Cove.Tool, A New Era of Architectural Consulting

A Hello, disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. Today, we're excited to introduce a guest who's leading the charge in climate action within the architecture industry. Sandeep Ahuja is the cofounder and CEO of Covetool, an AI first consulting platform that breaks down barriers in the design and construction cycle, creating a new network of shared information, interoperability, and accountability across projects and teams. With over a decade of experience in sustainable design building, Sandeep is widely recognized as a visionary, earning honors like Inc. Top 100 women CEO, Forbes thirty under 30, and speaking on global stages, including the UN Environment Assembly and South by Southwest. Her latest contribution to the fight against climate change is her debut book, Build Like It's the End of the A Practical Guide to Decarbonize Architecture, Engineering, and Construction, which presents actionable strategies to rethink how we design and build in the face of an urgent climate crisis. In this episode, we'll explore how Sandeep is driving innovation and decarbonization from the shift in her company's business model to her bold vision for the role architects and engineers can play in climate action.

A We'll also discuss how emerging technologies can lead the way in transforming our built environment. Let's dive in and welcome Sandeep to the show. Hi, Sandeep. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. Thank you for taking time out of your week to join us.

B Oh my gosh. It is such a pleasure, Evelyn, to be on this podcast to be on this podcast with you. You are making waves, and it's my honor to be here.

A Thank you for that. But don't discredit the work that you are doing, especially in the climate action space and building for a more sustainable and resilient future. Before we get into that, though, how about a little bit of an icebreaker? We just ran through your bio in the intro. Is there anything that you're looking forward to as this year comes to the close or as 2025 gets kicked off?

B There's a lot of things I'm excited about for 2025 and BDS twenty twenty four comes to a close. One of the things is most definitely, you know, continuing to drive change within practices, continuing to grow how firms incorporate these strategies, whether through the book, whether through continuing to develop our AI. We just crossed a significant milestone of over, I wanna say, 2000 architects that are using our AI, so continuing to grow that. So, I mean, we've we've got a jam packed Jan. 0 already.

A Amazing. So you alluded to your book. Let's jump off there. So just earlier this year, I think either Aug. 0 or Sept. 0, your book, Build Like It's the End of the World, was released. That's a really bold title, but I feel like you and Patrick did that on purpose.

B Yeah. I mean, to be completely honest, I I don't think the title is provocative enough. I I really think it's it's the facts because no matter where you are on your politics, no matter how you think about policy, we aren't suddenly going to stop having these twenty year hurricane or climate events every single year. I mean, I cannot stress enough. The ocean has a mind of its own. The air does not care what our policies say. So I believe that this is coming. The science says this is coming.

B So if anything, it's not provocative enough.

A I can get behind you on that. I mean, obviously, you guys have you have a business. You're doing amazing things. You're getting out there and affecting the industry that way. What inspired you to write a book?

B I think the thing that inspired me the most to write a book was truly when I tried to because, again, you know, being a Georgia Tech alum, I, from time to time, will will go on campus, you know, be invited to to host a lecture, be invited to, you know, kinda help drive conversations to inspire the next generation of architects and engineers. And the thing that I noticed is that a lot of the material that already exists is still a tad outdated. No one is truly there. I I believe that there is not actually a book like this that exists that kind of has all encompassing comprehensive view of not only the strategies, but why the strategies matter, what the financial policies are that can help us, how can we talk about it in a way so that we can make this happen. Most of that, even today, except for the book, I believe sits on, I don't know, hundreds of different blog posts that experts have written, hundreds of different YouTube videos. I frankly just noticed a very real gap that needed to be overcome because we need to get very good at this, and we need to do it really fast. And I

A realized that we kind of jumped into the meat of the book without actually giving a further explanation of what is in the book. So do you mind, you know, backing us up a little bit and telling us more about what's inside the build like it's the end of the world book?

B Yeah. For sure. The book itself, the the way that we wanted to position it, me and Patrick, my coauthor on the book as well, we really wanted to look at the entire AEC space as a whole. We didn't wanna focus just on architects or just engineers or just construction experts or contractors. Right? Like, in the financial space and the education space and the owners. Because I really know from having, you know, been firsthand involved on so many projects and having spoken to hundreds and thousands of architects and engineers over the last, I don't know, seven years, that it really does come down to every single person collaborating and everyone has a role to play. The impact of the role can certainly vary, but it truly is a comprehensive plan. And that's what the book does.

B It lays out a comprehensive plan for each project. It talks about the theory, for sure. It talks about why this matters. It talks about the actual data. It pulls in, you know, what the what the financial implications are. Not necessarily hypothetical, but truly, factually, what the financial implications have been, how we can forecast that going forward. And, truly, the goal here is not to make a, let's save the planet because we're so awesome pitch because, again, if that was the pitch that was gonna work, I think it would have already happened by now. The pitch is very much, okay.

B Here's the financial implications of doing business as usual. That's pretty expensive. That's going to make many of our careers not be able to exist in the way they currently do, so let's make a change now proactively kind of pitch. And that's that's really that's really what it's about at its core.

A Yeah. And, I mean, you're speaking to the business operations professional in me that wants to be able to help architects tell the story from a business perspective, right, to their potential clients and why we should be making these decisions. And the other thing that I really love about the book is that you actually lay out strategies that people can implement in their businesses. And you you mentioned you know, I'm looking at the Wiley website right now, and it mentions, you know, it's written for practitioners and it's written for students. Who who can read this book and then kind of take what's in it and go out and apply it the next day? Is it really everybody?

B I mean, most definitely, there are sections that if you're an intern architect and a at a brand new job, you could learn something from it. If you're a principal who's been doing this for multiple decades, there's something for you in the job if you're somewhere in the middle, project manager, whether in engineering or construction or architecture. There is something for you in here. If you're on the real estate side, if you're a developer figuring out how to think about your building, how to actually price some of these changes, it's a good fit. Or if you're a student who's trying to make sure you're set up for the architecture, the design space, the the building construction space that you will likely be exposed to by the time you graduate. This is the way to look at it versus the the view of what was. This is the what is and will be.

A Yeah. I especially liked how you said with the students. I think when people when students when new interns come and ask me how do I find a role that I want, I think by educating yourself. And I feel like this book would give them all the questions they need to be asking about a potential firm they may be joining to see if the firm really does align with the values that they would like to see.

B I mean, that's exactly right. And even more, if they don't let's say they do ask these questions. Right? And they're like, oh, we don't quite think of a lot of these things. It could very well be. It's because they don't know how or they've never done it. So but so long as they're open to this new intern, this new student who's taking their first job can help truly drive the direction and push it because they have the knowledge and access to technology to make some some changes that weren't available to that firm before.

A Absolutely. So you just mentioned technology in response to, like, how we leverage technology in the future. And that's how I first met and heard about you and your cofounder, Patrick, through Cove tool. So can you tell the audience a little bit remind us a little bit about what Cove tool is, and then we'll talk about some recent shifts that you all, have been making.

B Yeah. So at its core, COVIDUL is a business that is focused in every which way to help make our buildings more sustainable. That means lower carbon, better daylight, better financially sustainable so that, you know, they're in budget. So it's all in all focused on making buildings sustainable in all ways.

A And from what I remember my conversation with Patrick is you both have these incredible minds. And a while ago, pre Cove tool, you were running very sophisticated models that it took you both a kind of a lot of time to do. It was hard to do it at scale with a lot of different buildings. Right? So Cove tool was really to take, rather than hiring you and Patrick individually, was really about creating a software that enables more architecture firms to do what you are essentially doing on a limited basis.

B That's, yeah, that that's exactly right. Like, it was my honor to see earlier this year, we had the AIA reporting come out. They published this by the numbers report every single year, and we're the most used software by all architects in The United States by a long shot. I think the next in line was, like, half the square footage of building impacted. So it gives me great pride, and it gives me great gratitude, you know, to to the community around us to be in a position to offer a software, to offer value to all of these, you know, gosh, 70 of the top hundred architecture firms. But that's most definitely how we started.

A So you you mentioned that's how you started. And one of the things that I feel, like, architects have a hard time doing or thinking about from an entrepreneurial standpoint in their businesses is is this idea of a shift or a pivot. So in addition to your book this year, Cove tool also took a little bit of a shift in its business model from, you know, what I would consider more SaaS oriented, which is software as a service, where you're actually trying to sell just a software direct to firms to more of a consulting model. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

B Most definitely. We have gone from SaaS to VaaS is probably the simplest way to say it. Right? Like, as you said, SaaS is software as a service. We sell you software. You use it, and you get a report, and you rock and roll with it. Now VaaS is value as a service, where you tell us what the challenges are that you're facing on your projects, and we help you drive the value for those challenges, and you go win. So it's it's a much shorter way. And the way probably another most comparable way to think about it is is right, like, the difference between Google and ChatGPT.

B You go on Google, you type in a search, you browse through, I don't know, ten, twenty, 30 different things and find the the answer that you're looking for. Or you go to ChatGPT, you ask your question, and you get your answer. It's that AI leverage that we have implemented all across our business that has led to this massive shift where instead of us challenging the architects to learn yet another technology and software and to become experts in yet another thing, it's like, yes, you need to know everything about Unicode and everything about the building regulations, but also now you need to be an expert energy modeler and figure out exactly what it means to meet your local regulations and figure out exactly what it means to go to net zero. And I I think that many architects have answered that call, but I do think that to be able to move at the pace that we need to to make the impact in the global carbon emissions that we need to, we need to get there a little bit faster. And I really think that AI has enabled us to do that through services where everything moves in the entire AEC. That's mostly a services space where everything moves when the project moves, and each outcome and each solution is so customized to each project and its needs. That is exactly what we do now. So the I mean, we're we're part of the AI revolution.

B And, I mean, while we don't talk about it quite as much, I will say that, you know, kind of in the two ways that we leverage AI, one, of course, with our software, which is Betras AI. It's almost like chat GPT. Right? Like, knowledge is curated. You can understand the sources like Unicode, and there's no hallucination. But the second is most definitely our AI enabled services.

A I wanna talk a little bit because Cogtool has been around a while. Right? So even I don't wanna necessarily say pre AI because AI has actually been around a while, whether or not people wanna admit it.

B But the boom's, like, maybe a year and a half.

A Yeah. Definitely, I think people woke up to it most recently. But when did you as a technology company start really investigating that addition to kind of the technology suite you're offering?

B I will say that the first version of machine learning, which I'd say is some primitive way of thinking about AI, you know, before a lot of the large language models were made accessible. Gosh. Our first machine learning algorithms were from, like, five five years ago, and we've really been on this journey of what we were first pushing through purely through automation by, like, let's automate all the regulations. Let's automate this. Let's automate that. But now being able to mash the automation with kind of the variability of AI, I I really think that's where the power lies is because now we're able to take what we already had from a automation standpoint, and we had built the simulation engines to do, and now mesh that in with the complexity of each project. Like project a might be a tiny, I don't know, classroom renovation, and project two might be an entire mass master plan. And both of those problems are very, very different and require very, very different solutions and require us to look at very, very different codes.

B That's really how we're able to now leverage AI to take that next step.

A It's interesting to me when I think about the evolution of your your business model relative to how AI has come up and now this idea of fractional experts right in the space. Because now I think because the buildings, as we know it, have continued to get more complex over time. Right? There's more technology in it. There's more systems that go into our building to support those technology needs. So I I feel like the role of the architects continue to evolve. Right? And and we like to think that we're a jack of all trades, but the amount of information that we have to know to get a building to really, you know, have a first class latest everything new in a in a building. Like, I I don't think we can contain all of that knowledge within the firms. So we're used to working with consultants.

A How do you see the role and you talk about delivering value. How do you help architects not only to deliver immediate value to your projects, but tell the story of the value also to your clients similar to kind of the the business model shaping back to your book, Build Like It's the End of the World. It's really about delivering value not only to them, but also to their clients and to the the end users.

B So for us, I mean, it it really is it's a value chain. Right? Like, everything starts and ends, I believe, in our space with a project. When there is a project, that means there's some financial activity happening, which is someone is investing some money into making something happen. It could be a new thing, a new building. It could be a renovation, but some money is going into something to get some valuable outcome. Now if that is what I start as the premise, the actual financial implications of it, What does the owner need? The owner may have they may or may not have any sustainability aspirations, but they certainly will have aspirations to get the best product for whatever they're spending on it. Right? Like, it could be code compliant for all day care, and that's perfectly fine. But they still want the best version of that product.

B I believe strongly what I have learned from my customers, which is the architects, is that the best version of the product is when the building works together in a holistic way. Right? Like, when it has great daylight or if it has emitted glare, if it has low energy, if it has low carbon. What I have heard from time to time and seen now enough examples having worked on projects is that not all of these necessarily, in fact, 99% of the time, all of these wonderful factors and features of a building that may come across as sustainable, they really are not cost additive. They're really, I mean, if you design it appropriately and if you're thinking about it along the entire project life cycle, they're the same. They're the same cost. In fact, you can be empowered to make better decisions if you're actually running the data. So as a very, very clear example, we recently were running, you know, an embodied carbon study for our client, the architect. So, of course, the clear value to them is that they did not have it was a small architecture practice.

B They did not have, you know, embodied carbon specialists in house, so they leaned on our PhD of embodied carbon researcher, you know, to kind of help them understand exactly what the implications were of the different decisions that they were studying. They were comparing different structural options and, you know, they were able to have the insight to be able to then inform their owners. So the immediate value to them is to, of course, have the insight to provide to their owner and to provide be the value grower for that owner that, hey, look. Aren't you so glad you hired us as the architect? We are giving you this incredible insight that you need for your building. The value, of course, for the owner is that now instead of going one way or the other based on, I don't know, intuition, that feeling, whatever they've done before, they're doing so based upon data. And they can still choose to, you know, make whichever decision that they choose to, but they're doing so in an informed data driven way. So they can feel very, very, very confident that the decision that they've made is in the best interest for them as they currently see all the data at hand. And, of course, my firm belief is that data is the way that we're gonna solve the climate change problem.

B And that is how I believe the the world wins is because we make the data accessible. We make it easy to understand. Our experts break it down. We go sit on client meetings. If the owner asks, oh, why is this number 522? Our consultants will explain why it's 522. And if they come back and are like, oh, we would like to change it, great. We are happy to change it. We will modify it.

B We will customize it for your needs so that you can drive the best decision possible. So while we're not in the business of making decisions, we're certainly in the business of driving better decisions.

A And as a data geek, you can't benchmark anything and see change unless you have the data to kind of prove that it's changing over time. So I really appreciate that as well. How did you make the decision? So when you made the change from SaaS to SaaS, I mean, obviously, there's a little bit difference in, you know, how you're positioning Cove tool to your potential clients. But was there a big difference in the shift of the makeup of who you have on your team? Because you're still very much technology enabled but informed by experts.

B Yeah. Most most definitely. For us, the key difference as it happened on our team was truly the growth and the build up of our entire consulting team. And that is the team that we have grown from ground up with now experts in compliance modeling. I mean, we already always needed, you know, energy experts, carbon experts, daylighting experts to help people drive good decisions through the software. But because now we're truly covering all edges of the project, not just early stage, we're touching pre design gosh. We're touching compliance. We're touching post compliance certification because we're truly touching all ends of the of the project cycle.

B You know, we we grew our consulting arm and, you know, brought on specialists who had experience and expertise within that so that we truly can be that end to end provider, and that's proven to be, you know, quite quite a success. Because for us, it's not necessarily about, you know, maximizing how much you need us. I mean, gosh. So we have no problem telling people that, oh my gosh. What you're asking me is such a simple question. You actually don't need us to do any consulting at all. Here is a sheet of paper that describes exactly how you make your decision. Go go on.

B Go for it. You know, we're we're really in the market. We really exist to solve to solve the problems that need to be solved. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, from a team standpoint, that that is definitely a growth that we did.

A So if I'm a small firm owner or even a large firm owner with a small project, when do I consider bringing you on for a project? And what does that look like for architects to work with your team?

B Let me share perhaps a couple examples to kind of share the breadth in which, you know, folks will bring on our our our consulting services. It's every gosh. Yesterday, we're starting to work on six different compliance energy models for different regions. I think some were in Texas, some were in New York, some were in Jersey, some in California, like, really all over the play place. Right? Like, so sure, the design's basically done. They're like, oh my gosh. Our codes changed. We can't get away with ComCheck.

B We need a compliance model. We're like, great. We're here to help you. We're here to support you. We will do that for you so you can be confident in your design and your decisions. But then we also just started working also last week because, again, while we've only been doing consulting, you know, we have over 60000 projects worth of experience under our belt. And just this year, we've done, I wanna say, a little over a hundred projects. So we're doing this at scale, which just gives us the insight of everything that's going on.

B So or for the other example I was about to share is that, oh, hey. We're in predesign stage. We just met with the owner. Can we bring you on to be our sustainability consultant? And we may go for a lead, we may not go for a lead, but we just wanna make sure that we're driving good decisions. And we're going with them to client meetings, helping inform the decisions, running everything from shadow studies to massing studies to envelope studies to truly figure out the best decisions. It really is the full spectrum of services that one could need for for their design to be successful.

A That's amazing. So I think it depends, like, not on the firm size, I think. Right? It depends just on the the project size and the independent needs of of the project.

B It really is. Isn't that the beauty of architecture, Evelyn? Every project is unique, and every design team is unique is the thing that I've learned. In fact, I will say this. Being the CEO of the most used software in, you know, like, at least by the AI numbers across the board for the types of studies that folks are doing within the software, I can say for a fact very, very safely that software is not something that a % of architects are going to pick up in our space in the near future. They may it may take five years, but it's gonna be too darn slow. So it really has to be kind of a mixed media approach. And in fact, now, every time someone does a consulting project with us, we also give them access to software because why wouldn't we? If there's two people in your firm who are perhaps the more forward leaning and, you know, kind of more tech savvy, give them the software. Do a bunch of the easy stuff yourself.

B Come to our consultants for things that you really truly do need experts for.

A I mean, when you say that, I always people know me to say this. I still know people that pay for Revit, right, but they use it like CAD. So it's not just like paying for the consulting service, which is a great use. Like like you said, you're also getting a piece of software for the early adopters in this space that have a passion to dive into and to leverage that software suite too. The other thing, having you just kind of rattle off the numbers of not only usage, but the number of projects that Cove tool has been a part of over the years is I I imagine that you guys are constantly learning and growing and especially with this dataset adapting over time. So that means that your models are continuing to change with every project that you add to that dataset as well.

B That's most definitely accurate. We, of course, have to be extremely compliant because we do a lot of you know, there's a lot of federal work that, you know, that that we collaborate with as well, and we keep, you know, kind of all the data security measures in place. But beyond that point, most definitely with every, you know, hundred projects, every thousand projects that we that that go under our belt, I mean, truly, I would say, I I I truly don't know who else in the entire industry has that level of experience. Like, I I don't know if many are in a place to have the opportunity to learn from 60000 different projects.

A And that's kind of what I wanted to to really illustrate. I think for the people that are in the industry talking about AI and leveraging the AI better, we always talk about the need for us to share our data more. The great thing about having Cove tool is that through the use of your software, people have inputted so many data points, and now it is learning. And you guys are learning from all of those data points that has been put in. And I feel like that's a huge barrier that we often talk about when it comes to leveraging technology and moving the profession forward, which you guys now have access to and are so willing to give others access to through your through your value as a service model. So what do you see the role as emerging technologies playing in architecture going forward? I know you guys just stepped into this value as a service model. What is your wish and hope and dreams for a Cove tool five, ten, fifteen years, and how how that may continue to evolve over time?

B I think a lot of it comes down to disrupting the status quo. I just have to say, you know, whether it's a popular or unpopular belief, this is my belief is that we, in the AEC space, not just pure architecture, but truly in the AEC space, we move very slowly. We're very much stuck to the past. I mean, probably ten years ago, that's likely what we did. We brought on consultants. Consultants did things. And, yeah, as the project complexities have grown, so have the count of consultants. And while that's fine, I do think that it all comes back to continuing to reevaluate if that truly is in the best interest of the architect as a business model and to truly rethink how we can continue to claim more and more and more, you know, of that power and influence so that we can deliver the best versions of the projects versus being, you know, kind of limited by constraints, you know, constraints from this area, constraints from that area.

B Oh, I can only do 20% glazing. Oh, I only can do this. Oh, I don't have enough room. And I think that data is truly the way that architects can re empower themselves and continue to stay empowered, you know, as the industry shifts and grows. And I really do think that taking a forward leaning step towards technology, taking a forward leaning step towards companies that are driving this technology can be a really strong competitive edge?

A Let's talk about that competitive edge, especially, I think, as architects often talk about how we are undervalued. What do you see the role of the architect as going forward as kind of you're playing both a supporting role, but also a disruptive role within the industry. What do you hope that role of the architect to be in the future?

B My goal and hope is that the architects can reclaim what only the architects can do, which is incredible, powerful design. A machine I do not believe is capable of driving the decision just like not to say that architecture is just art. It's so much more than that. But I find myself time and time again talking to practitioners in the field who are stuck doing, I don't know, repetitious, boring, uncomplicated things that a machine ought to do, and that sucks time away from the pure design. And for the architect to truly play the con conductor role to bring everyone together, to drive these discussions, to not be so overwhelmed with work and project deadlines because they're having to be in the nitty gritties of the of the things that truly technology ought to help with is is truly my hope, is for for us to to to look up and look above.

A A lot of people don't work in an architecture firm and then say, let's go start our own tech firm. What gave you the courage to kind of step out out of the the typical architecture bubble to go and start Cove tool in the beginning?

B Yeah. For me, you know, of course, my journey, as you mentioned, started out as a licensed architect. My first internship was at an interior design company because, you know, that's they needed one architect on board, and I was that one architect on board. And what I learned then, of course, was that, one, you know, there's a lot of effort that goes into every single part of building design. It gave me a massive appreciation for the amount of work that goes into produce a great output, you know, a great building, a great design. But what I also learned along the way is that while I was doing that, there was no attention, no mind, no conversation, at least at the time, and I don't want to age my