confident fashion.

I'm. At the point where if I was doing a trip where you might actually sleep and confidently, you know, get on the road,

Put your [00:09:00] seat back a little bit, like getting on a plane today, right?

I drive, I'm flying in from Charlotte, took off and pulled my hat over my eyes, leaned the seat back and went to sleep for 45 minutes. But in a car, you just, you know, sometimes you're driving, you're not paying attention,

Evan Troxel: Yeah, never

Phil Read: right? And that's scary when you get noddy and your heads, your eyes are kind of dropping, your head's dropping down.

You're like, I should just pull over. I think in this case, it'll be, it'll be better than having a teenager drive and you'll be confident. You're just kind of put your seat back for five, 10 minutes and then wake up.

Evan Troxel: you're seeing the future. Like you can already see where this is going, right?

The next steps are.

Phil Read: I mean, that's where I think it's going to go. It's just. that's what people will enjoy.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Phil Read: Like we were, when we were talking before about the time it takes to travel somewhere, there's really no competition, at least in the US with air travel for, let's say 500 mile distances that you just got to get the trains aren't.

Maybe in the Northeast Corridor, they're predictable enough,

Evan Troxel: go to [00:10:00] the location you want to

Phil Read: no, it's not point to point, right? So when you get there, you still have to get in a, so you're two hours before the airport, but I think

with driving that that's confident. One of the constraints, and I was chatting with Brock Howard, actually we were texting, as I was flying, we're texting back and forth over the internet and the plane, Brock's in Athens, Georgia, and only one of the constraints of private vehicles is they take up so much space.

Because of the distance you have to maintain when you're driving on the highway, right? You're sort of a hundred feet between cars. What is it? 10 car lengths or something like that. You're going 60, 70 miles an hour. Um, but not a NASCAR. In NASCAR, they drive nose to tail at 200 miles an hour. And I could see if, if you could get into a convoy mode, like full self driving, that's the next step.

And you

Evan Troxel: travel in packs,

Phil Read: you travel in, you know, nose to tail, three feet apart, and they're all communicating with each other. And that special lane goes a hundred plus miles an hour. Well, that starts to compete with air travel [00:11:00] and trains and it's point to point. Cause I tell you it's so quiet and I have conference calls in the car, you know, self driving's on and I'm paying attention to the road, but I'm also paying attention to the conversation.

It's very relaxing.

So, yeah, I think he's, uh, I think that,

that,

it's not the car, it's not a car, it's, I keep referring to it as an iPad with, an iPad with wheels. It's a, um, It's not a car. I don't know what to call it yet. Well, maybe it's an automobile. We've always called them automobiles, but they weren't auto.

Well, that's right. Rich people have always, and we've talked about that before, very wealthy people have always had these kinds of things. The car that drives itself, but it was a chauffeur, or the person that wrote things down for you, which was the stenographer, or the scribe,

Evan Troxel: Your, your entertainment was the jester, right?

Phil Read: Yeah, and the, um, the king that would have, the advisor.

And [00:12:00] now this is coming down to common people. Like, I mean, down to a common person.

Evan Troxel: democratization. Yeah.

Phil Read: Oh, in an extraordinary way. Like, I wouldn't feel comfortable personally driving 100 miles an hour.

Evan Troxel: you would gain that comfort over time.

That might be

Phil Read: You know, over time, but things happen fast. And, um, I, I went fast once in the Tesla for the first time to pass a car. And it was just one lane in each direction, but I made the mistake of doing what I would normally do in a regular car, which is mash the gas and then indicate and get in the other, you know, get in the passing lane and then pull back over.

but when I went to pull over in the passing lane, I almost went off the road because it was happening. So things were happening so

Evan Troxel: vector, yeah, like physics, whoosh, just

Phil Read: It's not the zero to 60. That's fast. It's the 40 to 100.

It's the same three seconds. And so you have to learn to go slow and in a regular aspirated car. Yeah. Cause things [00:13:00] happen so

Evan Troxel: yeah. Things

Phil Read: Um, but these kinds of, uh, these kinds of tools that the very wealthy have had, like the kinds of things that kings have had, let's say, in the last thousand, two thousand years. You know, the Roman emperor didn't drive his own chariot, okay? He had someone drive his chariot. Now it's coming down to, I think, common people, and we were talking about AI before in terms of being conversational, or the car that drives itself, or

I think in, um Well, certainly in transportation, in personal transportation, the idea of getting in a car, getting up early, relaxing.

I don't have to be at the airport and fight elbows in traffic.

You get in the car and you drink your coffee and you open the newspaper or you open the internet on your phone. You start reading the day's news and the car is doing itself. I'd feel very comfortable. I've been in cars where, um, I was with, uh, Christian Lange, who is the former CEO of Enscape, and we were in Germany, and we were driving to the airport, and on the Autobahn, and he was confidently driving well over 100 miles an hour.

He has an electric Porsche. I felt completely [00:14:00] raxed. So, if I could have that kind of confidence in a personal vehicle, okay, 100 miles, it's not the speed, it's the abrupt starts and stops that'll get you there. Hurt you.

Evan Troxel: right. Momentum kills.

Phil Read: That's right, right, right, right,

Evan Troxel: you stop it too quickly.

Phil Read: That's right. Right. So if it, if it was confident and you're in, and you've overcome the artifact of having to have the separation because of the speed, because you're driving, you know, manually, no, it's making the adjustments and cars are five feet apart and they're communicating to each other.

Then you could travel very quickly from point to point. but the, Taking that into what we're talking about in, in AI is, is, I know it's an over discussed, at least in architecture, right? You can't open LinkedIn without seeing another rendering tool that some kind of AI tool, but it's not been that lately. Lately, it's the most trivial things. You're asking it questions that, normally, if you had a very learned person next to you in the car, and [00:15:00] you'd ask a question, Well, tell me about this, and it would give you all this information.

in the latest iOS, it will answer your initial question with Siri, and then it will go, Would you like me to answer that with, uh, what is it, ChatGPT? now it stopped, or in the early versions, it would call it ChatGPT, but they've gotten rid of that, and it's like, Would you like me to answer that with

Evan Troxel: full release, that's a

Phil Read: Yeah, so I'm driving back from the coast yesterday, and I came through a small town that all of a sudden had these artifacts of, at one time in history, it was a very affluent town. location, but it was in the middle of nowhere. So I just said, Hey, Siri, tell me about this town. And it went to this long soliloquy about the history of this town and when it was established in the early 1700s.

And it was like, in the moment, knowledge that

Evan Troxel: It was like your own personal tour guide, like when you rent, you go to Alcatraz, and you get the headset, and you go to the stops, and it tells you as you're there, just in time, kind of an idea of,

Phil Read: Yeah, while

Evan Troxel: access to information while you're looking at it, not, oh, I'm gonna go look that up [00:16:00] later, I better put a bookmark on this, or save it to my notes

Phil Read: Yeah. I need to go look that up in a library. so that's where I think it, I've kind of been interested in the AI piece here and there, but mostly it seems to be automating bad processes. It's automating inefficiency. This next generation seems to just be giving you orders of magnitude more useful information with very little input.

So there's some tools out there that would automate documentation with AI. Like here's my document set, tag and dimension things. And I think that's kind of a, that's kind of an example of automating inefficiency because otherwise you have to have somebody do it.

So one of the,

one of the, things we were talking about before was, um, schedules.

Okay, so Revit will

continually count things as you work, but you have to create this schedule and you have to order the fields and you have to,

there's a lot of curation that goes into that.

Evan Troxel: it's the coordination is insane, right?

But to really

Phil Read: do [00:17:00] it, it coordinates it, but you have to set it up so

Evan Troxel: still need an expert, though, to review it and actually coordinate the hinges and the lock sets. And the door schedule is one thing, openings, locations, right? What kind of door? Is it a one hour door? Whatever those things are, 90 minute, right? Does it have fire glass in it? But then there's like the whole hardware end of things.

And it's. a dedicated consultant typically for that kind of a thing, So I tell the story about, about what you did with GROK that, that kind of led to that

Phil Read: yeah, that led to it. So Brock Howard and I, Brock and Grok, Brock's texting me and I'm on this airplane and I thought, well, this is kind of an obscure thing, but, and it's, and it's on Twitter. I took a photo at this beach show that was this week in South Carolina of one of the vendors and they had a table full of, preserved alligator heads.

Alligator jerky. It was like one of the things they're trying to sell to beach shops, right? So, and I took a photo and I thought, I wonder if Grok would know what this is. So I asked Grok to estimate the retail [00:18:00] cost of everything in the photo and I'm on the internet in a plane and in about five seconds it started giving me responses and estimate like counting things, quantifying things.

I was just dumbstruck by that, like that's a very common question and it cost me nothing to get an answer. Well, I suppose I subscribe to the, whatever, premium. X or something like that. So

Evan Troxel: That is, it's basically, you experience like a magic moment right there. It's like, what? It can do that? Because that, that then leads back to this door schedule example,

Phil Read: Well, yeah. What if we're not making schedules? Like that was the leap of going from that was, okay, wait a minute. I've got a set of drawings and I'm

going to submit a set of drawings to AI and say, can you just give me a bill of materials and pricing, from Home Depot for everything in this project?

Like,

you don't even have to make schedules for that.

Evan Troxel: You just send it a, an image or a series of images or a model. I, I, it would be amazing if you can actually have a fully tagged BIM

Phil Read: And that's a whole leapfrog to me. [00:19:00] That's the part that, you know, on the way here this morning, as you kind of have time to ideate, you're just sitting on a plane doing nothing.

But the idea that you could take a photo of a chair And I, I actually, I did this last week in Wilmington. I was going through a tour of a distillery that had cool leather furniture. I took a photo of one of the chairs and using a Google image search, it said, Oh, here's the chair. Here's how much it costs.

And you can buy it at Home Depot. And it's like, what Home Depot doesn't sell this furniture. Well, they sell lots of things that you can't buy in the

Evan Troxel: in their quote unquote showroom, right?

But they're online.

Phil Read: but normally the step would be, Oh, we're going to start a company to build a tool that connects your Revit file with Lowe's or Home Depot.

And

Evan Troxel: With your pro account,

Phil Read: yeah, with, and then you're going to buy this thing. So it's gone to a price point of almost zero and no one's built a tool in between it. It's not like they built

the manual version, certainly there, but they didn't build a better manual version. And now it's been usurped by some other [00:20:00] agent, AI.

It's just leapfrog. It just went straight there. And, um, so for me, that's, that's kind of like a, a really important and interesting inflection point.

It's trivial. And you were talking about having a conversation.

Evan Troxel: so, so I was in, at AU, um, on my way back from AU, I rented a car and my first stop was at a, a photo shoot for a architectural project that my friend was the designer of, and the photographer was there, and he, we, we had, we had seen each other recently, but not that recently, and he said, have you ever had a conversation with ChatGPT?

And I'm like, well, I've asked it questions. Yeah.

Phil Read: I never needed.

Evan Troxel: So, so question and answer, is that what you mean? And he's like, no, like, like he goes on the way down here, which is about an hour and a half drive, he said, I had a full on conversation with ChatGPT. And he said, it blew my mind. He said, you have to try it. And I had an hour long drive coming up to Palm [00:21:00] Springs from there.

And so, in my car, in the car, rental car, through CarPlay, Um, I fired up and I think you have to have a plus account for ChatGPT to do this. It's 20 bucks a month. so you get the advanced voice mode that they teased, you know, months ago, it finally came out, it took a while for it to finally come out, but now that it's out, uh, it is very conversational and it will interrupt you and you can interrupt it and it will, if you get disconnected along the way, when you get a signal back again, it'll say, it looks like we got disconnected.

Let's pick up where we left off. So it, it just. maintains continuity with this conversation. And I was throwing this idea at it. And I had just been tumbling this idea around in my own head, not really coming to any conclusions, but I thought, Oh, I'll try this out with it. And so I asked it some, I told it what I was thinking about doing.

And it was, of course, it was very excited about this idea. Um, but, but, you know, this is, let's explore this. I said, okay, well, where should we start? And it [00:22:00] said, well, let's start with, and then it, it basically took me through this whole process and it asked me questions that everybody who's thinking about pursuing an idea would eventually, it would come across your plate.

All of these questions would, but in the span of 45 minutes, it sparked ideas that would not have been sparked otherwise, because I didn't do this with a person. I think this could lead us to other interesting places in the

Phil Read: conversation. Could you have a conversation with another person and the agent?

Do you think that would work with two people?

Evan Troxel: That's a good question. I would think so. I don't see why not.

Phil Read: And does it gives you responses in audio?

Evan Troxel: Audio and, in real time, yeah.

Phil Read: We should do another one of these where

Evan Troxel: Oh, a full podcast,

Phil Read: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: We would probably want a quieter

Phil Read: I wouldn't have, I didn't think about that this morning when I woke

Evan Troxel: Right.

Phil Read: let's do a podcast with an

Evan Troxel: With an agent. Yeah. So, so It asked me questions and it forced me to think about things. And you don't even [00:23:00] feel confident in your answer, right? Because it's spur of the moment.

It's just whatever is there you have to work with. And of course you could say, you know, let me think about that for a little bit and I'll get back to you. I, I assume you could do that. But, I tried to just stay in the moment and I tried to do the best I could with what it was asking of me.

Phil Read: it hard to be present when you were having this conversation?

Evan Troxel: it was a normal conversation.

It would, it would be

Phil Read: You didn't have to suspend disbelief. You were just like,

Evan Troxel: would be like being on this podcast and I went into it with the expectation that it was going to blow my mind, right? Because my friend had kind of prompted me with that. And I thought, okay, I'm, I'm here for this. And so I did that and I I didn't think twice about it.

I just thought, you know, there were several times where I thought, oh, this, this answer is going to suck, but I'm going to say it anyway. And it forced me to think about, think through things I'll say. And then at the end. I said, okay, now can you give me a summary of this conversation and give me some action items to pursue next?

And it said, yep. And it said, anytime you want to come back and pursue this conversation further, [00:24:00] I'm here and ready for

Phil Read: that.

Evan Troxel: Right. And, and, and because of the way ChatGPT works, right, it's got every query that you've asked it is a separate entry. And so you can go back and pick up on any one of those threads and continue it on.

And this is no different. This is just one of those threads. And so they're each in their own little buckets. Um, and so you really could have as many of these different threads and they're not really going to cross pollinate with each other. I don't, maybe you, maybe you want it

Phil Read: is not like a Google image. This is not like a Google search, right, from 20 years

Evan Troxel: not at all.

Phil Read: And, um, I've only started playing with this probably at, uh, since the fall retreat, because I realized, you Uh, I'm using the public, I was using the private version of the Apple beta, and then there's, it was getting too squirrely, I went back and dropped back to a, to the public beta, and realized that you could upload images and ask questions.

And I think, I don't know if it was somebody at the leadership [00:25:00] retreat, or maybe, I think it was Craig Barbieri. took a photo and then asked, oh, it was how to create a text prompt. So sometimes you can create a text prompt by, okay, how do I describe this thing in my head? Or if you take a photo of something, ask it to describe the material and then use that material as a text prompt and then say, okay, I want a seamless texture from that description.

works better than taking the photograph and trying to massage it in Photoshop so it looks like a seamless texture.

So I was like, Oh, you can submit a photo and ask it to describe it. So I, I took a photo of the kitchen at the cottage and, and, uh, ask it to, describe the design as, uh, you know, sort of pro and con terms.

And, uh, I, I got a description sort of a modern kitchen design. And then I asked it to describe the design and the persona of Steve Jobs. And it said some pretty nice things about the design and the utility of it and the clean lines. But then it also said there was nothing really innovative about it.[00:26:00]

Evan Troxel: personality.

So

Phil Read: sent it to a friend of mine, who's a contractor.

He was an architect turned contractor. And he's like, Oh my gosh, I would hate for this to happen, uh, to review my design work. And he sent me a photo of a mountain house that he'd worked on in North Carolina. And it was fully dressed out and a project. And the table had a very colorful and.

Uh, sort of festive place settings on it, and I guess they had set everything up and then taken photos of the finished mountain house. And I asked, I submitted that picture to ChatGPT, and asked for a pro and con of the design, and the pros would come in the persona of Martha Stewart, and the cons would come in the persona of Steve Jobs.

And boy, did Steve Jobs savage the design, and then, and I, I sent

Evan Troxel: Martha was complimentary.

Martha

Phil Read: thought the colors and the place settings was lovely and complimentary to the rustic, you know, and then Steve Jobs was like, busy, busy, busy, this is terrible. You know, how much noise, clutter, yeah. So I sent it to an [00:27:00] architectural friend of mine and, uh, in Charlotte, and he said, man, this would have been great in architecture school to be able to take photos of your design and then ask for feedback.

of the design, you know, without waiting until a Monday morning crit. but getting kind of experienced feedback from personas. and then it's not like a Google search. It's not transactional. It's interactive. And I think this is going to have profound implications around healthcare. Certainly, I think in, in terms of psychology, of someone who's going through grief or a difficult time to be able to have a conversation.

And, and certainly in psychology, there's a broad range of quote unquote, right answers. Um, I like. An psychologist, author named Viktor Frankl. He, if you want to look up a book called Man's Search for Meaning, he was a psychologist and ended up not fleeing Germany when he could have before the war and then ended up in Auschwitz and survived and then wrote about [00:28:00] what kept him wanting to live.

And then later on he created a, uh, style of counseling called Logotherapy, so I have an a, sort of an affection to that style of, of, of, uh, I don't know what you call it, psychologist. So to be able to have a conversation in the moment when you're troubled by something, but you want the responses to be in the persona of Viktor or St.

Augustine.

Evan Troxel: their framework

Phil Read: if you could really talk to him now, you're. I think in, in a simplification, you're talking to a carbon based version of AI, that's Viktor Frankl, well, he's passed, you can't, and he certainly doesn't scale. Viktor, if he were alive, he could talk to one person at a time for 55 minutes, and, you know, so, imagine any modern day psychologist that you would have an affinity for, what would this person say about this particular issue, or I would like to talk to, a [00:29:00] persona of this person.

And, um, cause history is certainly full of, of, of philosophers, you know, to be able to talk about a modern stressful issue in the, with the persona of Marcus Aurelius in context with his meditations, like to me, that's profound. And you can still talk to other people. But how it's going to impact

Evan Troxel: you might have to wait, like you said, until next Wednesday at

Phil Read: yeah, next Thursday and it's 300 an hour.

And,

and I think generally speaking, men don't like to talk about, we like to solve problems. And so we tend not to talk about the things that are troubling us because they're maybe they're unsolvable in the moment. There's not one right answer. So being able to

talk

to someone or something in a way that it's reflective, it's in the moment, so it's very needs based, and the cost, the price point is zero.

Evan Troxel: do you think this impacts, that sounds stupid to even say, how does this impact AEC? Like, so, [00:30:00] so one of the things that I, mean, I, I do want to bring it back to that, Context for the podcast, but at the same time, it's, um,

Phil Read: is it too constrained?

Evan Troxel: trite, right?

It just sounds like, oh, really? We're going to talk about this? But the ideas are, you're talking about schedules, right? You're talking about mundane stuff that we're still, like, literally showing up to fight with every single day. And getting wrong, making a lot of mistakes. Um, and I think about how long it took to even transition from

Drafts people to CAD managers, to BIM managers, or technicians.

And, and now, like, to me it seems like, well, we don't, we, BIM managers is old, like that's tired. What's wired, right? AI managers. Like, why don't we, why don't firms have, why aren't they like, you're seeing, going back to the Tesla example, like you see the future, you can, you can taste it. Right. It's right [00:31:00] there.

And it's so

Phil Read: I'm so ready to sleep in the car.

Evan Troxel: It's yeah. It's so obvious that this is going to happen in some timeframe that you can't not expect it to happen. And yet. I mean, the same thing goes for a lot of things, right, in AEC and in tech, and we are, you know, we are so slow to adopt this stuff.

Phil Read: So I think, yeah, I think some of it is.

so a lot of times working with customers.

or just other people. You don't know, there's so many good ways to do things. There's so many products of function as you design. Like you can, you can say, the stairs can't go here because of a functional reason, but there's so many great places to put the stairs. But the client, the customer is going to have a particular affinity towards how things are arranged.

And I think one of the areas AI is this client, the idea of this client's persona, of using your client's persona as you're designing in the moment. To kind of reflect and interact [00:32:00] with the design

with, with some confidence that when you do meet every other week, you're going to be on a vector that's correct.

And, um, there's a couple of tools. Not that create, they don't create client personas, but they'll, uh, they create, uh, potentially customer or employer, employee personas. And I mentioned it to you before, it's called Humantic AI. And it plugs into Twitter, and it plugs into, the same subscription plugs into Twitter, and it plugs into LinkedIn.

And it will scrape someone's profile, and based on their profile, LinkedIn profile, it will give you a vector based upon how they will respond if you're trying to sell them something or if you're trying to employ them. So basically you're trying to convince them to change their behavior or to behave in a certain way.

Right, I want you to spend money and, and uh, So, I've used that with great success, Humantic AI, now the, the bigger step of, of talking with a [00:33:00] persona to critique or to give feedback or to have a conversation in the moment about a certain design, a design direction that you could go, it's how many times have we worked for a couple of weeks and you have to come up with options

Evan Troxel: Two steps forward, one step

Phil Read: yeah, and then you meet with the customer and, and you have to change direction again or there's

You want to work with confidence and the customer can't meet with you every afternoon at, you know, it's their, their time is constrained.

Evan Troxel: or maybe they want to and you can't

Phil Read: So, and the persona could be not just, you know, one customer, but say you're designing a residence for an entire family. How will the family respond to You know, you're going to get a very, how much will it cost and what does it look like? those kinds of impacts to AI I think will be profound, like just being able to interact with a persona of someone with some confidence.

Try it sometime, take a photo of a space and ask it to describe the space and critique the space in the persona of someone alive or dead. [00:34:00] And, I don't know if the answers are completely correct, uh, but they seem to be on vector. And it's just curious, if you had, if I gave you an assignment

Evan Troxel: Entertaining, if nothing

Phil Read: yeah, yeah, Evan, write, Write a description of this space and critique it as if you were Martha Stewart.

Evan Troxel: It's a fun, it's

Phil Read: It's a, yeah, it's a, yeah, yeah. And, um, so that part of it, I think from an education standpoint, from a business standpoint, being able to interact with, uh, a persona, a client's persona, or even a, man, if you knew the, the people that were going to be on a jury, and you could take all of their personas of, and

Evan Troxel: You create a feedback loop that's totally proactive,

Phil Read: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: Because you're not waiting for that event to actually happen, and you might go in there in a better position. I would hope you would go into it.

when it really

Phil Read: firms employ psychologists to try to predict how the jury is going to respond to a design. Certainly it happens in [00:35:00] the legal space where you try to predict how jury members, right, when they're going through the process of selecting jury members, they employ psychologists to try to pick the jurors that will have an affinity towards their approach to the, to

Evan Troxel: case.

Yeah. To, yeah.

Phil Read: Do we do that in our, do we know, I don't know any architecture firms that employ

Evan Troxel: The example I can think of is employing psychologists to use research as a foundation for why they make decisions the way that they do. You know, when it comes to like healthcare space design, co uses of color theory in design, things like that, where.

They do have psychological effects on healing, for example, right? So, um, and then, and then they can point at their researcher and say, like, this is our expert, this is our subject matter expert, and here's, and, and here's why we're making these decisions like this, and here's why you should go along with it, or choose us, even, as an example.

So, they, they do things like that, but I don't think in the way that you're talking about it, not that I know of.[00:36:00]

Phil Read: Yeah, like, create personas of everyone that's gonna be on the jury, and what subtle, sociological, psychological,

Evan Troxel: You're making a business case, right, for, I mean, you're talking about winning work.

Yeah, yeah.

Phil Read: Yep. Yeah. So check out Humantic AI and then use it on yourself. I think the free version, you could do a couple of, uh, uh, test runs and then it's like trivially expensive.

It's not expensive at all.

Evan Troxel: So you did that, you did that on yourself and you

Phil Read: Like if I, if someone was trying to sell something to me or if they were trying to employ me and some of the edge conditions for around employment were, um, Whether or not the person would, if they would respond to a job opening that was aspirational and ill defined, or did they need to have very specific definitions with their, with what would be the metrics to, um, for their success in the job.

And some people you can say, hey, just come on board, it's going to be great, we'll figure it out. [00:37:00] We don't know what we're going to do, you're going to help us figure it out. And that's very aspirational and some people haven't They will have an affinity to that ambiguity and others will run, you know, screaming the other direction.

Evan Troxel: in, it's then in your, your approach to talk to them, knowing what ways will connect with them. You can modify your

approach to meet them where they're

Phil Read: you're trying to sell to this type of personality, don't go into story mode. deal with facts and figures and how their competition is using it to get ahead. And they'll want to know data. And even it will, it will tell you, uh, in, in sort of a, if you're pitching, if you're sales pitching to someone, um, don't expect a decision, that person's not going to make a decision.

They're going to have to go back to their company and build consensus. It'll be a long sales cycle and it's scraping this from their LinkedIn

Evan Troxel: So let's go back to the leadership retreat and, and your

Phil Read: Oh, you went to it. How was

Evan Troxel: [00:38:00] Well, well, before, before we talk about what it was like, we, we did, we did that already on the podcast when Adam and you were here. But, but the. Here's, here's what I want to talk about. We, we talked about BIM managers, not being that they're really technically oriented, right?

Not, not just BIM managers, but people on the tech side of architecture being really technically oriented, maybe not used to leading teams. Right. And that's a big transition. That's a huge threshold of change

Phil Read: You're dealing with emotions instead of facts,

Evan Troxel: and, and, but, but, but then plugging this context in with this, this humanized tool that you're talking about, right, and knowing your audience, right, using, because this is about communication style and approach to get the desired outcome that you're looking for.

So there's a business case for that. But there's also, you know, to me, this is about like internal projects as it is about winning outside work.

Phil Read: finding

Evan Troxel: You are innovating in your firm or you're coming up with a new workflow [00:39:00] or you want to make a different tool purchase. I'm just trying to, I want to give people tools to think are different ways to think about these kinds of tools that you're talking about, because I think there's a personal aspect to this too, that it can be leveraged for to, Communicate in the right style that it will land with the person who is your audience to move this goal forward, right?

I think that there's something there,

Phil Read: So the

It's not uncommon for BIM managers, self included, to live in the potential and to be inside that bubble a lot. And things are, technology is so obviously advantageous to us. Oh, we shouldn't spend money to do this thing, but you have to convince higher ups. And one of the more recent conversations I had with the technology director, almost out of the blue, can I talk to you about something?

And yes, pick up the phone and we're chatting and they're, Completely frustrated. They want to do this certain thing, and his question, [00:40:00] uh, was, How do I convince my boss that I'm right? Jesus, what an open

Evan Troxel: an open

Phil Read: And, um, well, what are you trying to do? Have you run the numbers? Have you figured out that the cost of the technology is trivial, but now you're going to have to train people, and you're going to have to change behavior, and what if it doesn't work out?

Um, and I'm trying to go through the conversation. I said, have you offered to resign if this doesn't work out?

Evan Troxel: would I do that?

I'm

Phil Read: Why would I

Evan Troxel: die on this sword.

Phil Read: a lot of money. And if it doesn't work out, what's your trajectory? Like they don't, you're, you're, you're, I think the problem is, I think what I mentioned to this person, I said, you're trying, you haven't built trust.

They trust you to manage the technology, but not to manage the business for a BIM manager. Who's, you know, I think we're also a little bit all on spectrum to have a conversation with the chat GPT. and go, hey, I'm trying to talk to my director about doing this thing and [00:41:00] they're just not listening to I wouldn't spend 300 an hour with a psychologist to this. I might buy lunch or breakfast for someone and go, how would you manage this?

Evan Troxel: How, yeah, well, and I would ask you, and you would come back with your experience, right? But, but, at the same time, like, you're saying that this, this thing exists where you

Phil Read: They're on the way to the office, 30 minute drive, in traffic, frustrated because they were just told yesterday, no, you're not going to, we're not going to do that.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Phil Read: And so you want to vent. you just want to know why. And having something go, oh, have you thought about this? Have you thought about this other It's not even a tool that helps you design better buildings, it's just a tool to help you deal with,

Evan Troxel: Or whatever problems or challenges you're

Phil Read: with people.

Yeah, the emotions of that, because I think we get locked in our heads, this is the right way to do it.

Evan Troxel: to do it. There's that, and everybody's like me. And I, we, we speak my language, but, but it really to me is about speaking their language and finding the way to communicate best with them.

And I love this idea of the [00:42:00] persona and kind of prototyping these conversations ahead of time. You know, role playing is what we're talking about, right? So

Phil Read: even before you have that meeting with the boss and go, look, I've got to have this conversation. I want to invest this money into doing this thing and training these people. What are, yeah, what are the roadblocks? What are the likely

Evan Troxel: grill me, pre grill me, right? Yeah. I mean, Steve jobs, roasting the design, right? It makes me think of like you grill me with questions. I want to get this thing through all the red tape that I have to get it through.

Phil Read: through. Does chat, does this chat GPT that you're using, does it work with video or is it?

Evan Troxel: You can put images up there.

I don't know that it'll work

Phil Read: You can't walk around a design model or something like that and ask it to interact. I think it just, it, it prepare, it could prepare you, and we have a family friend, Harvard trained psychologist, and a couple of years ago I, I, we were having a chat about, uh.

You know, obviously he does counseling [00:43:00] and I said, I think the AI is going to have a profound impact on this. And he's like, Oh no, you can never replace people. And now I look at it like the father, that's going to have to have a difficult conversation with a son, you know, grades at school or anything.

It's like, how do I want to approach this to build a bridge to not, you know, to not sever relationship, any difficult conversation, whether it's the boss at work, a partner, um, um, a child. The thing that I was thinking about when you mentioned that it's being conversational, and can you have a third person as the agent?

man, if I could have gone through teenagers and had the, the agent in there so that,

Evan Troxel: A mediator.

Phil Read: yeah, it's the mediator.

Evan Troxel: the

Phil Read: Okay, dad, you need to be quiet now. You're not, you're, yeah, you're talking too much. Let

Evan Troxel: You're talking

Phil Read: right, right, right. I could have Viktor Frankl in there listening in. I think those kinds of conversations will be profound and not just in monetary terms, but just in like human relationship terms because we see things [00:44:00] through our own

Evan Troxel: When was BiLT north America in St. Louis. What year was that? 2018 or 2019? 2017?

Phil Read: the next to the last one. So I think it was 18 because 19 was

Evan Troxel: Seattle, right?

I think it was in, I did like one of those YouTube wrap up videos. I was doing, doing those at the time. And something that came up at that conference was what if you had, I think it was in the, um, the, Is it the DTS, which was like the pre conference for the Digital Technology Summit? And, you know, Rob Yori and, and, uh, Robert Manna and people like that were, were there, it was a group discussion with people from large firms all over the, the US would come in and be there for a few days before the actual BiLT Conference and then stay through the BiLT Conference.

But the, one of the things that came up at that was what if you had one of those echo dots or something on your desk at work, what would you ask it? and I think you mentioned like there are certain things [00:45:00] that I just wouldn't feel comfortable talking about it in public, right? But this whole idea of using it You know, you've got your, you've got your AirPods now, like, I don't even think those were a thing back then, at least, you know, the wireless ones, and, and you go on a walk, you go out of the office and go on a walk, or you're in the car on your drive home, or to work, and you're having these conversations, there may be things that it's fine to, to do in the office at your desk, right, and, and to prompt something, and have it, have this conversation going with what, what it's seeing on your screen.

I think Claude recently, their latest model, Sonnet, can look at your screen and interact with you as you're interacting with your screen. And now there's this new layer of interaction with these models. But there's voice, there's screen, so maybe there are a lot of things that you could do that you'd be fine with saying out loud or showing on your screen at work.

And then there's a lot of things that aren't, right? And [00:46:00] it's interesting that you kind of tied that back into psychology and like, especially men who are not. as open with their emotions and their feelings and expressing those or talking to others about them

Phil Read: you pay somebody 300 bucks an hour and,

Evan Troxel: And just not doing that because it's cost prohibitive

Phil Read: No, if you're stressed about money, you can't pay someone 300 bucks an hour.

Evan Troxel: And I think like working in an architectural office leads to a lot of situations where that would be extremely beneficial, right? So like it's a frustrating job. It's a challenging job Uh, and that's you know

Lots of different roles in the office, not just technology roles. But I mean, we can definitely see that in technology roles.

It's really challenging. Yeah,

Phil Read: I think, you know, we've used AI, the AEC space primarily to create beautifully seductive images of buildings and the lighting is perfect. The reflections are amazing. And, uh, you know, from text prompts and, and, and a little bit of graphics, little massing or sketching,

Evan Troxel: Some some kind of rudimentary underlay. Yeah. [00:47:00]

Phil Read: images,

but that's just, I think we're just scratching the surface.

We're doing the thing that appeals to us as

Evan Troxel: it's the eye candy,

Phil Read: we're, well, we're visual people, you know, we're, we're, we've kept ourselves alive over millennia by being visual and listening. But, uh, that's just scratching the It's, um, it's far more

Evan Troxel: well, and that even, you know, scratching the surface, to me, it's like, it's the lure, it's the carrot, and it's not even the thing we should be.

I really focused on. Right. It's just, it's a distraction.

Phil Read: Well, there's an enormity of execution that has to take place if you're talking about in terms of manufacturing and leverage. I think everything in a way is every, every job is kind of a manufacturing role. You're turning something

of a lower value

into a higher value. So you're turning raw materials into tennis shoes or tires.

You're turning electricity into drawings, instructions to build a building. And. We are still doing, [00:48:00] so there's a lot of automation that occurs, that, that occurs and has developed in the last 20, 25 years, where you can move a door in a plan and it moves in the elevation and it moves in the schedule.

Evan Troxel: It's called building information modeling, Phil, have you heard of it?

but

Phil Read: But

isn't, transactional.

Evan Troxel: Mm hmm.

Phil Read: It's not a conversation where you're just staring at the blank piece of paper and going, you know, this doesn't really work. Like, give me some ideas here. Which normally you'd call someone over who has a lot of experience.

Evan Troxel: say, Hey, I need some fresh eyes on this. Can you look, can you look at this and tell me if

Phil Read: lay down some trace and you kind of look at it a different way.

Um, I think that kind of interaction what's going to be really profound. At school. at university, like having a minor in psychology and a master's degree in architecture, or maybe having an undergraduate degree in architecture and a [00:49:00] master's degree in psychology. Because ultimately what you're, I think what we're trying to do in business is persuade.

Evan Troxel: Absolutely.

Phil Read: And how you persuade depends on the person that you're trying to persuade. It's not one

Evan Troxel: There's no one way to do it, yeah. Right.

Phil Read: Yeah. There's so many ways to do things. And what will appeal based on that person's understanding of how that space is going to be used. Commercial space or a private space. The aspiration of what that building and investment is going to, is, is how it's going to Like being able to interact with a persona at that level. I think is, is just, it's profound. We don't have

Evan Troxel: you feel like that's leverage to build those skills

Phil Read: Well, if you're building a

Evan Troxel: those

Phil Read: you don't have,

you're not constrained by team size. Maybe, you know, what's, I don't know if [00:50:00] it's, if, uh, I like things in threes.

You know, a stool is, will hold, a stool won't wobble with three legs. Maybe you just have three people. What's the firm size now? And you have these intelligent agents that you can interact with, even with those other people on the team. Um, but how you will pursue work, propose work, win work, execute work, bill for These are, these are tasks that people have to manually do, and to be honest, they're not always interesting all the time. Like chasing money is not interesting

Evan Troxel: you become a specialist in that this is how large firms operate, right?

You're specialists in, in all those roles.

Phil Read: But I think these agents will be the specialists that you need on, on

Evan Troxel: Or they can be If, if people are willing to

Phil Read: Look, even the conversation when the customer's not paying you, having a conversation first about this customer that's not paying me, how would you

Evan Troxel: Well, you would write your draft.

Phil Read: And some customers are going to be very transactional and you're going to say, I'm going to come and I need to be paid [00:51:00] today. And others may, it may be a different appeal.

Evan Troxel: negotiation. Right.

Phil Read: Um, Because if you're impatient and you just escalate right away, get frustrated, go, Okay, look, well, if I have to get a lawyer,

Evan Troxel: Every, yeah, if you're a, if you're a hammer, every, every problem

Phil Read: yeah, that's not the win.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Phil Read: So using these kind of agent feedback loops, having the conversation before the conversation, I think that's the profound part. We haven't, we haven't touched the surface of that yet.

We're just using it to make pictures right now. We're not using it to create personas.

Evan Troxel: I

mean it, and the technology exists right now to do this.

Phil Read: You'll get more than you, that's the, that was the bit flip, is when you get more than out of it than you think you put into it. Like taking a photo from that, uh, beach retail show of a, of a, a vendor's tabletop and going, okay, what do I have in this picture?

And how much would it cost retail? And it starts to give a very [00:52:00] detailed accounting of everything on the table to the point that, um, I mean, the alligator heads were pretty obvious. You could get back scratchers and alligator heads, right? but then it had alligator jerky and it recognized, alligator jerky from this photo at probably 10 15 feet away and it gave me an accounting of what that would probably cost retail terms.

Like this is the most obscure thing. Like no one would build a tool for

Evan Troxel: Oh, and by the way, the table costs you $25

Phil Read: Yeah, so now I'm finding myself walking around taking photos of things and asking, uh, asking Grok, um, who makes this chair and how much does it cost? Where is this light from? And, and it goes and finds it.

Evan Troxel: So the thing that this is. Bringing up for me is this whole idea of curiosity, right? Like you obviously have this curiosity now, like you, you've seen a bit of what it can do and, and now, oh man, I'm just going to keep asking it more and more questions, but curiosity is, um, let's just say it's not, really welcome in a lot of corporate situations, right?

It's like, do the job with these tools like [00:53:00] this.

Phil Read: Ooh, I don't know you'd want to Why would you ever want to work somewhere you weren't? being paid to be

Evan Troxel: well, and look what you can get out of it, right? Like, like look what the potential is with that. And that there's a, there's a leverage right there. Like, I always found it to be incredibly frustrating to work in places where it was like, this is how we do it. This is how we've always done it. This is how we're going to continue to do it. Don't do, don't go outside of these lines, right? Don't color outside the lines. And I remember first year of architecture school, my professor, who was a wild and crazy individual, he said, the worst thing you ever learned was in kindergarten when they taught you to color inside the

Phil Read: Inside the lines.

Evan Troxel: Stifling that curiosity happens early on in a lot of people, right?

And then it continues. And so like there's, there's levels of curiosity that are allowed in air

Phil Read: of air and I, I suspect that business success leads to Pattern recognition of, [00:54:00] oh, let's do more of that. Right? So you don't want to

Evan Troxel: Keep doing that. Yeah.

Phil Read: even to the detriment of the business, they'll follow it all the way down. But just keep doing the thing and particularly in stress mode, then people really look at pattern recognition and they don't want to try anything else because they're stressed. Yeah, they double but for architectural firms now, or students that are in school now, I suppose if your aspiration is to work for a company and be part of the milieu of a very recognizable high design firm,

then that's one track.

But, you don't have to follow that path. Like having all of these agents work for you, and to be able to ask it questions on demand when the, when the question is, is forefront, you know, front. The cost of that, if you had to do it in human terms, would be, you would have to hire all of these people to do all of these kinds of tasks for you.

I don't know, if you're not curious, I don't know that I would want to employ people that were not [00:55:00] curious or want to be employed. Isn't that kind of, isn't that kind of what we're, we're not just paid to do a thing, we're paid to pay attention to the thing we're doing and to try to improve the thing? Yeah. mean, anyone, I don't know what you, isn't everything improvable?

So while you're doing it, you're also in this other mind of going, I wonder if this could be, like, this could be

Evan Troxel: I wish we could run a poll on the podcast right now, right? Like a real time poll of like, do you feel like you have that agency in your role to be curious? Like a lot of times there's like designated individuals who are like in an R and D kind of situation and that might be over glamorized, right?

But it's like this, or I remember as a designer, right? I remember a project manager who was, you know, a principal and owner in the firm was like, You've got the, you've got the easy job. You get to design things. And I'm like, are you serious? Like I get to put my heart up on the wall and watch people rip it off the wall, [00:56:00] right?

It's not what you think it is. And, and so anyway, tangent that the idea of this, this R and D, you know, those people get paid to be curious or they

Phil Read: I think

Evan Troxel: paid to come up with innovation.

Phil Read: can see the director going, okay, I like your idea, but that's not a good idea for today. Like that's a good idea for the next project. But to just say, Hey, I don't want you to have, stop thinking, you know,

Evan Troxel: Yeah, just

Phil Read: just do, ah, nah,

Evan Troxel: crushing for an artist, or for an architect,

Phil Read: even think it's artist and architect. I think anyone, like even if you dig a hole and someone goes, oh, is the hole there? Nah, let's put the hole over there. Or if you're digging a hole, right? Like literally digging a ditch and you go, you know, we're going to dig it this way, but that's a long way.

We could dig it over this way and it's a better way to dig the ditch. Oh, I'm glad you thought of that. Like, know, to be, to be, uh, proud of your work, anything, be curious, anything. I can't think of what you could do that you wouldn't be curious.

Evan Troxel: So that the idea [00:57:00] behind this kind of talking to this technology, talking to these agents.

You know, why, why not just talk to a person about this stuff?

And the answer is because they're not available.

Phil Read: they're not always available. Yeah, yeah. No, there's very smart

Evan Troxel: they cost money or whatever, whatever those things are. There's

Phil Read: they're in the middle of their thought, and now you're interrupting an important moment for them. Um, I don't think it'll be either or. I think it'll be both and. You'll use this other, you know, you mentioned that the, the agent was so optimistic about your idea, right?

You do get, you do get that artifact sometimes. What a wonderful idea. Let's just, let's, let's think about that. Um, but you do need a way to bounce ideas. I think these tools, at least in my experience, are not being used. To do lazy things, you're doing them to be more rigorous about them, to be curious, to be asked questions, uh, to be responded to in

Evan Troxel: things to the [00:58:00] ground faster, right?

Phil Read: it's like, Oh, I didn't think about that.

I was doing, uh, one of the posts for the Fall Leadership Retreat, or maybe it's the Spring Roundtable, like, we don't have alcohol at the event. And so I wanted to do a, a, a short article about why we don't have alcohol. And it wasn't meant, I don't want to do anything preachy, it's just like, in practical terms.

So I asked ChatGBT, like, give me some practical reasons, we have this kind of event, here's what we're trying to do. What are some practical reasons you wouldn't, give me five practical reasons you wouldn't have alcohol. And out of those five, I've got three good ones. I think I ended up combining two into one.

It was like, oh, these are good reasons. You know, they're nothing to do with moral authority. It's just like, okay, we have water sports and we have ski boats and e foils and yeah, you don't want to risk people drinking and being drunk.

You know, involved in water sports.

Evan Troxel: Phil.

Phil Read: We didn't see, we saw him on the river, but he's none in the

Evan Troxel: way. So,

Phil Read: So yeah, there's, you know, to be thoughtful, to be in the moment, uh, to be aware of what you're saying and thinking, okay, those are good reasons why we don't have alcohol. It just [00:59:00] avoids complexity. I still had to kind of curate the final selection, but I asked the tool, like a room full of people, Hey, give me some ideas.

Like, you're just ideating, and I think that part of the, of the, of

Evan Troxel: Don't you do that, don't you do that anyway? Don't you go through it at the, everything, even if you make it, right?

Phil Read: You do, but sometimes, you know, there's that mental block at first.

Evan Troxel: Oh, no, absolutely,

Phil Read: and um, it's very good at getting that initial vector, and then giving you ideas that you wouldn't have thought of.

I think even for myself, if I had got myself in a quiet place and thought about it, I wouldn't have thought about that angle. Yep. So, those kinds of, I, I would Encourage someone to take some of these tools and take a photo of a chair and say where can I get this chair? Take a photo of a space and say I like this design.

How much would this cost all the furnishings in this space? What would they cost like it will recognize brands of? Tables and chairs and soft furnishings and even wall fixtures. It will recognize all of that and give you [01:00:00] a list So it a lot of time to design to get to the point where the customer might say I don't like it But if we can do that quicker and have these quicker iterative steps, and we're confident that we're on vector, I think the clients will be happier.

The customer will be more satisfied with the end

Evan Troxel: You know, as an architect, I always found that you have different types of clients, but the best clients were the ones who were looking for ideas, searching for ideas.

Phil Read: using you as an AI. Yeah,

Evan Troxel: Yeah, they were using you to do the same thing, right, because they're not the experts and they recognize that and they hired you to do that job and you're the expert in that job and for you to look at it like that I think is a, is a good take, right, because like when you get those unexpected, whoa, I didn't think about that.

That's really,

Phil Read: Yeah, they've, they've already biased themselves, they've flipped online through pictures, they've looked at designs, and, and they're still at the point where they go, you know, I don't know, just, here's what I like, but can you give me some ideas, we have this piece of property, here's what we want to do [01:01:00] with it, here's what we want to, here's how we want the, the end product to perform, here's its function, but give me some ideas.

Evan Troxel: One of my favorite kind of surveys afterward with a client was when they said, I said, so, you know, just, Let's just talk about the overall process. And they said, you know what? I really, really, really the thing that really made a mark for me.

And this was like a board member at this entity organization. And they said, you brought things to the table that we would have never, ever, ever thought of.

Phil Read: You're a very good carbon based AI.

Evan Troxel: But that,

Phil Read: But that's what, you wanted something unexpected.

Evan Troxel: the kind

of jobs I want to work on. Right, and And you don't, I don't wanna work on the kinds of jobs where it's like I have all the answers. Number one, I, I want it to be interactive, but I also want it to go somewhere where ne, neither one of us thought it

Phil Read: that's what happens in the conversation so many times. I think I have an idea, and I chat with Adam about the idea, and at the end of the conversation, we end up with [01:02:00] another idea that neither of us anticipated, that we're both interested in. And, I think that's, another important artifact of having these conversations as opposed to the transactions when you can re ask the question and okay why do you say that and dig deeper you end up

Evan Troxel: mean by that?

Phil Read: yeah you end up with a an idea that turns into a very interesting opportunity it's surprising

Evan Troxel: Yeah. And that, I mean, that it's, there's, there's something here about surprise that actually makes people pay attention to something. It's like what something is impactful to you. It's typically because it was surprising. So it's the twist in the movie. It's the, it's the bridge in the song. It's the key change.

It's something that you didn't see coming. Right. And, and it's like, boom, it smacks you in the face. Right. And it's. That's what makes its mark on you,

Phil Read: right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: searching for that to happen.

Phil Read: And the [01:03:00] restrictions of, uh, Don't just do anything you have to.

And I think that's where AI suffers right now, particularly with regard to trying to come up with design ideas and creating renderings, it's really good at creating anything, anything, and it, it's hard at creating something. Um, I think that'll get better, but, uh, it's hard to iterate and have things sit still and then just kind of tweak it over here.

I only recently found out that Keith Richards uses open tuning and five

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Phil Read: Oh my gosh, the music sounds amazing. And I'm, and I

Evan Troxel: would know, nobody would know that, right?

Phil Read: and he said when they were starting out, like the, the heavy string, the bottom string is

Evan Troxel: when I, when I say that, nobody listening would know, like, Oh, Keith Richards plays with a completely modified setup from normal

Phil Read: So it's an old blues style, open tuning. So you can strum, so you can strum the strings without touching the strings. It also means you can just put one finger across five strings and get, and Go online and listen to Keith Richards playing the guitar. You're [01:04:00] like, that's, that's the sound. That's the sound of his guitar playing and how he's able to create fills.

The songs that they're known for would not have been possible without that, without the restriction of that tuning style. And I think he said it, um, it was an artifact of, uh, you can do open tuning with six strings, but, um, They were broke and the bottom strings at Spence's, so he's like, yeah, forget it.

We'll just play without that one. And

Evan Troxel: but, yeah, it's

Phil Read: And even a guitar company created a five string guitar, which he played with for a number of years in the late 70s or 80s. But it was a five string guitar and he would open tune it.

Evan Troxel: it. Just for him. Yeah. I

Phil Read: listen to them play carefully.

the concert in, um, it's called Shine a Light. It was a documentary film. Martin Scorsese filmed it in the, um, uh, it's at the Beacon Theater in New York.

And if you listen to Keith playing, there's a lot of fumbling. Like there's a whole bunch of [01:05:00] other musicians playing at the same time. He's just doing fills and little pieces, but it's amazing. It's like orchestrated music. There's these little pieces of magic happening. I don't know that that, uh,

it's,

It's, it's, a completely recognizable sound once you hear it.

And it was, it was the product of restriction and function.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. That, that is the beauty of constraints in any situation, right? It's like you figure out how to operate within them, and then you break a rule here or there, right? Yeah? But they actually provide you with, I keep saying the word vector, right?

But that's what it

Phil Read: Oh, it's just like you're on it.

Evan Troxel: okay, now I can see where we're going because it's not just a wide open field of blank page.

Phil Read: Yeah. What's

Evan Troxel: What do we have to work

Phil Read: I only have one professor at architecture school that built this artificial restriction. This is a four hour task. This is an eight hour task.

Evan Troxel: You talked about him, I think, in, in one of our podcasts. Yeah.

Phil Read: And, uh, he's like, yeah, I don't

Evan Troxel: This is how much time you get to do

Phil Read: You get eight hours and, uh, if you come up [01:06:00] with two ideas in eight hours, fine.

One idea in eight hours. I want to see what you get by tomorrow morning. Give me four hours and then go do something else. And, um, I always felt a certain level of satisfaction of doing something well with a constraint, as opposed to just, oh, it doesn't matter, do anything.

Evan Troxel: or just keep Oh, you still have time left. Keep going. Even though you're, you feel done,

Phil Read: You feel burnt out.

Evan Troxel: feel out. Yeah.

Phil Read: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: yeah, there, there, there are definitely people who are wired.

If there's more time, we're not done. We can do more.

Phil Read: The glue's got time to dry. Keep gluing.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Phil Read: So it's, uh, yeah, I think the technologies are interesting, certainly in the ability to interact in a conversational way with an agent that will critique a design for a student, for a would be architectural student.

It will discuss ideas in a way that aren't emotionally, uh, threatening. Right? Because you're not in front of a jury of peers, your students are all there watching you [01:07:00] get reamed on a Monday morning. You're having conversations with, you know, with, uh, a tool that looks at a design and goes, Well, have you thought about this?

Or have you thought about that? Or certainly, from this persona, it's a wonderful design, but the other persona might say, Oh no, it's, it's too busy, what were you thinking?

Evan Troxel: So, so this idea of curiosity but also flexing that muscle and actually playing, like I'd, I'd like to frame it under the, Play right you play with these things so that you learn what works What doesn't work how it's changing over time if you don't flex that muscle if you don't flex any muscle it they atrophy they go

Phil Read: Well, you mentioned that some of these tools will respond to things on your screen.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, yeah Claude

Phil Read: And it will respond in architectural terms? I mean, could you have a, a model or a plan of a

Evan Troxel: I believe so. I, yeah, and so, so, so, yeah, so the, the company's Anthropic and their model is called Claude and they have different versions of Claude for different, you know, different structures and stuff, but one, one of the [01:08:00] modes of their app will, will look at your screen.

Phil Read: Yeah. I would look at a mode that does the thing that when you go, could I have another set of eyes? And they take out the trace and lay it over and start doing sketching.

But this mode

Evan Troxel: Well, this'll actually No,

Phil Read: have you thought about what if you move this over here and move that

Evan Troxel: It's looking at what you're doing on your screen. So, I think, I think the idea is like, it will actually act like an agent on your behalf at some point. Maybe it does that now. But it's like, I'm clicking this button. in this interface. It means this, right?

And it could walk you through things. It could be like a helper, but it could also potentially, I think, do things for you.

Phil Read: There's a lot of, I think there's a lot of empathy that occurs in good design where you're in that mode of sort of plan view, but you're, you know, analytically, but you're also trying to imagine how it will be experienced.

And, um, getting feedback in terms of the emotional quality of a design as well as does it satisfy the analytic needs of the design. [01:09:00] and in stress mode and time constraints of real life, just being able to have that other person there that are, that's always available just to ask a

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Read: I think it will take the stress away of doing work and then having to untangle it later and going, Oh, I spent all day yesterday on that. So I worked 16 hours and I have to roll it backwards as opposed to in the moment being

Evan Troxel: Well, there's that, but there's also how much you can actually compress time, and so you don't waste as much time having to redo something, right? Because, ideas, like, okay, so real time rendering, you know, you're connected with Enscape, I love the idea of, Making using it as a rendering as a decision making tool now, right?

That wasn't a thing back in the day and back in the day. It was an a

Phil Read: Oh, you push your button and wait.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a thing you did at the

Evan Troxel: And well, you better not screw it up because you don't want to have to do it again, right? And we learned how to fix things in Photoshop because it was way faster

Phil Read: Yeah. Instead of push the button and wait four

Evan Troxel: So so this idea of like moving that technology closer to the audience to the metal, right?

It's like, [01:10:00] I'm now using it to make decisions because of the visualization quality. I can actually, I can use it right as a tool throughout the process. And I think this is kind of the same thing, right? This is, this is another thing where we're using it as a tool along the way to help us.

Phil Read: the moment, right?

It's not the thing where you push the button at the end and render. It's the questions and interaction in the moment. Otherwise it's too disruptive. You have to, you have to do these big cycles where you go back and start over and go back and start over.

So that's where I'm kind of, yeah, there was so much, there's so much about AI this and AI that, and I was like, oh, it's getting overwhelmed with AI.

But, but recently finding these sort of conversational vectors, that's got me really interested in it, in, in the impact of, of not just in, uh, in business, but just in trivial things. Trivial things. It's faster to, it's faster to ask AI to give me a recipe for [01:11:00] fajitas or burritos than it is to try to find it online now.

Because when you search online, and I've started doing

Evan Troxel: Now, everything's a five star recipe, first of all. Like, you, you

Phil Read: through, you get the thing, and then you get the backstory of the

Evan Troxel: And finally, at the end, you get

Phil Read: and finally at the end you get the recipe, and then you get the instructions. But if you ask, chat

Evan Troxel: No nonsense.

Phil Read: It's like, Oh, you want to make fajitas? Here's your list of ingredients. Here's what you do. And I was like, okay, and, and these are options. If you want to do this, you might do that. And I'm like, okay, that's what I want with, then there's no advertisers. There's no noise. I'm not scrolling down four pages. Um,

Evan Troxel: That's a really interesting, uh, door, to, for me to get back into this part where, you know, this idea of, of, Using or, or, or leveraging curiosity of your employees to play with these tools and create fluency with them so that that leverage can be amplified, right? Like if you, if you have zero fluency with these, [01:12:00] then someday you're going to say, Oh, you know, we should be using these tools, right?

They've finally proven themselves. Now, okay, we're at the laggard end of the adoption curve. We're going to now. Jump in on this, right? And, and you're late. You're super late. You can't leverage it as much. Now you're playing catch up. And so with your, your clients, with people that you're talking to out there, are you seeing this kind of attitude of leverage and playfulness and fluency, or is it very much stand back and watch?

Phil Read: No, some of it's, uh, It's still a little transactional.

It's very, you know, the ideation that creates an image that sort of convinces a

Evan Troxel: customer. We use this tool

Phil Read: Yeah, so I was talking with an architect, and I think it was at AU, and they're winning work by doing simple sketches or massing models of lobby atrium spaces, and then they're asking, uh, I think it's mid journey to [01:13:00] They're describing a text prompt and then in the style of a particular well known

Evan Troxel: And then using

Phil Read: and they're using that to generate an image and then they're using those images to win work and then they execute the work.

But they're, they're naming, they're naming other firms by name, um, which might, I don't know, it might, you know, Upset some people, but to me it's no different than going to the library and pulling out the latest architectural record or some other magazine and going, Oh, I like that work, that's by

Evan Troxel: Putting a little tab on that

Phil Read: Yeah, yeah, and just go, it's that firm, because if

Evan Troxel: this is what Pinterest was for everybody, right? Like, it's just, just create all these

Phil Read: So it's part of their text

Evan Troxel: stairs and rails

Phil Read: transactional, I think, in that way of going, here's the massing model, and we want it in the style of this, and you get an image. But the idea, if you're doing lunch and learns on AI, and you have young staff, asking people, what are you using AI firm for?

Let's go around the table at the Lunch and Learn and talk about what you're using. AI firm, but has nothing to do directly [01:14:00] with

Evan Troxel: no one's gonna get in trouble here.

Phil Read: Right, right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: just an open conversation

Phil Read: and it might not be anything to do with images, but the idea of someone saying, Oh, I'm using it, I'm using AI to have conversations that are in lieu of a psychologist, or I'm having a discussion in lieu of, of, uh, trying to understand a difficult relationship with a coworker or roommate, all of these kinds of human conflicts. You know, imagine a roommate that just doesn't keep the apartment clean Right. To your standard. It's like, oh, I use chat GT Plus to

Evan Troxel: formulate that conversation.

Phil Read: Yeah. Right, right. Because

Evan Troxel: Give me some

Phil Read: art artists may not be, we're, we're kind of a, we're kind of conflict averse.

Yeah, we don't like chasing money. We don't like chasing arguments. That's why we have somebody else do that. No, I don't like selling. So now you have that conversation with an agent to help you frame a discussion around why it's important for me that you do your [01:15:00] dishes and do your part to keep the apartment clean.

Like just go around the room and find out what young people are using, you know, uh, I don't know, young people, but the people that are younger in the firm, What are they using these tools to do that you might not expect? And I think you'll come up with an idea that will fold itself into something business related to solve a problem. But it's, um, it's, it's not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't just say, okay, how are we going to use this to build better buildings? Right. You might want to take a bigger step back and look at the big

Evan Troxel: That's a different conversation. That's like, here are the, here's the business goals. Once you've defined those, you can figure out which technology it's probably, it may be AI, it may not be, right? Plugs into solving that business goal, right? That could be any number of tools to do that. You're talking about approaching it from more of a grassroots effort, which, Hey,

Phil Read: we, what do we, what obscure things are you using this for?

Evan Troxel: that'll just spark ideas, right?

Phil Read: Yeah, I think you take a bigger picture.

You [01:16:00] don't just step in going, How are we going to use this for rendering? It's kind of, that's so transactional. You can do much bigger things with it. And then you might get to rendering as well.

Evan Troxel: Well, I want to use this now as a segue to transition into the upcoming round table discussions that you're gonna be

Phil Read: End of April.

Evan Troxel: at the end of April of

Phil Read: So this will be the second year. Um, and the, we have the, we have the fall leadership retreat, which is more leadership, self-leadership, other leadership, leadership of others. And then the spring event is more technology focused. So this will be the second year. And our approach is that. Good answers are not transactional. They come from discussions. And we, I, we add both Adam and I've experienced watching really good presenters at conferences present something, and then you get them after the conference, you go, okay, so look, here's the thing on my

Evan Troxel: Here,

Phil Read: How would you do it?

Evan Troxel: add my me

Phil Read: Yeah. How would you, how would you do it for this kind of thing?

And they go, oh yeah, that won't work. Yeah. You probably want to do it this other way. So we thought, [01:17:00] you know what, we should just have the conversations after the presentation. So, like, Carl Storms did a presentation last year that was based on his, uh, self interest in the, he did a hundred days of AI, and we talked, we went around the table, what other people were using AI for, in some cases, trivial kind of things.

I learned things that never realized that even could exist.

Evan Troxel: See, this is, this is exactly the conversation we just had about finding out what young people are doing with AI, like, flexing that muscle. And so Carl did that for a hundred days.

Kevin Kelly, you know, one of the internet, early internet pioneers, mid journey, every single day would Just to play with it, just to figure out what it could do to find out what worked, find out what different didn't work. And that, that to me is really about like kind of flexing this muscle and just playing with it.

Like there's no, there's nothing on the line here, right?

Phil Read: No, and it's not, and we're all high performing technologists, so we're not really concerned about someone [01:18:00] coming up with an idea and then shooting it full of arrows, well that's not going to work.

What we really want is, this is a hard problem, and it's costing me stress and time and money. How are you guys approaching this, because they're not presentations, they're, you know, Discussions and we just go around the table and then eventually the, you know, the discussions go back and forth and from different angles and talk about a number of, of business related topics.

Harlan Brum, who's a product manager for Revit, led a discussion or facilitated a discussion on the future of documentation and we all realize it's a really hard problem. You just can't, and maybe what we're also trying to do is automate.

an

inefficient process, and maybe that's not the best thing to do.

So to the, one of the submissions this year, and I expect he's going to come along, is a guy named Scott Brown, who's the National BIM Manager for BECC. And BECC is a design build firm. And Scott showed me a documentation method at Autodesk University. In [01:19:00] a trivial way, we were just at dinner and he opened his iPad like, Hey, Scott, what's interesting.

He's like, well, I'm working on this thing. You want to see this thing? And I dreamt about the conversation we had at dinner that night. And I was going, well, Scott, how would you do this? And what about that? And we were still having the conversation. So he must've really got into my head a bit. And I said, Scott, this is profound.

I think you should present this one evening at the round table event and just show a room of 30 or 40 technologists. This is how I'm doing documentation. And we have, and by we, I mean, Beck, Beck has to be accountable from the design through the implementation of the construction. And he's like, Oh yeah, I'll do that.

Paint a target on his chest and present it in front of a bunch of high performing technology

Evan Troxel: But, but what's so cool about these events is like, you can totally be safe and vulnerable and, and like it really isn't a target, right?

It's like, if it was at AU and you were presenting that, it absolutely, it's just, it's a different, it's a different

Phil Read: Yeah at light at [01:20:00] Autodesk University is a very kind of um, It's a very lecture environment where hold your questions to the end or maybe ask questions as you go along Where I

Evan Troxel: But there's also a spotlight and a stage and a screen and a PowerPoint and a video.

Phil Read: There's a uh, there's a power

Evan Troxel: stakes. Right? Yeah.

Phil Read: Um, there's an adult child kind of relationship. I am the speaker and you are the listener. Um, and so you don't want to ask questions that might put the speaker on the spot. What Scott showed me was a sit back, drop my napkin, gobsmacked moment going, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that works.

And it's, and, and without, I don't want to give it away because I want Scott to really present this, but it is a return to first practices using new technology. And, um, I would say it orders, orders of magnitude simplifies the instruction, the process of creating instructions to build buildings

Evan Troxel: Interesting. and,

they, these, these are not recorded and they're not shared afterward. [01:21:00] Like, you, you have

Phil Read: No, you got to be there. Yeah, and we think that's important. We've had people ask, oh, will these be recorded? Can I download it later? And I think that's just. It's not worth the investment. That's just so transactional. You really want to be there to interact and to understand at the moment. And, uh, I think if Scott goes forward with this and opens it up and shows people what he's doing, he's going to end up creating a template that people will be able to use to document their projects.

And this is a, in Revit terms, you know, the Warb template, like project template.

I think this template will scale To a residence all the way up to the largest, most complex projects in the world.

Evan Troxel: world. Wow.

Phil Read: And, um,

it's, it enormously simplifies the documentation process. And because I think it's part of the artifact is because, uh, the reason this has evolved is because Beck is accountable from the design through the construction.

So he's trying to simplify the communication process as well. Um, so I think what we've used technology for was to create a more [01:22:00] efficient way of making

drawings. which has resulted in this incredibly complex method of naming and enumerating sheets and where the sheets go in the set and, you know, hundreds and hundreds of sheets of drawings for not complex buildings, but it's an artifact of how drawings have evolved.

And Scott's just gone right back to

Evan Troxel: with politics, with country, like there's, there's so much else kind of muddying that right. Create, making it what it's become.

Phil Read: Yeah, so what he did, it just, it just so surprised me and even the name, the, the name or the metaphor he's come up for this process is even beautiful as well.

So yeah, so good on you, Scott.

Yeah, he's a, he's a curious guy. So that's what, so that's what we'll do. We'll have the same kind of, you went to the, uh, leadership retreat, so you'll know it'll be the same, uh, we intend to have the same kind of process where people arrive Sunday, try to start to detach, get in the moment of talking, catching up with people, um, and [01:23:00] then Monday will be the off site event, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Roundtable to best practice discussions 9 a. m. 1030 a. m. 1 p. m. from 2 30 until 5 o'clock afternoons open So go down to the lake learn how to e foil We'll have the ski boats out go for a paddle board and or talk just talk with you know Fellow peers ask questions come up end up having a discussion about something You didn't think you were gonna have a discussion about that turns out to be really important and then we'll probably have an evening you So dinner is usually six and then seven o'clock, kind of just have a, uh, uh, um, it's all informal, but have an informal discussion about an idea.

And that's where I would like Scott to present this, um, because I think it's going to take a longer discussion. We don't want to be constrained by, okay, this is the

Evan Troxel: We gotta do this next thing. 10 38. Yeah. No, it's

Phil Read: like, wow, okay, let's talk about

Evan Troxel: where this goes.

Phil Read: Yeah, okay, now we're going to go out to the campfire [01:24:00] out by the lake and we'll keep talking about it, you know, after he's, so we don't have PowerPoint presentations, but I think for this we might end up having a projector and a screen

Evan Troxel: so you can

Phil Read: TV and a, you

Evan Troxel: something to look at.

Phil Read: TV and a screen and Scott's going to say, it's what I've been thinking about.

So, the, um, the other thing about the event is, We, we, I don't know if Adam and I have been too clever about this, but we got excited about the idea of theming the event, and we're looking for submissions of, uh, facilitated discussions around the theme of better storytelling through technology. But I don't know if that's And Adam and I are going to talk about it again this week.

Have we constrained it too much or, or, or put a form around it that people go, Oh, I don't know if my idea about this topic or discussion is really about better storytelling, maybe I shouldn't submit it. So maybe we need to pull back from that and go, no, no, no. If you're, if you have, something that you want to discuss with a room of other, you know, best practice leaders and people who think [01:25:00] deeply about the technology and how it's implemented about any topic.

That is important. Curiosity. It. It's curiosity. Then you should submit that topic.

Evan Troxel: I mean, the thing about this audience, I think, is that they are the people who tinker.

Right? We, we, we tinker with stuff, because we build tools, we, we design things, like, you, you chase your curiosities, you know, you, in the 90s it was like everybody learned how to code a website by hand, right, because, and there was no, you couldn't do a course back then, it was like,

Phil Read: You just had to figure it

Evan Troxel: you view source, and you'd copy and paste, and you would figure it out, right?

And, but, but, there's new versions of that, like what, what you're saying Scott's doing, right? It was like, right. Something led to something else, and it led him down this path, and, and, I'm sure he never saw that coming, but everybody's got something, everybody has that story, and the, and it's like, what's, what's the current version of that story for you?

Do you think a group of 20 to 40 people [01:26:00] would

the right audience for you to throw it out there and then see what comes back like To me it is it is it is not transactional. It is not it's not that one way Here's my idea take forth and like go forth and prosper. It's not that it's like oh, well, what about this?

Oh, have you thought about it like this and you're gonna get it Out of it

Phil Read: Oh, there'll be more

Evan Troxel: even put into it, right? And, and so there's, so, so yeah, like labeling it under the idea of storytelling. People may not think that they have a good enough story, but everybody definitely has

Phil Read: Like if you say, if we said better communication through technology, because sometimes as technologists we get excited about the artifact of the technology and really what is the implication of it or how, how do you use it well? You can use technology to do lazy things, right? but what I. Well, I think Scott has done, and I could even be in my own bubble right now, because I mean it was, I don't, I tend not to get surprised a lot.

I think I got surprised at Revit, I got surprised at SketchUp, I got surprised at Enscape, um, [01:27:00] I got surprised at cars that drive themselves, right? That's, and that's over a 20 year period, like four or five things surprised me, technology wise. When I saw what Scott was working on, I was really, I'm like, this is beautiful.

And I, and I really want him to, to show this to a group of 30, 40 people and just have them go, Oh my gosh, like, could we do this? Could we do that? And if, and that could be a spark that I think does profoundly improve the process of creating instructions to build buildings.

Evan Troxel: Cool.

Phil Read: Yeah, he's, he's a great guy.

Yeah. So if anyone's out there, you know, that the topic is better storytelling through technology, or that's a theme. Yeah, if we've been too clever about that, just ignore it, and just propose a really great discussion,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Phil Read: something that's, uh, led by your curiosity.

Evan Troxel: And what, what's the, so, so you, I mean there's a date coming up, but what are the, what, how does it work with proposing these?

Phil Read: I think, you know, well, okay, so we have to have a, you have to have a date, [01:28:00] a deadline somewhere, so we're looking around the 27th of December is the deadline for submissions, and then registration will start the first week of January. You know, there's only over three days. It's nine to 12 discussion sessions.

So we can go through those pretty quickly. We don't have to create a big committee. Um, it'll be Adam, me, and maybe a couple of others just go through them and discuss them and pick, pick them. And, uh, and then open up registration probably first week of January. And then the event I believe is the 27th of April through the 2nd of May, Sunday to Friday.

Yeah. That gets everybody on site for the offsite. Monday. Otherwise, you can't show up Monday. We're already gone.

Evan Troxel: To me,

this is an event where, like, it really is worth investing in yourself in. Even if you can't get corporate to pay for it, or, I don't know. You know, like, coming away from this. This is the best event in AEC that I've [01:29:00] ever attended. And so I'm not just saying that cause I'm sitting here with you in Denver airport face to face.

It really is. I mean, it was super, super impactful. And so I feel like, like it's worth submitting an idea, but it's also worth just attending.

Phil Read: In practical terms, the reason we announced this top, the call for submission topics or session topics in, after Autodesk University, is because the dust has finally settled for people having, you know, they've got to get to AU.

And it also gives people I'll give credit to Nick Kramer. He said, you need to tell people how much this is going to cost and when it's going to be, uh, in the third quarter or fourth quarter of, I'm like, why? He goes, well, we have to ask for budget. And it never occurred to me, you know, my own business owner and Adam and I have a lot of leeway with what we do.

Not everybody gets to do that. So they have to ask for budget and planning before the end of the year. Don't surprise them in January or February and say, Oh, we're having this event. You should come. Cause then. They've got to ask for a budget they didn't ask for, and it [01:30:00] looks like they don't know how to plan their time and money.

So that's why we put it out this fall. Um, and actually we've announced the dates for both events, the spring events, the end of April, and the fall event, the leadership retreat, will be the end of October. We're going to get out of the hurricane path for a change and stop doing it at the end of

Evan Troxel: Cause it is in Florida.

Phil Read: Yeah, and if you look at the bell curve of when hurricanes rough weather happens in Florida, it's all right at the second half of September

Evan Troxel: And people who don't know hurricane weather like me, or, you know, others from Canada and, you know, the West coast,

Phil Read: this year one the week the week before and the week after the event we had Uh, Hurricanes pass. We didn't get impacted, but it was just like, okay, it messes with travel, and I thought, this

Evan Troxel: there was a lot of worry about it.

Phil Read: Oh yeah, it creates

Evan Troxel: Should I even go? Because,

Phil Read: Yep, yep. No, we were going to go on the Chautauqua Springs, and it turned out that the, uh, the river Ended up full of trees.

And so we ended up going to Silver Springs and that was the Thursday or the Wednesday before the [01:31:00] event, that river is still not clear. So we, yeah, months later, they're having to pull trees out of it. So we'll do that event at the end of April or sorry, at the end of October for the fall event and stay out of the storm,

The

peak of the bell curve.

Evan Troxel: But it's an amazing location. Uh, it's really quiet. You actually can unplug the wifi is not great,

Phil Read: It's, it's good

Evan Troxel: is fine, which is actually I think a bonus because then you're less distracted and you're more grounded, I think, in the people and in the place of the event.

So all of that I think adds up to

Phil Read: We haven't figured out how to make this.

If we should scale it, like, I don't think more than the number of people that fit on one motor coach should ever attend because we don't want the artifact of, of having to print lanyards and having to, like, we don't have exhibitors, we don't have lanyards, we don't have sponsors. I don't want to turn into the event location and say, brought to you by XYZ software company.[01:32:00]

Just like the moment you get there, you're there. It's everything is authentic. So from the standpoint of it scaling as a, money making hand, you know, hand over fist money making venture, I don't think we aspire to that or we've even figured that out. We, we would like to, I, I would like to try to take this concept of technical round table, And six months later, Leadership Roundtable, and go to the other hemisphere, like try to do Australia or New Zealand or somewhere else, but again, no more than 50

Evan Troxel: But people from the Southern Hemisphere come to this event

Phil Read: event, too.

Evan Troxel: it's a stretch, but they do it.

Phil Read: a stretch. It is. No, Carrie, uh, Carrie Thompson attended. Right. Uh, yeah, Callum Freeman from, uh, Assemble in New Zealand. attended. And they're both on, they're like, Hey, we should do this in New Zealand or Australia. And like, yeah, we have to find a place.

But we have an interesting Venn diagram at the camp that we go to because we have a chef, private chef. We have a commercial kitchen. He gets to run the kitchen for the week. So we have, I think meals are very important. Conversations that [01:33:00] happen around meals are important. Chef Charles has just a joyful attitude to what he does.

And so having a legitimate French chef,

Evan Troxel: Think about the food that you're consuming and who it was made by at this versus a production

Phil Read: Yeah, you're not standing in a line getting your food. He brings it out. It's all, it's all set, like a family, like here's your plates of platters of food and a couple of

Evan Troxel: explains it all. Yep.

Phil Read: So that kind of attention to detail and, um, and it's a camp. So the accommodations are I would say austere. They're not uncomfortable, but it's either like a motel style room or a cabin style room where it's, you know, there's no campers. It's just you're in the counselor's accommodation. Questions

Evan Troxel: that came up from, so some people heard that I went, I think I was at AU, and they're like, you went to that, right? And I said, yeah. And they said, is it true that you can bring your family?

Phil Read: Oh,

Evan Troxel: Because they heard that on the [01:34:00] podcast and they said, is that true? Like, like, like

Phil Read: Could you really do

Evan Troxel: were just making that up.

So, so talk about that

Phil Read: Yeah, so the idea is that, um, we wanted to have counselor led activities for, you know, for kids during the day, and then in the afternoons everybody can get together.

Um, Sylvia, who's a wonderful technologist around scanning, BIM scanning services, modeling services of historic buildings. Um, Mia came, and I think Mia's seven. Very precocious, self motivated, and she was great the whole week. And it worked. So she's already, she was a little bit nervous about attending at first, like she was going to be the only kid.

She's already said, Dad, I want to go back next year. And, um, so we're trying to do it in such a way where, yeah, people bring their kids, they're doing nature things during the day. We don't, we just,

Evan Troxel: they don't have to sit in the conference

Phil Read: no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Me as an edge condition, still sit in a conference room and listen to discussions and, and draw on color all [01:35:00] week.

And, uh, but no, it should be like, yeah, kids want to go off. And, and, and the things they do is like teach kids to, uh, build fires or build forts or the kinds of stuff that I used to do growing up in Florida. Yeah, you go feral and you go build a fort in the woods. So the idea is that they councilor led activities during the day for kids.

And it's just a nominal cost for the meals. It's not, you know, much more at all. yeah.

Evan Troxel: opportunities for, like, off site, you know, things that can happen for, for, depending on who shows up.

Phil Read: yeah. If, if, if you had. partners show up and they want to go off. There's, there's an enormity of interesting historic and beautiful things in Florida to do. Go off to St. Augustine for the day and go shopping or old historic village. But, um, yeah, it's legitimately like we had, uh, someone asking about driving.

They wanted to bring the whole family. I think it was like three kids, mom and dad and like, yeah, go. Mom and dad are both architects and they just wanted to know that they could Legitimately bring the family. Yeah. We just haven't been, it's just that [01:36:00] kind of new thing where no one's really done it because it's not been done. I don't know that people bring their families to au, I don't even think you can get into the conference area at au under a certain age. You have to be like 18 or older. Uh, we had families that built,

because it was just kind of a, easy, relaxed atmosphere and people would bring their families and, but yeah, definitely at Lake Swan, uh, you could bring families and the kids could go on a paddleboard, do councilor led activities, and then

Evan Troxel: on the inner tube on behind the boat. Go, go down the water slide. Yeah. There's a

Phil Read: wrap up video that Peter did shows Sylvia and Mia on the, uh, getting pulled around on the big inflatable thing.

Yeah, yeah, so it's meant to be time to definitely think hard, but also relax, try to disconnect a little bit. It's an investment in, it should be an investment in future revenue, um, but I think the best way to get there is by having conversations, not by sitting in a room and just being fed presentations all the time in a, in a transactional way.

And

Evan Troxel: I think you

Phil Read: things And you can have both, I'm not saying the other one, [01:37:00] like the Autodesk University kind of, kind of approach, where you do have, you know You know, sort of audience and presenter kind of format that's legitimate.

Evan Troxel: This is very participatory and, and contributory, right? And in the, just the natural way that it works. And to me, like, again, just reinforcing It was impactful.

It was professionally impactful. It was personally impactful. I built relationships with people who I'd never met before there. There's a network because it's intentionally small that gets built up. And I can see this being kind of a homecoming event that happens, but, but there's room for new people. I mean, it's, it's not exclusive.

And so, yeah. Uh,

Phil Read: but it's, I think, I think authentic. You know, having the offsite on Monday helps people to de posture a bit

Evan Troxel: Yeah,

Phil Read: and kind of just

Evan Troxel: Get to know each other.

Phil Read: and have conversations that aren't

Evan Troxel: ease into it. It's lovely. We

Phil Read: thought about doing it at the end, like it as a wrap up event. Oh, okay. We've all done this thing for the week now let's do [01:38:00] an offsite, and I think it was Henry. Uh, give him credit with this idea of de posturing and doing it at the beginning to help people kind of relax and feel more, uh, open and feel authentic and then go into the event.

And that's proved itself out a better, better structure.

Evan Troxel: All right. Well, Phil, I will endeavor to get this episode out before your deadline.

Phil Read: 27th of December. Look, I think the main thing is people, people now, if they have to ask for budget to do it and what do they want to attend and what do they want to events do they want to contribute to next year?

Now, at least it could be, you know, they, they have, uh, they have advanced.

which we, to our detriment, we haven't done that in the past. We should have. So now we're letting people know in, yeah, we're letting people know in quarter four instead of quarter one.

Evan Troxel: Cool. Yeah.

Phil Read: Thanks, Evan.

Evan Troxel: Well, it's gonna be fun and uh, I wish you the best 'cause I won't be able to attend that one, but I'm

Phil Read: The spring event, you can't, you've got obligations, but maybe in the fall, [01:39:00] get you back on the E Foil? Yeah.

That's Evan doing the, uh, the lasso. Was that you on, in the, in the, uh, wrap up video?

And you'd never done that before? No. And you got up? Yeah. Oh, great. Thanks, Evan. All right.

Evan Troxel: right. Talk to you next time. 

Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Mayur Mistry for his YouTube channel. Over the course of an hour, we covered everything from my approach to podcasting on TRXL to broader trends and challenges within the AEC industry.

For those who couldn’t tune in live, I wanted to share some key insights and reflections from the conversation—and invite you to check out the full interview if you’re curious to dive deeper.

1. Why I Podcast: It’s All About the People

One of the things I shared with Mayur is that my passion for podcasting comes from the people I meet and the stories they tell. TRXL isn’t about the latest gadgets or software updates; it’s about the humans behind the innovation—why they’re doing what they do, what challenges they’ve faced, and what drives them forward.

“The technology is secondary. I’m much more interested in the ‘why’ behind the work.”

This is the essence of TRXL: creating a platform where long form, meaningful, human-centered conversations happen and where others in the industry can learn from those moments.

2. Turning Conversations into Knowledge

We also discussed how podcasts can become more than just a series of episodes. At TRXL, I’ve been working on ways to make the content even more accessible and actionable for listeners. Through transcripts, search tools, and categorization, I want to create a resource that people can revisit whenever they need insights.

This concept aligns with Mayur’s and my shared idea of turning podcasts into searchable, personalized knowledge hubs—something I think could transform how we all engage with long-form content.

3. Sustainability in Podcasting

Podcasting is my full-time gig, and we dove into what it takes to make that sustainable. From finding sponsors to ensuring a high level of quality in every episode, I’ve learned that it’s about finding balance—putting value at the center of everything I do.

“People think of podcasting as a side hustle, but for me, it’s my main hustle—and it has to be sustainable.”

This sustainability hinges not just on monetization but on building a relationship with my audience. Encouraging people to subscribe and engage with the podcast is critical, not only for the show’s success but for its continued ability to serve the AEC community.

4. Where AEC Tech Falls Short (and Where It Shines)

In our conversation, Mayur and I reflected on gaps in AEC technology. While there’s a lot of innovation happening, certain phases—like construction detailing—are still underserved. Meanwhile, buzzwords like “AI” often dominate the funding landscape, leaving essential but less glamorous challenges overlooked.

“The real value often lies in solving mundane, everyday problems. That’s where we can make the biggest difference.”

5. Building Relationships in AEC

A recurring theme was the importance of relationships—whether it’s booking podcast guests, securing software adoption, or creating new collaborations. AEC is a relationship-driven industry, and that extends to how we introduce and adopt new tools and ideas.

Meeting people where they are, building trust, and understanding their needs are critical to making a lasting impact—something I’ve strived to do both in my podcast and throughout my career.

6. A Call to Action: Support Creators in AEC

At the end of the interview, I emphasized a message that’s close to my heart: support the creators in your industry. Whether it’s by subscribing to a podcast, sharing content, or simply reaching out with encouragement; small actions can have a big impact.

“If you care about the AEC industry, show that you care. Help the people who are trying to do something meaningful.”

Want to Hear More?

You can watch the full interview with Mayur Mistry on his YouTube channel here. It’s packed with actionable advice, personal stories, and a deep dive into the challenges and opportunities in AEC tech. Be sure to subscribe to his channel while you're there to show your support!

And if you haven’t tuned in for a while, check out the latest episodes of the TRXL Podcast for more conversations with the brightest minds in the industry. Your support—whether through subscribing, sharing, or simply listening—means the world to me and helps keep these conversations going.

Thank you for being part of this journey!

Brian Nickel and Brett Settles join the podcast to talk about their latest work at the intersection of BIM and fabrication. We talk about the innovations the Allied BIM team have created that link design intent directly to the machines on the floor in the shop. Brian and Brett share their insights on the evolution of BIM technologies, the importance of user-friendly web-based platforms, and the role of training and VR in remote management. They discuss real-world applications, the skilled labor shortage, and the future of construction automation, making a compelling case for the transformative potential of their work.

Tune in to hear about how Allied BIM is bridging the gap between design intent and on-site execution, and learn about their vision for the future of the critical link between design and the trades.

Episode links:

• Brian on LinkedIn
• Brett on LinkedIn
• VR to Fabrication (YouTube)
• The FAB FAB podcast
• Allied BIM website
• Allied BIM on LinkedIn

About Brian Nickel:

With over 10 years of experience in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, Brian D. Nickel is the CEO and Founder of Allied BIM, a pioneering firm that develops and delivers cutting-edge fabrication tools and solutions for Autodesk Revit and BIM 360 platforms. He is also an Autodesk Revit Architecture Certified Professional and a Part 107 FAA-Certified Drone Pilot, demonstrating his proficiency and versatility in AEC technology.

As an adjunct instructor at Montana State University's College of Engineering and Gallatin College, Brian shares his passion and expertise in AEC technology with the next generation of AEC professionals. He uses innovative methods such as Microsoft Teams and virtual reality (VR) to create engaging and immersive learning environments for his students. He also actively participates in national conferences and speaking engagements, where he advocates for a collaborative and integrated approach to design and construction. Brian's mission is to advance the AEC industry through technology and teamwork and to inspire others to do the same.

About Brett Settles:

Brett has 20 years experience implementing, managing, teaching, and using new technology in Geospatial, Mining, and AEC. He is a dedicated design and construction technologist looking to use data, emerging technology and innovative workflows to better the experiences of those in design, fabrication and construction.

Provide feedback for this episode

Connect with Evan:

• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Twitter/X

Watch this on YouTube:

Episode 171 Transcript:

171 - ‘From Model to Machine’, with Brian Nickel and Brett Settles

[00:00:00]

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, a little bit of housekeeping upfront here before I introduce today's guests. I would very much appreciate your support of this podcast by subscribing, wherever you watch or listen. So YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Wherever that is. And please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

You can also support my mission by becoming a paid member at trxl.co, which is my website.

Just click on the join button in the lower right-hand corner.

And if you'd like to receive an email when these episodes are published with all of the show notes, which includes links and all of the other information, whenever they come out, you can sign up for that by becoming a free or paid member at trxl.co. And clicking that join button. Okay. In this episode, I welcome Brian Nickel and Brett [00:01:00] Settles of Allied BIM.

Brian is the CEO and founder of Allied BIM which is a pioneering firm that develops and delivers cutting edge fabrication tools and solutions for Autodesk Revit and BIM 360 platforms. And he is an adjunct professor at Montana State University's College of Engineering, and Gallatin College. Brett Settles is the product owner at Allied BIM and he brings 20 years of experience implementing, managing, teaching, and using new technology in geospatial, mining and AEC.

In this episode, we discuss their latest work at the intersection of BIM and fabrication. We talk about the innovations the Allied BIM team has created that link design intent directly to the machines on the floor in the shop. Brian and Brett share their insights on the evolution of BIM technology, the importance of user-friendly web based platforms and the role of training and VR in remote management.

Today we [00:02:00] discuss real-world applications and the future of construction automation, making a compelling case for the transformative potential of their work.

You'll hear about how Allied BIM is bridging the gap between design intent and onsite execution, and you'll learn about their vision for the future of the critical link between design and the trades.

This was a fantastic conversation with Brian and Brett. And I hope you'll not only find value in it for yourself, but that you'll help add value to our industry by sharing it with your network. So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Brian Nickel and Brett Settles.

​

Evan Troxel: Today I'm joined by Brian and Brett from Allied BIM. And I want you guys to actually give an intro to what you've been up to. We had the chance to connect at Autodesk University. it was a jam packed schedule. We squeezed it in [00:03:00] just in time to, but it's incredible what you guys are working on at Allied BIM. And I thought it would be a cool story to tell because I know you've been working really hard on this direct to

fabrication stuff. Everything that you've built is absolutely incredible. And there's so

much information there. I don't know how deep we'll end up going today, but, first welcome to the show, both of you. It's great to have you here.

Brian Nickel: Thank you for having us, Evan.

Evan Troxel: Well, Brian, maybe you kick us off because we've known each other the longest and have been aware of kind of what's going on on both sides of our worlds. And we're not actually that far apart anymore.

I moved to Oregon, you're out of Boise and Montana. You're kind of splitting time, right? But maybe you can get a little bit into that and tell people what you've been up to for the past few years.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, um, no, thanks, Evan, for bringing us onto the show and, uh, definitely known each other for quite some time. Um, my name's Brian Nichol. I'm the CEO of Allied BIM.

Uh, we started Allied BIM actually based out of a prefab shop in Bozeman, Montana. Um, I was a second year architecture student [00:04:00] studying architecture.

That's kind of where we have some commonalities is our architecture backgrounds. Uh, but what was interesting is just learning the process and sort of the pain points in an actual fabrication shop of, you know, what the disconnect was from model to machine software. Uh, at the time in 2014, uh, there was not a lot of applications that allowed us to easily transmit data, uh, to those machines. And so long story short, we developed Allied BIM. We raised a substantial amount of capital from Arco Murray Ventures, along with some other private ventures as well. And what's really exciting about it is we brought Brett Settles on board, who's our product owner. And I'll let Brett introduce himself here in a minute as well.

Uh, but we've come together in, just in this last year and we've really started to drive the industry on the electrical side. And [00:05:00] we're looking forward to doing that on mechanical and plumbing as well. So, uh, really brief background there. I'll go ahead and let Brett introduce himself. Yeah.

Brett Settles: here at Allied BIM for closing in on a year now. So started at the very beginning of the year. Uh, my background is really kind of dipping in and out of industry. Uh, when I'm in industry, my history really revolves around industrial engineering and construction management. So the shop hasn't always been my forte. It's more about workflows, software, user experiences. So for me

This whole journey into Allied Vim has not only been something I feel like I've been able to help with, but also something that's been an extremely valuable learning process for me, not only for what we're doing, but also for essentially, um, the way I understand it if I ever end up anywhere else in the industry.

Evan Troxel: I just want to jump in here real quick, Brett, because what you just said [00:06:00] is super intriguing to me. And I think a lot of times, uh, firms, uh, you know, I'll, I'll come at this from a kind of an architectural firm perspective. You're looking to fill a role with somebody who has all the knowledge already, right?

And they're going to be able to bring that knowledge to the firm and disperse it amongst the staff of the firm to win

projects, to deliver projects, whatever the role may entail, right? But what you just said was. Like, this was not your forte, right, to come in and, and, and, like, bridge the gap to the shop, right, from software to the shop. And I find it super interesting, like, number one, like, you saw this as a really interesting challenge for your own professional development, and that Brian, you saw that he could, Do it and that at the same time. He didn't come with all of that at the get go. And so a little bit of a detour here. I, I would love to hear from both of you because I, I don't think that that's very common, like what you [00:07:00] just described.

Like a lot of times we're looking for some, they don't, the resume, or you know, the job posting always says 10 years, 5 years, 7 years of experience, like doing all of these things. And what you're saying is like, You were going to figure it out here and you were the right guy to do it, obviously, because Brian said you're the right guy to do it,

So talk, talk us through kind of how that little piece happened. And then we'll get back to your,

Brian Nickel: Uh, I'm actually gonna hit on that 'cause uh, so Brett, I was actually Brett's third customer at a company called Visto. So I, uh, back in 2015, I believe is when I met Brett for the first time, pro, possibly even 2014. And we were just a small company and I said, Brett, you know, I'd love to use your software, but it's too expensive.

Right? And Brett's like, I'm going to come in and we're going to figure this out. And we figured it out. And what happened through that experience was I actually got to see Brett's customer service and customer care, um, on a [00:08:00] product owner standpoint. And I got to see what he was doing with that product.

And I got to see how he was evolving that product. and really how he grew Revisto, uh, in, in, from my perspective, just sitting, non software guy at the time, like, just using software to build buildings, right? And that really got my hopes up for the industry, because I knew that he was putting that extra level of care in it.

So, he ended up, uh, coming to Reality Capture Network conference about a year ago, uh, it was not this current one, it was the one last, uh, last year. And it was in November. And it was Reality Capture Networks done by Matt Bird. He's a really good friend of mine, really good advocate in the industry. And Brett came by our booth.

We actually were boothing an allied product at the time. And I saw him, and uh, and Brett had switched over to a company called Penta Engineers. And seeing Brett go from the software industry back to the traditional role of engineering as CTO, I'm like, why did you do that, Brett? [00:09:00] Like You're so valuable for the software side.

Like, have, have you ever considered like coming and working for a software company like Allied? And he's like, Hmm, I might be interested. Let's have a conversation. And Brett, I think that's pretty much how the conversation went. And then within 30 days or, or 45 days, we had Brett Settles on board and it, he's done tremendous things just in the last 11 months this year, uh,

Brett Settles: well, I'm flattered, of course, and yeah, I mean, I started off my career in GIS, surveying and civil, really gravitated towards Revit and BIM, was really kind of put to task during the housing crisis, selling software in a very hurt economy, right? So, low staff, lots of responsibility, which greatly helped my career development. Um, and then got into industrial, uh, CM. So [00:10:00] I was really working with prefabrication from an engineering point of view, and then even a construction, uh, management point of view in the field. In industrial, we're working with large ducks, large kilns, they get shipped on trucks, they're pre assembled, right? It's actually pretty common in that industry, and, uh, the one thing that I had never done is seeing what happens after I order things and when they show up on, on site. And, uh, this job has really not only let me kind of get inside of those doors, uh, but really kind of what I feel like is bringing a fresh perspective on software user experience to a group of people that are experienced in the industry that we serve.

Um, and

You know, I'm, I'm learning pretty rapidly right there. You know, coming in,

I honestly feel like I probably know more about software or conduit vending than I probably should.

Uh, but that's just [00:11:00] how it works out. You know,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Side effect of the job.

Brett Settles: exactly.

Evan Troxel: Brian, maybe you can give us kind of a short story of, of where Allied BIM has come from to get where you are now, just to give people a bigger understanding of what, because Allied BIM, I mean, obviously you're, you're focused on BIM. Right. And so maybe give us an idea of,

of the transition, what, what, where you've been and then what you're transitioning into currently or have been working on.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, in 2004, I started, uh, actually at Santiago High School in Southern California, uh, which was not too far from where you were. I believe you were in Ontario, uh, working for a firm down there. Um, but what was interesting is we, we learned Revit 6. 0 and I was in Bill Brown's class, uh, was my high school teacher and I loved Revit the moment that I opened it.

Like, it was just a, a great, uh, It was fun. Uh, I grew up a huge video gamer and got into Revit and I'm like, I'm, I'm [00:12:00] being paid to play video games now. And, uh, what I didn't realize at the time until I went through architecture school and ultimately moved to Montana, uh, I'm an alum from Montana State University with a master's of architecture and going, going to Montana and what I didn't understand was the connection of what was beyond the traditional blueprints for architecture and engineering, right?

And so I saw this ad, ironically enough, this was 2014, in a newspaper, okay, and I, I, I see this little, uh, clip that says, Hiring Revit MEP Specialists, and I'm like, that's interesting, because I happen to be in a building systems class, and I feel really uncomfortable with building systems right now. It would be, what better way to learn mechanical electrical plumbing systems than using Revit, which I love to do, and learning how to model it.

And so, uh, Go in, go in for an interview. I meet Bob Harvey, who's now my business partner and I interviewed with him and I [00:13:00] found out his wife was a professor actually at my college and I initially declined the job because I didn't want to get, I didn't want to get like a conflict due to the fact that, you know, I'm in school and I'm working for your husband type thing and, uh, he called me back and he goes, I don't care about that.

Come work for me. Like just, just come work for me. Bear in mind, I was not heavily in the industry yet. I was more or less just like a student, you know, doing some architecture jobs, you know, very, very basic drafting stuff. And what Bob started to proceed to do was explain his vision for how a model should connect to a specialty contractor.

And what was enlightening about it was the amount of volume in just supplies, the amount of volume in materials, the amount of waste in materials. Uh, the, uh, the general complexity of the projects that they were doing. And at the time in 2014, when we were modeling with system families, if you open up like a [00:14:00] Revit MEP system family for an ELBO, and you'll, you'll see that the connectors just don't work.

Like you can't get linear cuts. It's not a fabrication element. And so coincidentally enough, uh, and total fate, I think, and, and it was, it was just sheer coincidence. 2015 they roll out MEP fabrication parts inside of Revit. And at that moment they had adjusted these connectors to be able to actually lego fy your building.

Like you could actually like go coupling to pipe to coupling and it knew what the distances were because it was spec driven, right? It was driven off of the actual product specification. And the light bulb went off right there. I'm like, this is incredible. Cause he, my first task was, Hey, draw this. So my guys can build it because I have to draw these isometrics and I have to explain it.

And I've got 40 plumbers and I tell one plumber to do it this way and this plumber to do it [00:15:00] that way. And they all do it 1500 different ways. And how do I want, I want to create consistency for better quality. And so, um, Kind of speeding this story up a little bit, what was interesting is as the tools began to evolve, my comprehension of their specialty trades started to evolve.

And so I was working with master plumbers and they would explain, okay, this is how this all goes together. And I'm, I'm just a dumb old architecture student, right? Like I'm just designing buildings. And what they were doing was they were teaching me how to construct the MEP system. And so as I learned how to do that, we were able to, um, Bob came into my office in 2016.

He goes, Hey, I'm thinking about buying this linear positioning system. I'm like, what the heck is that? He's like, well, it goes on the back of a saw and there's some automation on it. And I was like, that would be amazing. Cause I can give you the list and then we could go cut it. Right. And so, uh, we, long story short, [00:16:00] we bought that, we got the equipment in place and we realized major deficiencies with it.

We're like, I got to export an Excel file. I got to tell Johnny in the back, like, Hey, you know, you're going to cut this list. And Johnny doesn't know how to operate a computer. And he's like overwhelmed. He's like, I'm just going to pull a tape measure and cut it. Um, and so I got to see that and I went up to Bob one day in 2017 and I said, let's develop our own solution.

We tried other gen one solutions on the market at that time. And I said, You know, let's, let's build our own product, which at the time I had no idea what I was doing. I was like, I, we just need to build our own software to do what you want it to do. And so we ended up hiring out a development team. We ended up building out the process and kind of building the initial framework.

Bear in mind, this was all strictly for Revit. And so what we ended up doing is in 2019, Forge [00:17:00] rolls out. And I'm like General Akbar from Star Wars. I'm like, this is a trap. This is a nightmare. Like, it's going to ruin my Revit tools. You know, here, here we go. Well, I met with Jim Quancey at Autodesk and he goes, Brian, it's not a trap.

It's actually a great product and we're building it for this purpose. And we want to learn more about why you're building what you're building and how we can incorporate it into, into this whole APS life cycle. And so, uh, 2020 pandemic hit. Um, I ended up kind of going to Bob and, and we're like, you know, well is drying up.

We, we got to go present this and pitch this and let's start going the VC route. And we start going the VC route and we ended up raising 2. 25 million in a seed round. And, uh, that really helped us get the traction that we needed now. So we're now, we're, we're doing very well at Allied [00:18:00] and it allowed us to bring on Brett and we've fully evolved the system to be a web based fabrication workflow platform where now we can take a Revit model from design, whether it's conceptual all the way through fabrication ready, directly out to the machine.

Evan Troxel: And you have like, no, that's cool. I, I, I think what one thing I, I even want to expand on it because when you say like, you machine ready, like you, you showed me,

and and we're gonna have a link to a separate video that you're

gonna put up that

shows people what that actually means because it's

more than just like, file export.

Right. And so take a second and just talk about what that actually means, because I think it actually puts you in the shoes of, or at least it gives you a footing in the

shop when you're actually building these cutlists and you're, you're working in this interactive model, but you're

also directly connected to [00:19:00] the shop to see the output, which then in four, I would assume informs kind of both

sides of that equation so that you get a tighter. Connection,

not just between the, the transfer of data, but also the people who are doing this job.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, no, uh, what was happening in the beginning was the communication breakdown of putting it onto a, uh, USB stick, handing it to them, walking it to the back shop, putting it into the computer and then fighting the computer to organize the list. In fact, not even being able to pack optimize the materials accurately to mitigate waste.

It was just cutting stuff. We, we reached a point where, you know, a tail end of the stick, they were nearly chopping their fingers off on the saw just out of the box. Right? And so, Leading and segwaying into what you're talking about, Evan, where we've gone model connected to machine. Now the design modeler can publish for fabrication, link the [00:20:00] machine to the actual model that they're going to be building from and translate and organize the data in a way that's safer, more efficient, less wasteful, and just overall faster.

We're seeing an eight X improvement speed over. what a traditional thumb drive export is. And let's face it, we all hate exporting and importing data. It's the worst thing ever, right? So oh, sorry, Brian.

Brett Settles: Well, one of, one of the things that I was going to bring up, and I think it's so important with software, and it's something that I kind of bring across most of my jobs with me, and it's something I remember really vividly from doing it, is context switching, right? This, no matter what job you do, the idea of saying, all right, I've got this, shut this system down, now open it back up in this system. It is a very jarring experience, no matter what you're doing, and so whenever we were [00:21:00] tackling, you know, coordination software, we focused on where is the context switching and how do we make that smooth handoff? And I think fabrication and its link to the BIM world suffers from that greatly right now. And the more you smooth that out, in addition to reduce the menial tasks that people do,

uh, the more value you get,

right? So,

um, and there's a lot of opportunity for that here. So we're kind of taking the low hanging fruit first,

and, and then, you know, working our way up that tree.

Evan Troxel: And you, you talked about kind of this idea of, I'm going to put context switching even in context because, you talked about workflows earlier, right? And so the idea, like, in an architectural workflow, there's a lot of context switching, right? It's like, I'm going from this tool Export, Import into this tool, Export, Import, like wait, like there's all, all these different context switching things that are going on because, you know, when, when I, back, [00:22:00] back in the day, right?

It's like we had to wait

for a certain thing.

You had to wait for the thing

to export. You had to wait for Photoshop to, to, Pre process the image

before it could actually process the image. You

remember that in

Photoshop, we had, we had like a progress bar for like what it was, it was thinking about what it was going to do before

the real progress bar of

actually doing what it was going to do when you applied the

filter or whatever, or preparing to save.

That's what I'm thinking of. Photoshop used to tell us it was preparing to save.

Brett Settles: to save.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Um, but, but then even rendering, like it used to take hours. Right. And so, and so to your

point

about like keeping this workflow in.

Like, I don't know what you would call it. It's just like this one system,

Brett Settles: Like a stream.

Brian Nickel: keeping it connected,

right? Like there, there's so many disconnects from design, even, even on the receiving side of a specialty contractor from the design side. there's a lot of rework,

constant rework that's done, right?

And that's all driven based on, you know, that [00:23:00] particular, particular specialty contractor that's going to put whatever content they build into their model.

Um, but the moment that you can start to control that connection between what has been published versus what is being produced and, and connect that back to the models to give the designer a status of progress. You can now accelerate that production. An example of this was Williams Plumbing and Heating in Bozeman.

They were doing 10 model assembly spool drawings, which for those viewers that are listening, or for the audience, a spool drawing is really just a fabrication drawing. So for somebody to be able to have instructions like a Lego sheet to build. So they'd get 10 assemblies or 10 Lego kits to build. and what we were able to do by creating that connection was accelerate it on day two to 20, on day three to 40, and on day, uh, four, they were like, okay, we're ready to go 80.

We're going to just do [00:24:00] 80. And that's where we get our 8x production number from, is them accelerating the number of spool books or spool fabrication drawings that they can produce. And, and so it's all about that connection, really.

Evan Troxel: But then, but then the other kind of side effect of that, like, how is it possible? I mean, and I'm just kind of stepping back and from a manufacturing standpoint

for a manufacturer to say, let's go eight times faster and

it's safer like that. That's just gotta be kind

of a, another level of disconnect.

It's like

how's that

even possible?

Brian Nickel: Yeah. And, and that's a really good point that you bring up. They're like, you're so full of shit. Like there's no way that you're going to be able to make it 8X faster and safer. And it's like, no, we actually are controlling a work cell, which enables us to have a less skilled worker operate it.

It actually attracts the less skilled worker to the trades where we have a massive trade shortage right now. You know, I ask, I do a poll, I [00:25:00] teach at Montana State University in my Revit class. Um, I teach the construction engineering technology students. I do a poll. How many people are familiar with the trades?

On average, I have about 75 to 100 students a semester. I average about 5 students that even know what the trades are. And so, what I do as they go through my Revit class is I kind of explain, you know, here's the options that you have to you. Here's why it's so attractive to check it out.

And with, with that, it's like now we've made the machine safer.

We're using a machine that's easier to teach somebody than it is to even pull and read and interpret a tape measure to mark with a sharpie. Because now they can punch in the dimension that they want and the system does it on its own. And it's less hands on. Um, so in a traditional shop, you've got guys out like skill sawing or using a chop saw.

That's a lot of manual labor. With these fully automatic machines, you literally push a [00:26:00] foot pedal and it does it on its own, and then it advances it on its own. So now you're not having to pull a tape, set a backstop, pull a tape, set a backstop, and advance. I remember from my woodworking class how frustrating that was, right?

And so, to your point, Evan, it's all about the safety. the training of the skilled trade labor, like being enticed to want to come work in the trades, right? Because now we've got this digitally connected system. Um, and it's, it's, it's pretty interesting. Brett, you can probably add a little more to that as well.

Brett Settles: Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, I have been connected in my life with people that have worked in a more traditional manufacturing environment, right? And, and I've been in those shops, not near as much as I've been in these sort of contractor AEC shops. And, you know, there's a couple big things that you guys bring up.

One is the safety. In order to use a brake press in some of the shops I've been in, you have to be standing on a pad and push two [00:27:00] buttons with both your hands, right? Meaning that you have no extremities available to get stuck. in the machine, right? There, it is not possible. Uh, as to where you make a site visit, like what we did last week, there's nothing wrong with what was happening, but the opportunity for injury is, is higher because of the nature of the tools being used. Skill saw in hand. You know, dusty floor, um, situations that are very common in construction. And so, what we learned is, is, uh, in the visit we just made, you can actually prefabricate your cuts and add two people back to the labor crew building and remove them from the dangerous situation.

Um, and keep that all in, in one workflow,

uh, and so it's really an organizational value proposition that has to be explained in multiple [00:28:00] ways because it gives everyone value,

um, not to get too sidetracked there, but hopefully that kind of,

uh, helps kind of our thought process there.

Evan Troxel: That's super interesting to kind of think about the business that you're actually affecting, right? Like, you're not just affecting process. You're actually affecting the way that they can conduct their business from a labor standpoint and where those labor units are applied in the shop versus out on the site, doing installation versus that prefabrication.

I think that's really interesting. And so, like, just building on that, Theme for a minute what tell me like how those conversations go like you just said you had to explain you usually have to explain It multiple different ways what what do you hear is kind of the

objections and the pushback throughout that process?

And and that you're kind of overcoming through that conversation. I

Brett Settles: you know, usually, uh, I have, uh, uh, two conversations with almost all [00:29:00] clients, depending on, and this goes for a lot of different verticals, GCs, subcontractors, and the two conversations are first with the technical team, what are we trying to achieve from a technical standpoint? And then the second is this a buy in from the people that are actually doing the work. Um, and those are two very different conversations, right? The first one is a very advanced, lots of acronyms being thrown around, lots of terminology that if you're not in this industry, you're not going to understand what we're talking about, right? As to where when we go to the field, Brian and I went to a field visit last week, and I, you know, we met with the superintendent.

We said, um, you know, just explain to us, you know, what's the most important thing to you? And he said, going fast, speed, you know, safety is always number one concern, but second to that is speed, right? Um, yes, he did say safety [00:30:00] first. I reversed it on him, but, uh, you

It was one of those things where we thought it was going to be a very technological process,

and it turned out to be a very simple one, where he said, all I need are these certain types of parts marked and cut and labeled and brought out to site.

We will do everything else that will accelerate our process. and

so, does he understand that assemblies are being created, files are being processed? Uh, you know, we're post processing PDFs into the parts that he's getting delivered. He knows none of that. All he knows is that he's going to get a package that tells him where those parts go. And that was where he was like, oh, that's nice.

Brian Nickel: What they want, Evan, is they want the big, fat, red, that was easy button, and that's what we're trying to build in the platform to make it simple for them to use to where they don't need to necessarily know what's happening on the, [00:31:00] happening on the backend.

They're just getting the lists and the files and the organizations so that they can produce and build the building faster.

Brett Settles: Brian and, and, oh, go ahead, Evan, I was gonna say it makes sense that you want it on the surface to be simple and you want it to be approachable and intuitive and, you know, it feels good and the complexity is below the surface and it's difficult to build software and processes that are actually like that, right? I mean, I'm sure you've gone through a

Evan Troxel: lot of iterations to actually get to that point.

Like,

what do you

put on the surface? what

do you hide below the

surface?

So that That overwhelm doesn't happen.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, what the hardest part was, was realizing that we're,

so when we segued at Harvey's from building it internally for a company to selling it to other companies, that was the most difficult thing for us to overcome is you build something initially [00:32:00] for your operations and it has purpose for the internal operations.

But how do you blow the lid off of that and make it accessible to everybody? And we've successfully done that because we learned through trial and error how to do that. And one of the best parts was once we built that web environment, it became understandable of how it was all going to tie into where we didn't have to worry about what parameters were in the Revit model anymore.

We can now map data through our platform to the equipment that we've built on the back end. And that's what's really powerful about it. I mean, Brett brought up the tube bending side. Uh, the CNC tube benders, I showed a video just a few moments ago. Um, but the CNC tube benders are traditionally built for the aerospace industry.

So like SpaceX, um, NASA, like JPL, those kinds of companies typically use this and automotive. And those companies are batch [00:33:00] producing the same part over and over and over again for each air, aircraft. In our world, we're building new buildings over and over again, but it's nothing but variation. No two projects are the same unless they're actually the same, right?

And even, even then, I would say 95 percent or more of all projects are constantly different, done by different people. And so one of the other battles that we've built into the layer is we were able to make this machine handle, and all machines that we work with, handle that variation. with our construction industry.

So now it doesn't matter if it's building the same part over and over again, or if you

have 150 million different parts.

Evan Troxel: Interesting.

Brett Settles: What's interesting about that is, is that is also a requirement of that, and the ability to act on variation very quickly is a result of the [00:34:00] connection to the model. If we go back to the beginning of our conversation, when Brian was talking about, you know, generating a USB and taking it to a saw, well, at the point where that USB is put into your hand, anything on that model that changes.

is is unknown to you,

right? Um, in this environment,

it doesn't

feel different. You're still getting a cut list,

but that cut list can be changed based on decisions made that are out of your control and further up the process.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I want to go back to that easy button idea, um, because I think that a lot of things that fabrication struggles with is the design

side, not understanding what a model that is ready for development is. fabrication really means.

I've heard this from, on the, on the timber side, on the, on the, you know, Greg Howes over at Cut My [00:35:00] Timber, he, he's talked about that a lot, like the, just the, the, vocabulary of the design side isn't there, the knowledge on the design side isn't there, the understanding of how the tooling works, what the processes are.

And so I'm just wondering, like, when you are bridging the gap, Between design and fabrication. Talk about kind of, okay. So, so you're, you're intentionally keeping stuff below the surface. You're bringing stuff up so that people can see certain

things, but you're really talking about

that from. The, the operator side at the moment, right?

You're talking about the fab shop, but from the design side, talk

talk about it from that direction too. And like

what architects and design teams need to know about the process that they are, because

I

think they think it's an

easy button. They actually

assume the easy button already exists and I'm just chucking this model over the fence and it's all

good. And that's,

that's not the case, right?

Brian Nickel: No, it's, it's actually interesting that you bring this up because my thought process on this has changed so many times over the last couple of years. I was a really disgruntled architecture student coming out of [00:36:00] school. I was disgruntled because my mindset was we're going to be the master builder.

We're going to know everything that goes into the building. We're master designers, right? We know how to master plan and master layout and, and put together construction CD sets that we can convey and get permitted. And we can, it's, that's going to get bid through the GC and they're going to go build that project.

And, um, what we've seen and what we've done really well with our platform is once it goes out to the subcontractors, they're the master of their craft in

installing those things. And that creates a nice separation. Um, because now in a modeling standpoint, you know, starting with system families where you're going through and you're doing spaghetti, right?

Like you're just modeling, you know, generic sizes, doing your collision detections, just validating that things are going to fit and systems are going to go. I look at it more kind of like the Russian dolls, like stacking dolls concept, where [00:37:00] it's like, you know, architect gave us, you know, the whole set, we're going to take that one off and drill in a little bit further.

We're going to drill in a little bit further to that. And then eventually, you know, you've, you figure out how they've all stacked together, right? And I think, um, what we've seen and what we've been able to do is, Revit has regulated and controlled that to some degree. The specialty contractors that are using Revit didn't have the tools ten years ago

to make a manufactured model, right?

And over the last decade, there's been solutions that have come out and the industry's really evolved into creating higher level precision models. The problem is the time that goes into build those models, fighting Revit, and how large those models are. And so the, the exciting part about the web for us is it no longer even has to be modeled technically in Revit.

We can actually digitally manufacture, you know, from a [00:38:00] model that's generated in the web. And so that, that's kind of exciting because if I could take the blueprints and the, the engineered models that are, call it, you know, um, magnified level or magnified level of detail, right? It's not microscopic level, it's just magnified a little bit.

We've got enough detail in there. Um, and then make it microscopic through an upload and process it and generate it and fabricate it. That's really where this industry's headed is, you know, with all this, for better or worse, adoption of AI, you know, there is the opportunity for us to publish, generate, and manufacture.

Right? So, just kind of, it's, it's changed where in our today's, today's,

It's Plan, Design, Send a Model, Receive Model, Remodel, Fight Revit, Export,

Evan Troxel: You forgot to fight [00:39:00] Revit in the earlier part too.

Brian Nickel: I should've put it earlier, Fight Revit.

Evan Troxel: That's

at

Brian Nickel: do love Revit. I do love Revit, but we fight it a lot.

Brett Settles: You know,

I talk about this with clients all the time, and I first recognized it when I stepped into the construction industry, when I realized that the models that were being used were generally authored by the subcontractors and not the designers. When early in my career, I always thought the subcontractors model would be an evolution of the design model, not A complete rework. of the design model. And what we've discovered over the years, and I'm not talking anything that anybody doesn't know, Is that there's now, uh, and I've, I've used this comment in other parts of the industry. There's essentially a sub economy of, of, of tools that float in this space of taking an engineered, uh, detail, an [00:40:00] engineering level detail model and taking it to something that can be built. Um, that was never addressed in the native software. And there is now a whole bunch of tools that do that on top of Revit. But as technology has gone on, now we're questioning of, is Revit the base, the best place? And we'll use some base level AI talk here, and, and,

Brian Nickel: Very base.

Brett Settles: Preface this, this could absolutely be described as rule based automation. If I'm an engineering person, and I say, I want 50 foot of conduit, Right, point A to point B, from this box to this box. Everybody in this project knows that that's going to have to be chopped into five 10 foot sticks and couplings are going to have to be placed there. Everybody, the engineers, the construction workers, the, the, everybody. But we still have to go into Revit [00:41:00] and say, cut it here. What coupling do you want? I want this coupling. Put it here.

Why? Right? Those are all things that we all know has to happen. And, and when we look at like rule based AI type stuff, those are the types of things I think that us as an industry should be looking at is, is that the things that we all know is going to happen and, and leave the hard stuff to the people. Um, and, and so that's why that part of the industry is big in flux is because there are tools to fit that gap. But they are very human driven.

Brian Nickel: One follow up point to that, that you made Brett, that kind of relating it to the architecture industry. Do you remember when like Lumion came out for the I love that.

And, and they're like, they're like, how can we make rendering sustainable? Right? Do you remember when we were spending all of our budget rendering

and then Lumion came along and then it gave us more budget to actually focus on the [00:42:00] model?

Right? went from eight tower PCs running a whole weekend to running Lumion in 15 minutes to achieve the same results.

Exactly. And, and that's what we want to do for the fabrication industry. It's that same concept is like, instead of spending, you know, 90, 000 hours or whatever it is, you know, a hundred thousand hours, what, whatever it may be on a project, modeling, modeling, modeling, slicing every coupling, you know, let's spend more time manufacturing and getting awarded more projects so that we can build more buildings and sell more buildings.

Right. Right.

You know, these guys that we met with last week are building massive data centers all throughout the United States. And, um, what's exciting to me about it is not only is our core principle of automating the trades to build more buildings, but the buildings that they're building are actually powering the system that we're relying on to build the software as well.

So it's, it's kind of [00:43:00] exciting to see that kind of transpire.

Evan Troxel: It is interesting to me to think about it from the standpoint of the complaints that I was hearing about like the design team doesn't know enough to be effective in on the design side before it gets thrown over the fence and then it magically works itself out. But the reason it magically works itself out is because the trades are doing a deep dive, rebuilding everything from scratch because they have the expertise, right?

It totally actually makes sense because Revit, Any CAD, any hand drawing, for that matter, was design intent, right? Architects think in assemblies, they don't think in components, for the most part, right? Floors, Ceilings, walls, we think in categories. I mean, if you want to think about it that way, right? And, and uh, and, and it always made sense.

I rem remember when I started off when it was on paper and it was like MEP was single line [00:44:00] diagrams, right? Electric. It was single line diagrams. Like there was no way. All of that information needed to get front loaded onto the designer. Number one, they didn't know what those pieces and parts needed to be, because we're not component experts. But number two, like,

a lot of that was

just actually figured out in the field. There was no Prefab like point on the

timeline. Right.

Brian Nickel: the art of the trade.

Evan Troxel: it was the art of the trade and, and, and you could rely on that. And that, and that was part of like the handshake that happened there. And it was, it wasn't adversarial, right?

It was, it was like a necessary piece of the puzzle stepped in when they needed to be there. And what I'm hearing from you guys is like, that's actually still possible here because the, like, I shouldn't as a Revit operator need to know. that the EMT needs to cut down into 10 foot sections. And we need to use this coupling, which is specified here from this pull down menu, and I got to pick it and all that.

No, like that's what software is [00:45:00] really good for. Right. And, and that to me is actually reassuring. That we can actually make even simpler front end design software that is a joy to use, which everybody knows the current software is actually not a joy to use, right? It's, it's with that, we've talked about fighting it, right? Um, and, and, and we see a lot of potential in that part of the industry right now with people who are developing some really incredible stuff. But, but the reason is, is like, that's because our value is not in doing that deep dive that early. Like it's great if it would be great if the software said, Hey, red flag right here. Um, something, you need to address something, but I don't necessarily need to know what those things are until I need to know what those

things are, right? I mean, so, I mean, am I, am I talk, is this crazy talk or are you nodding your

head in agreement like,

Brian Nickel: it's, I

live it, I wear it every day. I lost all my hair from pulling it out using those tools, right?

It's like, it's like how many times have we sat there and we've just been like, Oh my gosh, [00:46:00] why do I have to do this again? Right? It's, it's, it's, it totally makes sense what you're saying. And what I, what I'm really enjoying about this conversation is, From your perspective, Evan, I'm actually thinking about it in a different way than I have prior to this.

And it's, so it's, it's really exciting for me because, you know, hearing your thought process on it, and then you're, you're kind of more on that design side out to construction. We're kind of more on that specialty side. And what the software providers have been doing is they're kind of stuffing that and forcing these architects and engineers to learn the constructability side, but it just doesn't need to happen.

Right? We can allow the software to do that translation for us. And that's kind of the exciting part about what Brett and I are building here.

Evan Troxel: But that sounds like a very recent development, right? Like

that the software and the hardware have kind of come together at this moment of like really great [00:47:00] capability

to be able to do that. Because I think that was just a big cloudy mess for a long time.

Brian Nickel: Totally. I mean, just the amount of, we've done several pivots as most startups have. Um, our last pivot was probably about two years ago, prior to building the electrical segment out. And, uh, I gotta give major credit to Kyle Sponseller from CNR Electric, cause he came in as this, really young, but a master electrician, professional engineer.

So not only did he know how to design it, but he also know that he also built it. Right. So he's kind of that master electrician that knows how to build it. And so his, he kind of informed the process. He's like, let's mark the material. Let's cut the material in an automated fashion. Let's bend it automatically.

Let's reduce it down. Uh, in some of the examples that we show online, you know, the bends on 4 inch [00:48:00] EMT that are going into data center work take about 15 minutes to do it the manual way, the traditional way. And with the automation, we can do it in less than 15 seconds per bend. So it's pretty wild to see, you know, that translation.

What that translates to me is being able to do more projects, do more bends, produce more work. So,

Evan Troxel: curious, like, how, so, so, I mean, there's been conversations led by, uh, software companies previously about retooling AEC, and this is really the C side, right? The, and, and you even have kind of the pre construction side, if we're talking about prefab, kind of, offsite fabrication, right?

So talk about that side of it and how, what the appetite is for retooling the trades, because now you're actually talking about less people running the machines, the machines are way smarter, you [00:49:00] have a lot less waste, you have less in like, there's all of these things kind of

floating around that conversation, but how does that, how, what is the appetite for that conversation?

Brian Nickel: when we came into this showing the

moonshot, which was the whole entire work cell, which is like auto marking, auto cutting, auto bending, we're asking for a pretty substantial investment into equipment to retool that shot. You know, they're, they're looking at a work cell that's anywhere from 650, 000 to 1.

2 million, depending on what they put into it. These guys are used to using, you know, 881s, 555s, 747s, and a hand bender. All of the tools that range from 100 to 8, 500, upwards of maybe 30, 000 to 50, 000, depending on what they type of machine they're using. And so what we've had to do and what Brett [00:50:00] pointed out, which I think was absolutely brilliant is we've had to actually scale the product back to what the existing trades do today.

So now there's an option. Are you a manual shop? Do you do manual work? Great. We have a tool for you. Hey, are you a semi automatic shop? Yes, I am. I use a little bit. I want to, I want to start with cutting. I want to start with marking. We have a way to do that. And then there's the whole, you know, like big end goal of manufacturing, like a manufacturing work cell for electricians.

And we have that too. And so it's interesting because you, as you're developing your product, you know, we were very visionaries. Like as the founders were, you know, we're like, we need to get out Go all the way,

Yeah. Go all the way here. And then people are like, you're absolutely out of your mind. You're all the way out there.

Like what's.

What's going on? Uh, and then we've met, you know, we've, we've actually, we're currently working with the [00:51:00] top 50 in our, uh, 100 electricians and we're in about 10 to 15 percent of those currently today. And what's wild is, um, we, as Brett came on board and Brett can speak to this, as he started to scale it back, It's been easier to kind of lay out the breadcrumbs to get them into understanding how there's a bigger picture to do full automation.

Evan Troxel: Before you

jump into that, Brett, cause I, I want, I want to hear that. I just want to add one, one extra thing is that

I, to me, what this seems like it would do for you is help you build relationships with your customers because you're

not just going all the way. It's like, let's start here.

And then once you're ready, we can go to the next step.

And then once you're ready, we can go to the next

step. That seems to me like a much more sustainable business

model, right? For, for Allied.

Brian Nickel: We're not, we're not just giving them a platter and saying here feast, right? Like, it's like

we're going in there and listening and [00:52:00] understanding what their pain points are. We're responding to those pain points in our development. and making that development suitable for anybody so that we can build a better relationship over time.

This trip to Atlanta at England and Stubbs last week was one of the most eye opening experiences because they truly understood, Hey, we're not ready to cut right now. We don't want to deal with cutting. We just want to start with the bender, right? Let's get the bender rolling. And After we finish the bending work, so they're like, okay, you've proven the bender works.

Let's get the cut stations rolling.

Let's let's let's automate

Evan Troxel: next step, right?

Brian Nickel: Yeah Mm hmm

Brett Settles: just as forward thinking, same exact industry, and they chose to go the other way where they're like, we're going to saw, we're going to cut and mark first and we're going to bend the old way. And, uh, they are now [00:53:00] like, okay, let's get these vendors going. Um, you know, there are two big, big things I'd like to touch on over that conversation arc that you guys had. Uh, one is that do we get pushback in certain areas of the country, uh, that say, hey, you're kind of encroaching on jobs or something of this nature. Yes, people brought that up, but there's a couple of things.

There is a skilled labor shortage, and what that requires is, is for the industry as a whole to market to young people and their interests, right? However, that may be, and I'm not a marketing expert, but I can tell you that whenever I go to career fairs, if I stick to we're electricians, we or, you know, we're industrial engineers, we break up rocks. You know, people walk on by, but if I have a VR headset and an interactive way for [00:54:00] them to engage with the type of work that they're doing, then you get that engagement. So, there's one aspect of getting new people on, but then there's the other aspect of that same skilled shortage, in that we don't have 50 electricians running around that know how to do all this stuff. Um, we have much less than we have ever had, and we also don't have a good entry level position for people in this industry. What better than a safety oriented environment to hire an operator to work under a journeyman electrician to learn the ropes of this new, of not only the way electricity is installed in our country and in the world,

But, you know, learn from someone that's got that experience while they still provide value.

Um,

to me,

it seems like a huge win all the way around. And, you know, people that make that leap are finding

that to be [00:55:00] pretty valuable in those regards.

Evan Troxel: You mentioned VR and I know Brian you've got like this really interesting kind of I don't know. I want to call it a workflow, I guess, for the moment, for the meantime, but

explain kind of this, the thing that, like, build on what Brett was just talking about, like the, the type

of software that you've done that's

enabled through the web, but gives you a, uh, a view, a window into the shop itself and, and kind of

this immersive experience that you guys

have created, which is

more than just like, cause I think maybe

what people think is okay,

Revit, is maybe what people

are thinking when they're thinking about what you're talking about, but it's not

that at all.

Brian Nickel: No, a hundred percent. Um, you know, in, in what we,

as we orchestrated and what APS, what Autodesk platform services, like I'm going to plug them. It's a shameless plug for them, but I I'm plugging them because I actually believe in them and they helped us a lot. And what [00:56:00] they kind of showed us was that now that we have all the model data information accessible through this environment, Now we can actually communicate beyond what the generation one set of tools did.

Now we can actually start to create this linkage to the equipment to be able to manufacture. So what I did is I, I, just tried it out. I'm like, I, you know, the MetaQuest 3's out, bought a MetaQuest 3. They're really pretty inexpensive, 600 bucks, right? Um, and, um, throw the thing on, open up a web browser. I opened up our Fabrication Connected software and I was like, wait a minute.

So we have some proprietary software that runs on the machine that I can connect to. Let's see if it connects from the headset. And so I go in and I log into our ring camera on our shop that's up in Bozeman, Montana. Uh, I'm based in Boise, Idaho. So being, you know, at the shop through the headset on the machine is like really important to me because I can [00:57:00] work with it.

I can actually. In the VR environment, I can touch it because it's got hand tracking, so I can actually tap and learn it through the headset. And what it did is it actually, real time, through the internet, ran the machine. It cycled the machine. I was able to load materials from my home office in Boise to the machine there.

Our development team's on the other side of the globe. They're remoting it and controlling the machine digitally now. And so where that all came from was the skilled trade gap. And I know we're, that's a whole nother subject, but I'm going to keep it real simple. I experienced it. My business partner is 60 plus year old master plumber.

Okay. He's retired. He's got 35 years of experience all up here. Okay. How does he teach that emerging generation how to actually use it? , and I believe it's through VR or you know, [00:58:00] these glasses, meta just talked about these new, I think it's called Osiris or something like that, or Iris. Um, but you basically put these glasses on and it's passed through technology that overlays all the screens while you're walking through society.

They're like 10 grand. They're really expensive right now.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, they're

not for sale. Yeah.

Brian Nickel: but I envision

him, I envision these guys popping in. on our headsets and seeing through our eyes on the job site and actually instructing us how to build and model. And as things start to get more intuitive with VR, like imagine being able to open up a toolkit and start modeling out your systems on site, like just with real content and then manufacturing that on the equipment, right?

It's, it's not even. It's not even modeling the building anymore, it's just going out on site and just, here, I want this here. Send it [00:59:00] to the shop, they're going to ship it to the site, I'll install it. Uh, it's, it's wild. So

that's, that's kind of the vision I see with it.

Evan Troxel: the interesting thing to me about that is scale, right? Like, like the, okay, the best case scenario is in person, right? Like you're, you're the, you're the master plumber

and I'm here learning this trade. Let's connect and let's do this. But that doesn't

scale, right? And,

and now with the internet, with technology, with what we're doing right here on this call,

right?

We're

in three different locations. You're also talking about tuning into the shop in Bozeman from Boise

and having direct control over the machines is you've, you've now got this broadcast scenario potential, right? One to many, right? And you have this interaction, but you can have an, a,

A huge number of people tuning in to watch and learn that in real time from the source, from the person who

is the master plumber to do that right there.

I think it's really incredible, [01:00:00] and that you can run all this software from that.

So, is VR magical here in this scenario? Not really, except it enables This whole thing to scale and it enables you to connect from anywhere to

anywhere and

feel like you're actually immersed in the situation Not just watching it on a small screen like on your phone, right?

Brian Nickel: I, it gives me a medium to convey the vision of it

so that someone other than me can build that, like, like, build that platform to be able to communicate so I can get that done, right? Like, we've looked at, like, ResolveBim. Angel say is amazing over there. I think he's probably going to be the one to pull something like this off.

Um, but being able to have that platform that. leverages our data to work with it, to pass it through those systems. We've built the network of fabrication shops. Now we just plug it into that headset and we're ready to roll, right? Or, or even just the network of people that are, that are [01:01:00] fabricating. So it's, that's moonshot.

Always have to scale it back to reality that we're using tape measures and sharpies, right? So, Gotta scale it before we can get there, but, uh, it's, it's just an interesting way of us being able to convey that vision.

Evan Troxel: It's a cool, cool thing. Brett, I have a question for you being the product manager for this and just talking about kind of why you guys chose the web. I know there's a lot of kind of, there's both sides to that argument, right? Doing it on machines versus in the cloud or on the

web. And I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on that side of it. And what that's enabled you guys to do.

Brett Settles: Yeah, the, the interesting thing is, is that the decision on the WebSocket was actually developed before I got here. However, it was new. So, while it wasn't necessarily my idea, it was thought of by Brian and Kyle, it is something that I immediately recognize is extremely valuable and something that me personally, um, [01:02:00] I have a unique perspective on a lot of my projects because, you My projects that I worked on were always prefabbed, very far away from where they were being built, shipped to where they were being built. And one of the things is, is solving the problem of localization for a prefab operation. and and what I mean by that is, is that if you wanna scale prefabrication the easiest. And, and I'm sure there's someone out there that has done this, but I'm sure it's very difficult to prefab one large project from three to five addresses,

right. So, you know, you get a project, you're doing something like a, you know, a 20 story hotel, um, and you've got three 5, 000 square foot shops, not a 25, 000 square foot shop. So, The first thing you got to do is you got to start [01:03:00] thinking about your resources, right? In a desktop bound environment, the connection between those three shops and the communication is going to be Excel and IT heavy at best. And that's if you have a very good team doing it, right? As to where, with the decision that they made beforehand, It allows it to where everything's automatically labeled, and you cannot possibly step on the toes of each other, even if shop 1 is doing, you know, 1 through 2 inch, shop 2 is doing 2 through 4, and shop 3 is doing 4 and up, in terms of, like, conduit sizes, or, or something of that nature. So, the integration of the data, and the way that the UPCs, the QRs, the package labels sort

themselves out, allow them to be shipped and not confused. I think it's something that's often overlooked about the difference between [01:04:00] desktop and web based software, mostly because No,

one's tried that yet,

or, or has tried it on a large scale. So we'll see how that goes over the next few years. I have high hopes, but you know, I've been wrong before, but we'll see. So that's kind of my take. Brian, am I on, on base

with what you're thinking?

Brian Nickel: what I really am glad that Brett just narrated there is just that

a lot of these shops have three to five different, like, buildings that perform different sequences of

operations. Like, one might be mechanical, one might be electrical, one might be plumbing, one

might have electrical split up between, you know, different sizes all the way out to different racking systems.

And the beauty of that web environment and answering your question, Evan, about like why we chose web is we have an internet system, right? So because every shop has a computer, it's much easier for a guy to open up a web [01:05:00] browser and create a simple interaction than it is to have him download and install and find his serial code to install a C sharp desktop application, right?

Right. And so what we've done is we've simplified it on different medians to where they can run it on the iPad, they can run it on their iPhone, they can run it on just a standard computer. And now, now that all those stations have been identified, it's rolling out a map of all of those workstations for an overall metric system to be able to understand what's happening at each work cell, at each machine.

Um, And it gives us data that traditionally is lost through that export. When, the moment you export a model, you've immediately just like vomited, you know, all this information that has no traceability, right?

And

Brett Settles: You know,

Brian Nickel: even if, you can import it, there's data loss, right? And it's just a nightmare, right?

This is [01:06:00] all connected. It all communicates. There's no data loss. It's all being put into one central core.

Brett Settles: and Brian, I mean, the only reason I was going to jump in there, and I'll be real quick, right? Like, classic problem in our industry,

uh, hey, BIM changed something. What'd they change? Disassembly.

Well, it's sitting right there.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Already made it, Yeah.

Brett Settles: So like, what are we going to do? This is a huge solver of that problem.

And that was really the only point I wanted to bring up there.

Evan Troxel: And again, I just want To kind of, like, I'll give you a moment to, and we'll have a link to a video where people can actually see the Allied BIM. Connection, like what that actually means, but it's, it's more than a spreadsheet. Like it's, it's a 3d interactive. You're clicking on, or maybe in VR touching parts, spinning models. To fully understand what is being sent to the [01:07:00] fabrication shop, right? Like there's, there's a level of fidelity there to give me the peace of mind that what has been modeled or, or maybe what is the intention of, of the design. Is actually being

sent to the shop. I get to see it and I get some, I get, I can actually see what the parts are and I can look

for red flags because as a human, I have really great pattern recognition by visually inspecting what's going on. Maybe I don't need to go through all of the parts list to on my end to do that, but that due diligence would need to be done on the, on the other side. But it just gives that kind of more accountability

in the system. At a really high fidelity right to enable the best product to be produced in the end.

Brian Nickel: You bring up an incredible point there is that most of these shops are putting out two dimensional paper drawings with a 3d isometric in 2d format on the sheet reference to a schedule on what to cut. And I [01:08:00] can't, I can't tell you how many times we've sent that out

and the guys, there there

Evan Troxel: you can't mess that up

Brian Nickel: he's looking at it and he's like, what does this say?

Like he's got to interpret that drawing now,

right?

And so the beauty of showing the 3D model is the interpretation is through the connection out to those positioners to cut. The interpretation is out towards those generated files to bend. So that interpretation layer goes away. It's more of a QA, QC process of saying, check, that looks correct.

Let's let the work cell do the work.

Evan Troxel: nice nice Very cool. Is there anything that we've missed here? Um, I, I, again, we'll just reiterate, uh, that there will be some links in the show notes that you can click on to watch some videos on the, the types of facilities that you're talking about, but also the software and kind of the interactivity of, of, you know, through the VR potentially, um, you know, as kind of a future statement of, of what it might be [01:09:00] like to work in these, but also

just showing kind of what the software is doing.

What else? Is there anything else that we need to say before we wrap up here?

Brian Nickel: Um, I just like to say, thank you, Evan, for, you know, hosting today and for bringing us on your show. I've been a listener for quite some time. I love the content that you're putting out. Um, really, really appreciate the time that you've gone through our product today and, For anybody that's listening that would like to get in touch with us, feel free.

Brett and I are very approachable. Uh, we, we enjoy conversations just like what we had today. And, and we also like learning about, you know, other ideas that can kind of further and enhance and better our industry together. I mean, this is an allied pursuit, you know, we're, we're building industry alliance status, like with different, you know, disciplines in mechanical, electrical, plumbing.

This is truly a collaborative effort and we can't do it without a network. Uh, it's, you know, this is our [01:10:00] network.

Evan Troxel: Nice. And I

want to give you guys a chance to plug your show too, so I'd

definitely talk about that if people want to learn more and do a deeper

dive into this particular kind of content.

Brian Nickel: Yeah,

I'll let Brett kind of,

Brett kind of came up with FabFab and I, I would love for Brett to kind of explain what we're doing there because it's, it's really exciting, uh, and it's focused on an area of the industry that's generally less understood from the design intent through the fab side.

And I think it gives us kind of a place to, to showcase that. But I want to, I want to, I want Brett to kind of cover that. Thanks

Brett Settles: Yeah,

it was, it was a whole bunch of things that came together. One is that we're a fan of a lot of podcasts. We both watch upwards of three or four a piece, and we truly generally like them. One of the things, uh, that we wanted to do was cover exactly that, [01:11:00] that sort of design intent through the beginning of fabrication, uh, because it's, it's an area that usually you're talking about BIM or you're talking about fabrication.

You're never talking about the interface of the two. Um, and that was something that RCN always did really well, was the interface of BIM and surveying and reality capture, and it's a super important area. Uh, so that is where we kind of like to live. We do it live. A couple reasons we do it live is because we don't have time to edit it, and There are a lot of people that do a much better job than Brian or I could do, so we just don't even try to compete in that area, right?

So we make mistakes, we go live, um, and yeah, I mean, it's just really, it's really based on that interface. And the term FabFab came from [01:12:00] a lot of conversations we had, and it was actually a goofy conversation where it's an abbreviation of Fabulous Fabrication, is essentially what that name means, and it was snappy, it hashtagged really well, uh, all of the internet analysis said that it was a good SEO, Opportunity. And so that is how we ended up with it. And it's fun. We don't do it as often as we would like, most likely because we're chasing funding, you know, but once we

staff up and stuff, we hope to make it a very regular thing and our next episode should have a very important client that has stepped through this process with us. So as long as they agree to come on, our next, uh, episode should be very insightful for anyone that's thinking about doing

Brian Nickel: He has agreed. Um, so Austin

Bruner from England and Stubbs is joining us, [01:13:00] but.

Yeah, the grittiness of it is why we like doing it live. It's like, you know, we're in a shop in a live environment working and stuff happens. And so we, we like to kind of fit that mantra of this is live or human.

Like we're not going to, we just, we're off the cuff. Like if we screw up, it's, we screw up.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Brett Settles: We're still waiting on our first ban. We haven't been banned from anything yet, so that's good.

Brian Nickel: Yes, correct.

Evan Troxel: Well, I will put links to, for people to connect with both of you in the show notes as well. So

they actually can get in contact if they want to learn more or talk through kind of what you've been working on at a deeper level. Thank you both for taking the time today to tell the story of Allied BIM and what you've been up to.

And it's really exciting. I'm, I, I find it. intriguing that you've kind of gone a different direction than a lot of other startups in this space. Like you're going directly to the trades and solving those problems between design and [01:14:00] fabrication, right? And that to me is just a, that, that's a sweet spot for you guys to be in.

Obviously your passion is there. So thank You for doing that and for telling that story today on the show. Yeah. Great to have you.

Brett Settles: Absolutely. Thank you. Evan.

💡These episode briefs provide key insights for forward-thinking leaders seeking innovation in AEC who are short on time, offering the context of each conversation without the need to listen to the full episode. They’re designed to keep you updated, spark your interest, and encourage you to tune in if the ideas resonate.Editor's note: this is a free preview of Leadership Edge. Starting in 2025, these posts will be for paid members only. Become a member to unlock full access and value in 2025 today.

Key Takeaways from episode 170

• Leaders must evaluate the mental well-being of their staff to ensure high-quality output
• Understanding nervous system responses can lead to better team dynamics and decision-making processes
• Technology-assisted mental health solutions are becoming crucial for workplace wellness programs
• Integration of human-centered design with psychological tools can create more effective workplace solutions
• Virtual Reality (VR) technology is emerging as a powerful tool for managing workplace stress and emotional regulation

Catch the full episode

Episode Analysis

In an era where technology drives business transformation, the intersection of mental health technology and workplace performance presents a compelling opportunity for AEC industry leaders. This recent TRXL podcast episode with licensed therapist Jared Anderson reveals innovative approaches that could make a meaningful difference in how we handle workplace stress and team dynamics.

The Intersection of Technology and Mental Health

Anderson highlights how emerging technologies, particularly VR, are becoming instrumental in addressing workplace challenges. For technology leaders in AEC firms, this presents an opportunity to implement cutting-edge solutions that go beyond traditional productivity tools. The discussion reveals how VR environments can provide safe spaces for stress management and conflict resolution, particularly valuable in high-pressure project environments.

Data-Driven Emotional Intelligence

The conversation introduces the concept of “survival imperatives” and how they manifest in workplace behavior. This translates into potential applications for data analytics in understanding team dynamics and improving project outcomes. The development of apps that track emotional states and nervous system responses could provide valuable metrics for team performance and wellness.

Implementation Strategies

For AEC firms looking to stay ahead of the curve, Anderson's insights suggest several strategic initiatives:

• Development or use of apps for individual and team emotional intelligence training and tracking
• Implementation of technology-assisted conflict resolution tools
• Creation of digital spaces for team members to process and manage work-related stress
• Integration of VR-based wellness rooms in office spaces

ROI Considerations

While implementing these technologies requires initial investment, the potential returns include reduced turnover, improved team performance, and enhanced project outcomes. The discussion suggests that firms embracing these innovations could see significant improvements in both employee satisfaction and project efficiency.

Conclusion

The episode underscores the importance of balancing technological innovation with human connection. For technology leaders in AEC firms, this means developing strategies that leverage both digital tools and human expertise to create more resilient and productive workplace environments.

Listen to the full episode for detailed insights on implementing these strategies and understanding the science behind technology-assisted mental health solutions in the workplace.

Catch the full episode