Bonus Episode: Autodesk AI

A I'm Evelyn Lee. And I'm Janine Chastain. We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry of architecture is changing.

B Together, we'll find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects.

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted.

B Hello, listeners. Hello, Janine.

A Hi, Evelyn. Hi, disruptors. Welcome to a special bonus episode of Practice Disrupted. Ex today, we're joining forces with Autodesk to dive into the future of AI and architectural practice. Autodesk Form a helps planning and design teams deliver projects digitally from day 1. Some of the features include conceptual design capabilities, predictive analytics, ex and automation to make solid, sustainable foundations for your projects. You can unlock efficiencies and intuitive project setups, design automation and fluid connectivity with Revit. It uses data driven insight in real time to make fast, smart design decisions ex that reduce risk and improve business and sustainability outcomes, and it improves collaboration and secure buy in by using data and visual to tell a compelling design story that can help you win more bids.

A We will link those resources down in the show notes so you can check them out.

B Ex Joining us today is Amy Benzel, the executive vice president of architecture engineering and construction design solutions at Autodesk. Amy's team delivers Autodesk ex AEC design portfolio, including the AEC collection, AutoCAD family, Revit, Civil three d, Innovise, Form a, and more.

A Ex also joining us is Ryan McNulty, principal of MBH Architects, a multidisciplinary architectural practice. Ryan has an innate ability to unify project stakeholders to create successful projects with meaning and respect to their local contacts. Will be focused on one of his recent projects that was showcased at Autodesk University, The Phoenix.

B Ex So we usually before diving into the conversation in AI, which is where our audience wants us to go, honestly, ex- We usually like to kick things off by getting a little fun fact about each of our guests. So, Amy, let's throw it over to you. Other than the fact that you're my physical ex neighbor, I think is a fun fact.

C So one of the best things about my job is that I get to go out and visit customers. And so I just got back from Sydney, Australia a couple of weeks ago, and I was fascinated by this, AMP building in the middle of downtown Sydney that's a a they basically took it down to the core and rebuilt the building. It is a great sustainable story, and it's just an absolutely gorgeous piece of architecture. I just love it.

B Ryan, how about you?

D I'm gonna go a little bit more random. When I was at Cal, obviously, as an architect, we spent a lot of time ex in studio. So to do something completely different and sort of push my brain in another direction, I joined a secret poetry club. Ex So we would meet on Wednesday evenings and drink too much and tell each other poetry. It was a lovely evening.

B Was it run by other architects, or is this other

D No. It wasn't. I was the only architect I was the only architect either smart enough or dumb enough to join.

C You know, Ryan, I'm an ex Electrical engineer. And when I was in college, I took all these art history classes just to get out of my engineering bubble for a period of time.

D It's nice to get a different perspective. I think it helps in a lot of the things we do.

B I think all of us I imagine all of us on this on this ex In this little bubble of 4 of us would agree with that.

D Yeah.

B I was gonna say, do you consider yourself a good writer then? Or is poetry would you consider poetry and ex Writing to be 2 different languages.

D They definitely have different goals, but I feel that it has helped my writing because you try and Get your point and your emotion across as as succinctly as possible. I know, like, when we're starting to become architects, we wanna be, like, all mellifluous extend spend a lot of time, like, getting our point across. You can actually be very effective and, like, get a lot more meaning with, like, very useful and impactful words. Ex So that's the one thing that I that I've really liked to, to leverage.

B No. And that's where I was going with this. I think architects are known for being very verbose and not necessarily the best written communicators. So it's interesting to draw that connection back.

D Yeah. A few of my partners will sometimes come to me. They're like, I need help clarifying what I'm writing here. Can you help me with this? So, yeah, I I definitely get pulled into it.

B Nice.

A And we always are excited to have Bay Area folks expect on the show, and this episode is one of those episodes. We are also welcoming you back from Autodesk University, which just happened, what, about a week ago?

C 2 weeks.

D 2 weeks ago.

A How was the event?

C Well, I thought it was amazing. Lot of great feedback from ex customers on both kind of the future looking things we talked about as well as the the everyday capabilities that we're delivering. And I think people enjoyed, You know, not everybody loves Las Vegas, but I think the people that were there really enjoyed the hospitality that, that we get when we go to Vegas.

D Yeah. It it was super successful, I would I would say.

B The project that we're gonna talk about today was featured at Autodesk University, and I got the opportunity to see it and walk through it up close as well as learn a little bit about how it all came together. So I'm really interested in hearing more of that from Ryan.

D I typically don't go like, Evelyn, your intro earlier of sort of dealing with more of the practice of architecture. I find myself dealing, ex Much more of the practice of our firm than the day to day operations and having a few days to get thrust back into sort of the brass tacks of how ex Our design technology is working, was really interesting. And then being featured in a project that was ex Interviewed and shown during keynote 1 and then actually participating in keynote 2 in front of 12,000 people and opening for Ryan Reynolds, was, ex Kinda crazy. So it's definitely a very interesting and and fun experience. I heard

B a lot of great feedback, actually, of the change back to Las Vegas from from New Orleans, right, and and stories about golf carts, I guess. Our good friend, Clifton Harness, who's been on the show before for TestFit, apologize because we asked, who Who is the one that, like, did a big shout out during Amy's keynote, and Clifton raised his hand and said it was it was him. But his one goal ex of all of AU was to have a conversation with Amy, and he felt that that little interaction qualified and met his one goal. Ex So I had a really great time at Autodesk University and understanding the greater landscape. It's also, ex Janine may not know where AI and Autodesk's use of AI was first introduced to consumers. So I guess the big question now where we're getting into the meaty part of the conversation. Ex and, Amy, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about what it means for the industry and what it means for your current customers.

C 1st, I think it's good to talk about the challenges of the industry. You know, we're not investing in AI just for the sake of AI because, you know, the rest of the world has all of a sudden decided it's It's in a it's in a hype cycle. So for us, you know, we see our customers with just lots of projects, but they don't have enough skilled workers to kind of fulfill the work on the projects. We see an explosion of new tools, an explosion of data, And we see this desire to really accelerate digitization as a response to this onslaught of of more. And so everyone's trying to get better outcomes whether it's cost or schedule or sustainability, but it's really it's really hard without without new tools. And so that's where we think AI can help in terms of both ex Or in terms of 3 things really, automation, augmentation, and then delivering more analysis of this, like, vast reams of data ex that people have. And so we've been building AI powered capabilities for years. But now, you know, I think the world is really ready to to step into it and to think more about how they can leverage some of these capabilities.

C And one of the things I'll mention, and this relates to the story that we did with Brian, is that

B ex The sustainability challenges

C that the world faces is really also accelerating the need for change. And so I think, as you know, the built environment's ex responsible for about 42% of annual global c o two emissions, which is a really gives it a target rich environment for improvement. And then the good side of that is our customers. We're seeing from our state of design and make report that 82% of architecture, engineering, and construction companies are feeling pressure to improve the sustainability of their projects. So now is really the time to to leverage all the great technology we can to to drive towards some of these these important goals.

B Are you actually finding more of that pressure coming from clients than before in that report?

C Yes. There's a lot of owners who are, who wanna realize, oh, hey. The surely operating this ex This facility or this building for a long time is a huge amount of the cost. And so now they're realizing, oh, hey. We need to make better decisions at the very beginning of this project where the architect has so much influence that so that we get a better outcome, you know, for the decades that we're we're living with this this project.

A So, Ryan, we wanted to ask you about how AI is impacting actual built work and how it's exchanging within architecture, and it's focused on the project side. In your viewpoint, why do you think AI will be useful for architecture?

D Yeah. That's a great question, Janine. How will AI be useful? And I don't think we'd know the precise answer yet. Ex And I think the fun part right now is that we're able to do a lot of testing with these new tools. And I think as Amy talked about AI becoming a tool for project delivery, ex The whole thing now is like you read in the newspaper of how AI is gonna, you know, replace white collar workers or, you know, automate all of these different industries. Ex And I don't really see AI being like this magic bullet that's gonna allow us to press a button and create a building. Ex But I do think sort of what Amy was talking about, how we can leverage our tools, it's a really powerful way for us to start actually accessing our data. We've been in practice for 34 years, and so we have all of these different buildings that we have On our server, you know, life science laboratories, multifamily buildings, single family residences, retail build outs, corporate interiors.

D Ex And there's so many different decisions and materials and design principles that have gone into all of these projects and to actually be able to efficiently and effectively go back and and leverage what we've done before and understand why and and be able to make decisions faster. That is really the first step in in ex these powerful tools. And we talked a lot about in the Phoenix project how one of the biggest goals is is time. Right? We talk about sustainability. We talk about resource management. In reality, one of the resources we're never gonna go back is time. Ex And so being able to make more impactful decisions is the biggest benefit I see of AI right now. The way that the industry has started to evolve, it's been kind of interesting.

D I've we were working on go. It's a 15 story high rise, and we were doing some tenant improvements and, reskinning the building. Then we found the original drawings, ex And they were beautiful. It was a building done by SOM in 1970. There were about 50 sheets of mylar for the entire building. That was it. And they're beautiful. Hand drawn.

D It was just like, this is this is great. You know, all the entire architecture team got to, like, nerd out on it and, like, take a look at it. And then we did our facade replacement and tenant improvement package. The architectural set alone was, like, 252 sheets, start MEP and our you know, it was just by the time we're all said and done, it was a 1,000 sheets. And you're like, there's something to be said about this. There's a huge benefit because we had some certainty in construction and costs and then the reality of, like, the craft of architecture. Like, what is the important decision making process? And so if we can take a lot of that administrative work out of this, we can then really start to tackle some of the big questions and some of the big problems.

A A lot of what Evelyn and I talk about on this show is really more in the realm of practice management, which we kinda talked about at the beginning on the intro. Ex given your role in firm management discussions, I guess I'm also curious beyond projects, like, how do you see AI impacting the business of architecture?

D Obviously, in the current climate with access to capital being, like, drastically, impacted by interest rates and, You know, just everyone being concerned about where the economy is moving. You know, we've met with some of our clients, some developers, and ex A nice little rhyming scare tactic we've heard is stay alive till 25. So it just kinda puts into perspective how people are feeling about the economy at the moment. And, ex You know, an 8% construction loan versus a 2% construction loan a few years ago. It has a huge impact on what's able to move forward. So from the practice side, we've been using AI to manage our day our data, which has really helped sort of deploy a lot of questions that developers have ex And being able to help our clients make faster decisions has really been helpful too. I mean, we'll probably talk about it in the video at AU. We talked a lot about ex Time saving.

D We're able to, like, look at feasibility studies really quickly, and then we're also able to leverage a lot of, like, the GIS data. So, like, We don't have to send a surveyor out and spend 2 weeks surveying a site. At the early stage, we can look at, you know, GIS data from the, you know, state of California ex And with a reasonable level of certainty, understand where the sight lines are and then look at a project and analyze it within a couple of hours.

B Ex And then it allows us

D to then talk to our development clients and say, like, does is this a go or a no go? And some you know, sometimes that would take months to figure out. So Those time savings are pretty incredible, and it does, that ancillary benefit of building up trust, I think, is is huge with our clients Because at a time where they're not sure if they're gonna spend any money on this site, dropping $50,000 in soft cost to start is a big hurdle to get over. So In terms of that practice area, it gets a lot of trust and and relationship out of the way pretty quickly.

B I think we can go dive further into this with our next few questions, and I also want to promise that we will circle back to the Phoenix project, which I got to walk through a piece of it at Autodesk University. See they had it on-site there, and it was great to see the outcome of that project. So, Amy, this is for you. What role can a company like Autodesk play in changing or disrupting the practice of architecture. What do you see as the role that Autodesk has in this space?

C One of the great things is that I see architects really as being passionate about change for the sake of delivering, you know, better and more innovative projects, doing a better job for ex for their clients. And, you know, if we think about it, 20 years ago, architects were the ones that started the building information modeling movements. It was all originally focused ex on design. And it's pretty incredible today when I see how things are built. We really transformed quite a bit. And I'm still shocked that really only about In the US, it's only slightly more than 50% of projects use BIM. So there's still a lot of opportunity to get to benefit from BIM. But I wanna circle back to something ex That Ryan was talking about.

C The working with the owner in the early phase to really, you know, optimize like crazy to get the best possible ex and now there's so much more data available at the beginning of a project, whether it's from your prior projects, whether it's ex Terrain data, you know, data from a municipality, data about wind or other weather components, water. There's there's so much more that you can factor into the front planning that ensures a better outcome, and I think that's even more critical now given the the high cost of capital that that was just mentioned. So I see ex I see the architect in many ways being able to lead a lot of these transformations, not just for their own practice, but for the industry as well.

B One thing that I see relative to the use of all this data and the ability for clients to be more responsive ex is that architects are always talking about the need to raise the value of architects and architecture and to find new services to deliver to our clients. Ex I almost think that this is an opportunity to flip the value structure, the the business model, and actually put the value on where we give the most value in the design phase as opposed to spending so much time on the construction document phase. I don't know if ex either of you have any comments on that.

D I love that prompt because I think one of the biggest things that we realize is that ex Going through these zoning analysis, going through a feasibility, there's the practice of architecture and then sort of like the capital a philosophical architecture. Ex And in my mind, to be able to practice 1, you have to practice the other because, obviously, we need to be able to ex Pay for our our team members to work on this. We have salaries. We have overhead. We have rent. But also part of the design challenges is creating a a solution that is buildable ex So that we can actually execute a project. Right? As much as I would love to design a sculptural monument to some concept, the real idea, especially as we talk about Phoenix, is ex Creating homes for people that don't have access to them in the Bay Area. So, I mean, that's a goal that we're trying to achieve.

D Ex And I think one of the biggest things that AI has started to allow us to do is take away some of those architectural administrative tasks that we have to do, ex Zoning analysis, code checks, we still need to do, especially our insurance providers make sure we do them. But going through those early exercises, Finding those details from old projects, trying to understand how we can get the adjacencies of some of our units, And then also the whole idea of what we were talking about earlier, massing, siting of buildings, wind exposure, solar heat gain. A lot of the tools now can do that so much faster. Right? Thinking of, like, an azimuth analysis that I remember having to do in college. Like, it ex Just broke my brain trying to figure out how to figure out how the sun was going across the site when you had to do it by hand. And then now you can plug in your coordinates time of day, time of year, and, like, boom, it's done in, like, 30 seconds. That is an incredibly powerful tool because then it it takes away a lot of that ex Time to, like, figure that stuff out where we can now turn and focus on, okay, what are the sustainability goals and how can we capture more carbon Or how can we site this building so that we can use less heating and cooling and make this more livable? How can we access more natural light and air? Or how can we make sure we can site this building away from a very loud highway or a or a BART track? There's a lot of ways we can shift our our focus now to, like, the actual architecture decisions, and then it creates better architecture from a livability standpoint, the end user. You know, thinking back of, like, college, a lot of, like, what we're working through in studio is, like, creating this beautiful model and creating these drawings and creating, like, the sculpture of architecture.

D But in reality, the end users are gonna experience this by just living in their apartment. And so being able to, like, think of different ways to shape it. So it's not just an apartment, but it's a home where it's also sustainable. There's carbon captured. If there's natural light, we don't want people living in a shoebox. We want people living in a home, and there's a lot of ways where we can start pushing the boundaries of how we're thinking about that.

A Ex so I wanna break this down for our audience because there's a couple of things to unpack here. There's the emphasis on using AI on this project, which I'm super interested to hear as a design leader at what point in the process did you all make that decision to go that route. I also want us to discuss the project itself, obviously. So being from the Bay Area, housing is a very important ex challenge there, and this project serves the West Oakland community as an affordable housing solution. So we wanna make sure our listeners understand what the project ex so, Ryan, can you tell us maybe how both of those 2 pieces of the project collided, the AI piece and the actual project?

D Ex Sure. I'm gonna turn that a little bit and start with the project, and then that'll sort of veer us back to how we started doing this. So the Phoenix is a project in West Oakland. It's right by 880 at in right near the BART station. And it is, ex Slated right now to be 300 affordable units. Right now, the way that we are setting up this project, it's it is a modular ex project where we are leveraging the, volumetric modular capabilities of factory OS out of, Mare Island up, north in Bay Area. Ex And so they have a factory up there on the island where they're able to create the mods, and we're looking to create a big affordable, mini neighborhood within West Oakland. Ex And the site, the way it's shaped and its adjacency to the highway has lent itself to be ex A mini neighborhood where we're going to have a much larger 240 unit complex as well as five or Maybe 6 depending on how this project starts to take shape.

D Smaller 12 unit buildings that are going to be affordable as well. So that way we can adjust scale, create a central green, ex And really create a nice environment for the community. And then the way now that we have started to leverage AI, working with FactorOS, ex FactoryOS has a long partnership with Autodesk as well as MBH, and we've been leveraging Autodesk design tools for, I think as soon as AutoCAD came out, I think CAD 14 is like the one that everyone keeps saying in my office, which is predates me, but, I know we've been leveraging ex Autodesk for a very long time, and Autodesk and Factory OS actually started the conversation as we were working through this project of how we could start leveraging a lot of the data that we have for this. I know that we have been very lucky to leverage some tools that were not released to, ex general consumers yet. So it has been a very interesting experience for us to see how there is ex The evolution of the software, a lot of that exposure we don't get to see. So it's been very enlightening for our team, but it was a true partnership. Ex So leveraging the construction and volumetric modular experience of Factor OS, leveraging a lot of the data. This is probably our 11th ex Modular project working with Factor OS.

D So we have a deep catalog of data of how these units are made, How the adjacencies start to work and how these buildings can come together in a very efficient way. And then Autodesk ex Was able to then partner with both of us and really start to leverage their software capabilities to really allow us to talk through, like, what our goals explore on this project, understanding how can we site these buildings effectively and quickly, how can we leverage ex Solar exposure. How can we leverage the interaction of the larger apartment complex with the smaller buildings ex To really minimize noise from the highway and then access to light and air. We kinda told them where we were trying to go with it ex And gave them our data and sent a lot of our models to them, and they came back. And it was really interesting to see that They were able to take a lot of the projects that we had done and then start to use the generative design process to then really start ex Maximizing the software to really make these explorations, like, incredibly fast. It was it was really interesting to see. And then sitting with a lot of the Autodesk team, just ex Talking it through with them literally, like, what dial do we wanna turn to make more important? So, like, you could really see the power of the software. Ex We talked about, like, adjusting adjacencies.

D Like, what does a building look like if it's just studios versus studios and 1 bedrooms? And all of a sudden, the had just spit out a brand new building, and we were just Wow. This is incredible. So it was a really cool process to see. And and frankly, it was it was a partnership, from the start.

C You know, I love what you said, Ryan, about working together because form a you know, what we have in the market today is really focused on conceptual design. Ex but over time, it's really gonna cover all aspects of BIM. And the only way we're gonna get there is by working closely with customers to help you solve, You know, real world problems today that hopefully deliver the outcomes that allow you to to, have a better value proposition for your firm as well as ex as your customers because Avalon, reflecting on your first question, it's it's on top of mind for everybody. Like, if as we automate and do things faster, if we're billable hours, ex That's how we get paid. Like, it's just broken. Right? We want to be paid for the value that we're that, you know, that's being delivered and the amazing outcomes that can ex can now happen because people are freed from some of these mundane mundane tasks.

A Yeah. I guess my follow-up, Brian, is that ex after going through this experience on this project, will you integrate Autodesk AI or Form a into future projects? Like, will it change how you're thinking about the delivery of projects, that you will pursue in the future.

D Ex the short answer to that is that we already have. So we have started leveraging form a, and as Amy says it, ex It is focused on concept right now, but we definitely have already started leveraging our experience with Autodesk on a lot of our other projects. We have looked at different ways to understand, like, not even just housing, but, like, just starting to look at analyses for, like, a lab project we're doing. Ex Looking at how we can quickly determine the envelope, understand what our square foot split's gonna be for lab versus office, And I actually helped us with our parking count because the developer was trying to understand how many stories below grade that he wanted to go. Ex And so we were able to really quickly determine how big of a garage he'd need to go. And so we were talking. We're like, maybe it's 1 story. Maybe it's ex 2, 3, 4.

D Who knows? And all of a sudden, we started looking at, use you leveraging form a for this, and we were able to get it in two explore. He's like, great. That meets my pro form a. Let's let's move to the next step. So it was it's a pretty powerful tool.

B I think going back to your response to Amy about the outcome of the shifts of technology and what that enables architects to do from a value perspective. Janine and I talk so much explore how do we scale from using our knowledge expertise in a more meaningful way. One of the things that I look at Architecture firms, and I think that they're gonna struggle with in the future is all of this data that we have that is really unstructured. You mentioned only 50% of buildings use BIM. I would say of the architects that I know that use Revit, talking to our friend over at Slantis, They have libraries are all over the place. You know, data is really unstructured depending on what project manager is running the project. So what can Autodesk do to really help better position architects to use the data ex In a meaningful way. So and maybe that's also for Ryan too.

B I don't know how you gave the your data to Autodesk so they could begin to use it, the generative AI. I feel like we have a lot of data, but it's very messy right now.

C Yes. And that's one of the frustrations about Building information modeling in general is the data keeps getting recreated as the process continues. Right? So there's a a lot of opportunity, I think, for everybody to have a better ex Better, you know, not have to work on some of those those repetitive things. But I think in general, yes, the industry has no shortage of data. The problem is it's kind of locked up in In proprietary formats, it's not structured. There's a lot of a lot of challenges. So we've been working for the last few years on a common data environment so that You can start a project in its Autodesk Docs for us, share with stakeholders, have control over permissions, and start to have that sort of central purposeful model that can be shared, and then it persists and can be then analyzed and looked at in the future. And And then the other thing we're doing is trying to unlock a lot of the data that's in Revit with our new data model API.

C It's really just the beginning, but we really want people to be able take all the rich metadata in Revit and just use it upstream, downstream, wherever you can use it to automate your processes. Whether it's, you know, creating reports explore checking codes. Like, all those things, we think that we can work together to make happen a lot faster. And that's just just a little bit of it. You know, in the future with things like Form a, You know, if we really will finally move away from files over time and, be able to focus on more granular, more manageable, less monolithic ex Data, which also can be overwhelming.

D Yeah. I very much look forward to that, Amy, when we can start having easier access to our data. Ex To your point, Evelyn, I think we as architects as we started to adopt it, I mean, like, that first step was leveraging Revit like it was just AutoCAD and three d ex And not necessarily, like, true BIM. And so I think as we've seen that evolution, there's, like, some old sort of vestigial ways of working that keep sort of dragging along with it. And to your point, if if you have a secret way to figure out how my team in Denver and my team in New York ex Could all start using Revit the same way? I would love it because it just doesn't quite work that way. Mhmm. And, you know, a lot of it too is as we try and upend the value proposition, ex How do we make sure that the value is clear to our clients for what we're doing and what we're bringing? Sometimes, you know, like, the demonstration of that data and how we're using our modeling examine our data. Just doesn't really come to the forefront.

D Right? We have to get the work done and get the project built and showcase our our expertise and our value in that way rather than, like,

B ex Well, you

D you now have a digital twin that you can leverage for building maintenance for its life cycle. You know, when they're staring at $400,000 contingency change order With a contractor, it's not really what they wanna talk about. So it's baby steps, but I think there's definitely ways where it it'll be start to become a lot more valuable as we move forward.

A I wanna know how your team embraced this change because it's it's hard asking a team who's trying to move a project through rigorous design processes, procedures, regulations, and construction to take on a new process that is being tested for the 1st time in real time. It's a high stress project in a high stress area of the country. So how did you all mentally get prepared for that?

D We try and push an ethos in the firm where the most dangerous ex Phrase in the English language is this is the way we've always done it. It definitely helps our staff know that they can push for change. Ex I think a lot of times, the junior staff that has a lot more, sort of software savvy as they're coming out of school, ex They're a little bit scared to, like, raise their hand and say, hey. Is this the best way to do it? Because you're gonna have sort of the trained architect Knowing how the building should go together, but not necessarily aware of how the software should function versus a a younger staff member who knows how to use the software, ex But has absolutely no idea how to put a building together. So it's like how we marry those 2 groups and, like, leverage the software to make the building better and vice versa. Ex We wanna make sure that the firm and everyone that works here knows that they can try and push for change. Like, we're not set in our ways. We broadcast that we are open for change, and we've ex Kinda wanna let the best idea win.

D And so at that point, if there's an advocate or someone that's real a big ex It really makes it easier for the team to really start pushing along. And I would say as I mentally sort of, like, walk around my office and and think about different project teams, our housing team, the Phoenix team. Our technical director is one of our biggest advocates for design technology in the firm, ex And he is one of the biggest proponents of FOMA that I've met so far. So he has fully adopted it on their team, and they're ready to go and try just about anything. Ex And that's starting to permeate across, a couple of our other practice areas. So it's just being open for change and and really open to different ways of doing things.

B Speaking of change and change management and how much change management technology is going to require for us to fully get on board with it. And this goes back even, Ryan, to your comment that your 2 offices use Revit very differently. And, ex Amy, I imagine, you know, that becomes that becomes kind of a a a problem, around customer engagement that Autodesk needs to solve. So what do you feel is Autodesk's role in helping with the change management and then actually ensuring that ex I feel like architects who have purchased Revit only use such a small piece of its total value that they're actually missing out. Ex Because many times, just because they don't actually have the ability to train themselves properly on the software to get the full value of it.

C I think one of the challenges with Revit is robust as it is. It's a little too flexible. So there's many ways to do the same thing. So you end up in these situations where Creative people found creative ways of doing things. And so so we are trying through automation and more intelligence in the product to make recommendations about preferred ways of doing things to just to try to improve that situation on a day to day basis. Another area that, quite frankly, I'm I'm surprised that for 20 years, like, Autotest did not offer a content solution that worked with Revit. Ex and so, you know, we made this Unify acquisition about a year ago, and they were deployed at a lot of our customers. And we felt, you know, really confident that this would be something that would be good to help people with this whole standardization process.

C But it's it does require a lot of change management from a human and I always look at that in 3 ways. I always think about why from multiple dimensions. Sort of like, why is it good for the company? Ex Why is it good for your customer and why is it good for the employee? And when you hit on all 3 of those, then, you know, you find these sort of early adopter types who will ex be the guinea pig and then start to share and advocate across across the company because people kinda have to see it to believe it too, and you gotta repeat yourself a lot For sure.

B What does this mean, or what do you see that as being the future of formal or other tools, especially as you say, ex There's huge aspirations for it to be so much more than than what it what does that look like from a customer engagement perspective partnering with ex Firms like MBH, but also kind of what it means for additional rollouts in in the future.

C Ex Yeah. So our our strategy really and why we started with the upfront kind of conceptual design and planning was to to really Look at the whole BIM life cycle and start at the beginning and see what kind of outcomes we could deliver at the beginning of the process that would then feed in to the rest of the process. So one of the other challenges in the industry is there's so many different tools, and in many cases, data doesn't transfer between the tools. And so we've been really investing in how, you know, you can go from form a into Revit. You can you can go back and forth as you get a more detailed design and see how that impacts some of your your original analyses. And so really starting to build up trust that, like, we're in this for the long haul and we're looking really thoughtfully at the processes. And then in parallel, what we're also doing is, you know, continuing to invest in Revit and continuing to work on unlocking the value that data that Ryan agreed was, you know, gosh. If we could really do a better job of getting more leverage or mileage out of the data that's already being built, ex We'll also be in a position where people have the the cycles to invest in in more more change as well.

D And I think that that whole idea too of The cross pollination of of tools has been one that has been a bit of a of an issue in in the industry. Right. That whole idea of, like, alright. We're gonna design in SketchUp. And then once we have everything locked in, we're gonna transition everything over to Revit and then model it. Ex And then all of a sudden, your client comes and says, well, actually, that curtain wall system doesn't work anymore because it's too expensive or delayed. We need to redesign that via ex Well, it's gonna take us a while to now remodel everything. The look on clients' faces when they hear that, ex It's hard to explain why it takes so long.

D Right? And so the way that we could get speed and and being able to move back and forth, like, a little bit more seamlessly, ex I think it's gonna create a lot of value because in in the end, we don't wanna be beholden to the software. We want the software to be a tool for us to implement these projects. And there are times, you know, with younger staff coming in and just spending a lot of time modeling, you have to understand, like, what the important part is, and the important part is using this tool to ex Illustrate the solution for this project.

A Ryan, it's cool to hear that you've got someone on your team who's really excited about championing the technology and leading that through your entire housing studio. When these conversations started coming forward around AI and how it would hit the architecture profession, ex what were some of the conversations that you all were having internally before adopting this platform?

D We're all gonna lose our jobs. No. Ex When I was talking to David over at, Autodesk, we were having a couple of conversations, and I I think in one of our conversations, I was like, David, I think I have, like, ex There's like a little angel on one shoulder and a devil on another that's saying, like, okay. Give them everything because then they can help you figure out how to use it. And the other one's saying, like, Don't give them anything because they're gonna just take your job as as you start moving forward. And you have to think about sort of the evolution of the practice if we just keep doing it the same way and protect ourselves from change, well, that's great. We're gonna be super successful for these 5 projects, but ex I have too much ambition to only do 5 more projects in the rest of my life or I and I have kids to get through school and a mortgage to pay. So understanding that life ex And change and training new staff and, you know, growing the company and having a better impact on the world is gonna involve just changing the way we practice every day.

D And so It was that realization that it's like, no. This is gonna be a part of how we practice rather than replacing what we do. So, like, there there was a realization that we all had to get through. Ex And, you know, frankly, there's still some teams here that haven't had the chance, the the need, the push to have that adoption yet ex And that realization, but we can see how some of these projects are starting to take shape where it's like, okay, there's early adoption there, and it's now happening In another studio, in another office, like, let's talk about it and see, like, what the value is. Because, you know, all of a sudden you're like, oh, well, we're we're Hoping to, you know, leverage some of those generative AI to do our massing study so we can actually then spend more time focusing on our facade. Ex All of a sudden, you have some people look up. They're like, oh, that sounds more fun. How do I get to do that? You know? So you can see the value there.

D Ex And then leveraging the AI too. It allows us to do things that are a lot more interesting. I know ex We had our our mod our one of our modules at, AU, and it was the 1st facade panel that we had leveraged through our our process. And

B ex I'm gonna be honest, like, not to toot our

D own horn and, you know, Factory OS and and Autodesk and Chrysler, but it was a really cool Panel. Without any architecture speak, it was just it was really cool. It was like something where, like, we used a lot of the generative design to understand, like, how we can thicken ex The insulation so that it would absorb more of the heat so we could use less, heating and cooling in that unit that was gonna be, like, ex have more sun exposure, but then you could see the side that was getting more into the shade. We didn't need it as much. So you had this really emotive and ex Really, interesting in and out on the, faceted panels. So something that actually had a reason for why we were changing the the system, ex The sustainability side, the livability rather than just, like, this is a very cool parametric pattern. Like, there was actually, like, a lot of thought that went into why we were doing it, ex Which was a really fun exercise.

A Do you have any advice? Because I can just imagine there are architects out there that, you know, they've been through these technology transitions at different stages of adoption of different phases of technology, and there's always these pain points, but do you have any advice for architects on how to navigate those pain points as they integrate new ideas into practice?

D It sounds simple, but it's been really impactful for us is really like 1 step at a time. Right? Like, the idea of form a ex Is our adoption process right now is that we're pushing it for feasibility studies. We're not requiring it for any of our massing studies. We're not Trying to use it for our actual concept design. We're really trying to leverage it for, like, feasibility. Understand how the site is gonna work, ex Leverage the tool to do it faster so then you can focus on the concept in a more traditional way. And then that way, we can see how They've started. They now trust it, and then we can start inching it over more and more and more as the as it gets more powerful.

D Because that way, then we build up that relationship explore. Like, oh, yeah. I I can trust this tool works for me as opposed to saying, like, we just have to use it now. Like, let's let's go forward because we've seen that fall. When we say, like, ex Some of our 1st Revit projects were a massive failure because it was just like, we're using Revit now, and it was just a big bite to take.

A Evelyn and I really are focused on thinking about the industry as a whole and the cultural shifts that we're all going to have to embrace as the world, the workforce, the practice of architecture continues to evolve. So I guess we're just curious about your ex your thought on knowing the industry and the community of architecture, what cultural shifts do you think will have to happen within architecture firms for AI to be more widely adopted.

D That is a great question, Janine. Ex Can I ask Chat GPT for that answer? No. I well, here's here's an example of that I'm gonna use as a way to think about how I really wanna answer this question. We are going through a shift right now for our intranet, for our, like, internal ex Wiki page for all of our training manuals and all that fun stuff. And we have a young woman who just graduated ex from school, and she was tasked with writing a lot of the manuals. And we gave her a whole set of things and checklists, and she'd met with a few people to understand what she needed to do. Ex And we're like, okay. Cool.

D That's 2 weeks worth of work. We'll we'll talk to you and do some check ins and do some milestones. And about 4 hours later, she came up to us and she's like, I'm done. Ex What? She's like, well, full disclosure. I I use chat GPT to write a lot of this and, like, work through it. And and we read it. We're like, wow, this ex is powerful. And it was one of those things that opened our eyes of, like, if we keep doing everything the same way, like, go sit down in your corner and and write.

D Ex Or okay. You 2 need to sit together and work on your markups and then go back to your corner and implement all those changes into the model and call it good. We're just gonna start falling behind, and we're gonna miss an opportunity to to understand new things. And I think the benefit for architects ex Is that I would say by our nature, we're inquisitive. Like, one of the things we always say here is, like, our first trait is that we're good listeners ex Because if we don't listen to our clients and our team, we don't really know what problem we're trying to solve. Right? You have a site and you have a program and you have an issue, And we're really trying to create a built environment around that perfect solution that meets the context and meets the budget in the schedule ex And understanding, you know, that that ability to listen to the people that work for us, the people that we work with, our consultants, Autodesk, our factor OS, and the end users. Like, what are what is everyone trying to do? And the more voices there are, the more opportunity for input there is, the harder it's ex for input there is, the harder it's gonna be to figure out how to implement it. And so I think the whole idea of AI coming in to ex Help us manage those tasks is gonna be that 1st step to adoption.

D When people see like, oh, wow. Like, all of my submittals have automatically been, like, ex Logged, filed, distributed. Awesome. I've just saved a whole day, and now I can actually look at the curtain wall submittal I'm supposed to review ex As opposed to making sure my engineer gets this one and my, my MEP consultant gets this one. I think those type of tasks are going to be incredibly powerful to push off because then it lets us be more of an architect. I mean, I I don't wanna spend my day writing emails all day or, ex You're doing that, but, you know, I'd love to work with 1 of our our junior architects to start working through details. I mean, that that seems like a much more fun day to me.

B So I'm gonna be devil's advocate here because I think people are going to hear that story that you just said and say, ex She did it really quickly, but did she learn anything by doing it quickly? And then some people would say the whole point of having her go through that process was to actually really to learn Mhmm. Everything that she needed to learn. And you mentioned you alluded it to even earlier in the conversation that, You know, how do we cross the divide between the people who know how to build, but don't necessarily know how to do things in the computers? And Individuals that are coming out and know how to do a lot of things with computers, but don't know the mechanics and the technicalities of things ex And how they go together. So how is MBH beginning to deal with that?

D That is something we wrestle with every day. We have interdisciplinary teams across different offices. And so, like, step 1, we have an an interesting task of What does it mean to be an architect when you're managing a team across time zones? That's a challenge in itself. Right? It's it's not the traditional architecture ex Process where you can sit down and mentor face to face and and work through a project that way. So, like, that's already step 1. So I feel like as a firm, we started to think about ex ways that we practice. And then what does that mean? Right? Because we don't wanna shift in a world where we ex No one is an architect anymore. We're all program managers.

D For example, right, like, we manage a model. We don't do any architecture anymore. It's just we press a button. It comes out. We make sure it gets built. Ex I don't think anyone is trying to get to that point. It it is a challenge. And then thinking about that example, I can actually follow-up exactly with that exact same woman.

D Ex Since she finished all that stuff early, we're like, well, now what is she gonna do? Well, we actually have a design presentation that we're supposed to do. She was not slated to actually participate in that exercise. But since she was done early, we pulled her in, and she had a chance to actually See more of that type of work ahead of schedule than we actually had originally planned for. And it turns out she was really good at that too, which is fantastic, ex But we were able to sort of pull her in to help us do some of the diagrams for the for the proposal we were working on. And that type of advantage, I think, is ex Is what I'm personally hoping for is that those mundane is probably the wrong way to describe it because it is very important, ex But there is very much an administrative side of running a practice that could probably be taken off of people's plates to allow some of the more creative, ex Opportunities to be approached. Right? We would have never given her that opportunity to work on this design proposal if, she was working on writing all of these manuals. Ex That's sort of like that bright side victory from that example.

A When I was listening to the story, I was thinking about all the cranky architects I know out there who have, you know they're a little frustrated because they the joy in their work is kind of a smaller part than they want it to be. And just the idea that we could maybe get to a place where we flip that and bring more joy back into leading with design and creativity and, again, at the front of everything that we're doing and pushing some of this other stuff that causes us to be stressed out and lose time in those areas away or down in more clever and creative ways.

C Well said. Very well said.

B So I think we've covered a lot of ex Ground in an hour, and we've just begun to touch on AI. And even though AI isn't necessarily in its infancy, I think we'll see a lot more use of it in everything that we we do in including architecture and including our firms. Ex So I guess as a final question to each of you, both Amy and Ryan, what is your hope in the near future for how AI can positively exchange the environments that each of you are working in.

D Amy, would you like to go 1st, or would you like me to go?

C I could go first. Ex My hope goes back to what we just said. I want people to have joy in their work. I mean, that extends to the people that are building the tools, to the people that are using the tools, and I hope that ex The practitioners really think about these AI based capabilities just as another tool in their toolbox. Ex they should feel comfortable experimenting, but also being intentional about what kind of value they wanna get out of them. And then, you know, give us feedback ex And let us know where we're where we're delivering that value and and where we're not, and and let's go on this this journey together because I think we can have a real opportunity to both make the current practicing architects have more time for the parts that that drew them into the practice and also to make the practice appealing to a lot of young people who might who might be maybe going in other directions. I mean, we need people out there doing, you know, amazing architecture.

D Well said, Amy, and I will will jump on the back of that where blue sky, what do I hope AI can do? And Very luckily for me, I have an executive from Autodesk to put this in front of. So it's perfect timing. But I would say, you know, like, Following the theme of what we've been talking about today, my hope is that AI becomes that tool that frees up ex The architecture profession to demonstrate its value to our clients and to our end users and to the community where we can really focus on the craft ex of architecture. I'd love to free up time away from the administrative tasks that, our profession has started to take on ex To really leverage a software to do that and then really allow the junior staff, the seasoned staff to really focus on their craft, ex their passion and understand how we can create really incredible spaces. At the end of the day, the reason we got into this ex As architects was, you know, not to get rich, but really to be creative and think of ways that we could improve the environments that we ex Interact with every day and just being able to really shape our environment is what I hope the end goal of AI is.

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