Bonus Episode: Never Draw it Twice, Giving Design Firms a Working Memory

A When I was practicing, finding a detail meant digging through old models. That's why I'm glad to have Puros sponsoring this episode. They make every detail, family and standard searchable across your firm and ensure that nothing gets used blindly. See it@pyrdos.com that's P I R R O S.com. Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast exploring how architects can build better businesses, embrace emerging technology, and more sustainable, fulfilling practices. I'm your host, Evelyn Lee, architect, angel investor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're running a firm, starting your career, or reimagining what's possible, this podcast challenges you to think differently about the future of architecture. Hello Disruptors.

A Welcome back to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. This one is a little different. It's a bonus episode created with our friends at Piros, and it's a good one because the two guests come at the same problem from opposite ends of it. Ross Wagner leads sales at Puros, but he started an architecture in a firm in Chicago and then San Francisco doing high rise residential and higher ed. A tool called PlanGrid changed his trajectory. He tracked down the founder's emails, talked his way onto the rocket ship and rode it through the Autodesk acquisition and spent five years there before landing at Piros a little over a year ago. Xander Ellenbogden spent eight years as an architect at Clark Nexon before moving into its Practice Technology group, where he now manages BIM workflows and as it happens, became the firm's first commercial drone pilot. Peros turns a firm's work into a living, searchable engine so nobody has to hunt through six subfolders or redraw details that already exist somewhere in the firm's history.

A But the conversation goes past the product. We get into whether AI is just the next CAD to BIM momentum, why architects change slowly and lean so hard on trust, and how you preserve the apprenticeship when the knowledge is a query away. Let's join the conversation. Hi Ross. Hi, Zander. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. So great to have the two of you on the show today.

B Great to be here.

C Thank you for having me.

A Ross, why don't you start off by introducing yourself to our listeners and tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got to Peros and a little bit about what Peros does.

B Who I am. So yeah, I started my career in architecture. I look at my journey in three different phases. My first bit was originally in a firm in Chicago and they moved me out to San Francisco to do mostly high rise Residential projects along with higher education projects. And then I actually came across on a product during CA called a tool called PlanGrid and ended up really just realizing the impact of technology within a project and really just took a hold of planning grid, dove into it and then ended up reaching out to a lot of people at PlanGrid, including the founders. Just found out like everyone's email and just wanted to join this rocket ship. And then from there saw through early stage plangrid to the time of our acquisition by a company you all are probably familiar with called Autodesk back in 2018 or 19 and then helped lead a team of technical sales professionals, people who come from the industry and, and grew that as well and spent about five years at Autodesk. And then like my third kind of phase has been at Peros, which has been really exciting and I came across Peros, you know, actually because I met Ari at Autodesk event a few years back, always kept an eye on it.

B Ari is our CEO and co founder and my wife is actually an architect and she saw Piros and was really impressed by it too. So that kind of happened just naturally where I was like, I definitely want to go back into like this really big innovation side of the technology arm and joined Peros a little over a year ago. And since then it's been super fun, great, great product, great team. And for those who don't know what Peros is, basically Peros is a way to capture a firm's work into a living, searchable, you know, intelligent AI based search engine where you can reuse and potentially reference and get inspiration from trusted potential content and, and really avoid the aspect of hunting or even redrawing aspects of your design, whether it be details or families. And there's a lot of other collaborative tools we can dive into. But that's a little bit about Puros. We can talk more about it later as well.

C Evelyn.

A Great, thanks Ross. Zander, how about you? Who you are, what you do at Clark Nexon, beyond BIM management, and maybe even a fun story about how you end up as the firm's first commercial drone pilot.

C Yeah, so I'm actually an architect. So I was an architect with this firm for eight years before moving over to the department that I'm in now, which is called Practice Technology. With this department, what we do is we manage the software and the hardware that's used in our design work. With my role as a BIM manager, I specifically focus on the front end aspects of bim. So it's like the workflows the processes that I'm looking for, optimization and efficiencies for us as we create our work product. But it's not just me. I work with a team of other people. So there are two other big managers in the firm.

C We have visualization artists that work in this department. We have computational design specialists as well, and computer scientists. The practice technology department that we're in is really interesting. And what I like about it is kind of divide our focus into one third production, one third innovation, and then one third synergy. So how do we connect everything? So that's actually where the drone part comes in. So that's under the innovation pillar of practice technology. And so, yeah, a few years ago, this was six years ago, when this group was getting off the ground, I volunteered to lead that group, and I found value in being able to capture a bunch of data from a site. So at that time, I worked out of an office that was in western North Carolina, so Asheville, North Carolina.

C So it's in the mountains. And so a lot of the sites that we were doing buildings on were. It was rural, so there wasn't a lot of data that was available through Google or something like that for the sites. And so we needed to capture that site data. And so very quickly we found the value of being able to fly a drone, scan the site, and bring that back to the office with us so that we could do our design work with the most information possible.

A So talk to me about how the two of you met each other. Who found Peros first? Was it at an event?

C Funny story. When I switched over from being an architect to practice technology, the other BIM manager that had been here kept telling me that there's this company they keep emailing, they want to set up a meeting, something about details. And so by the third time that she was bugging me about it, I was like, okay, fine, let's sit down with Piros and see what they have to say. I knew that we were having some issues managing all of our standard details, our typical details that we use in the firm. And at that point, we were using a container file to sort of manage them and using sheets to organize them. And it was working for us. But we also kind of, I think, knew in the back of our head that it could work better. But that's all to say, I did not want to have this meeting with Piros.

C I was like, it's just another sales pitch. We're going to go into this and we'll just keep doing what we're doing. But what's 30 minutes of my time? Right. So we met with them and they said a few things, they demoed the software for us, they said a few things that was interesting. But what really sparked my interest in this and I think, and what our group brought back and discussed the most was how this software enables us to tap into a knowledge feedback loop and access firm wide information instantaneously. So simultaneously coming out of COVID we went from sort of an office based firm model, so we have multiple offices across different states, to more of a discipline based firm model. So it doesn't matter what office you're in, you're in the architecture discipline or you're in the mechanical discipline, or you're plumbing discipline, or you're in electrical discipline. And so when we switched to that, it suddenly information that existed across offices needed to be accessible.

C And so we found a lot of value in being able to take our work, our revit files, upload them, and suddenly everybody can access the details that are used on these projects and be able to learn from them or build from them. And so that was the real value for us and why we really started to become interested in using Peros.

A Ross, were you in on that sales call then?

B This was actually before my time even. Xander's been talking to Piros for what, over two years at this point? I'm pretty sure.

C Yeah, it's been over two years at this point. Yeah. I think that the. I think Ari might have been like the CEO might have been the person who scheduled the first meeting with us and showed us how it worked, which was really special. And I'll say this, even as POS has grown, we have still maintained a relationship with Ari and everybody, and everybody's been extremely responsive to requests that we've had or questions. The customer success team has been really wonderful to work with.

B Yeah, it's one thing that we certainly take seriously here at Puros is that when we have a customer that's really engaged like Xander, that feedback is everything. Right. Because if you have an innovative mind at a firm like Xander, and we have many others as well within the industry, globally, that just continuously talk to us about what are pushing our boundaries, about what we should do next and how we should prioritize our roadmap. And it certainly has helped in terms of our partnership and our scale is that obviously always the customer comes first, but certainly the voice of the customer and what they're asking for their business, we have to also determine is this best for the industry. And we build some of these workflows and products based on that direct feedback. And Xander's always been a legendary name here at Piros because he always gives us very candid feedback. And we appreciate that. And we make sure that when he talks, we listen.

B And it's something that we put on our roadmap to make sure that it gets built eventually.

A I want to go back to something, Ross, that you said when you joined Puros and you were writing about design's moment has finally arrived and that you felt this new energy once before in your career. I'm assuming that it might have something to do with that other software product you talked about or what was that moment that you felt before? And how is that coming around again?

B Yeah, I mean, just a little bit like around when I joined plangrid. They're very much. And since the last actually decade, I feel like there's been such a big focus in technology around construction, and a lot of like, you know, capital investments have been directed on just the, the output and not really like the, the design aspect. It's more about like, the coordination during construction. And really when I was reflecting on like, a. A tool that like, globally made its presence across every firm, and actually there was kind of two tools that came to mind, but they were well over a decade ago. One was obviously Bluebeam. Like, I remember when I was walking around like the, the studio, and we had like a.

B A group of 10 or 15 of us, like, piloting Bluebeam, and then all of a sudden all 300 people at the firm had Bluebeam within like six months. That kind of took the industry by storm back in the day. But then the other one was more on the rendering side of Enscape. And both those tools really made a huge impact on the industry. But since then it's been a little quiet and I think obviously the tables have turned on realizing that design, there's so much that we can do today with it. Obviously in the era of AI and just helping out with operational efficiencies and in general capturing this ability to streamline how people problem solve, how people collaborate. It is a new era, and I think Puros is at the right time to help facilitate that. Now, certainly, looking back on Bluebeam and Enscape, they were different solutions, but I think my reasoning behind that comment in the post is that there's been such a big focus in construction, and now the time has arrived to focus back on the earlier stages of the design process and the project life cycle.

A Why do you think that it is the way that it is? Because I Mean, I've obviously seen that trend too. VC companies have been heavily, much more heavily invested in the C side of the AECO space. But I'd love to get your thoughts on why you think that focus has been so prominent historically.

B Well, it's probably two things. One is that in this new era of AI, people really want to know how to capture things that have been successfully done already or things that maybe have not been done well. And it's always best to point further upstream at when decisions are made, which is generally in the design process to figure that out so that things don't bubble up downstream. And I think like, you know, even if you look at all these other industries, a lot of these tools that are leveraging AI really point upwards and like the concept phases of how we can formulate a decision or a design or something that will help out like a downstream decision. I think that's one piece of it and I think two is that like, honestly it's a little bit less risk in the earlier stages of the design process to have optionality that potential ways AI can help streamline what your decision making process is, then having it be suggestive downstream in the construction process where there's a lot more money on the table. Right. So I think the first focus around how AI can help you out is that people are like, all right, well let's start where there's less risk and less money at play, which is really in the design phases versus when they're actually building the building. And, and obviously if something from an AI is helping suggest something in construction, then it's a lot heavier weight.

B And so I think the focus kind of shifted more upstream.

A Xander, I'd be interested in hearing your insight on what it's mean from the firm perspective. And I feel like there's a lot more technology choices now because of it that the firms are having to make.

C Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was going to, when, when you asked the question on my mind, immediately went to Enscape as well. Like that was a, a game changer. And I think from a design point of view, we're seeing more and more clients saying we want something delivered faster. Right? Don't, don't take as much time with the design, but we still want the same quality and the same thought put into it. So, you know, previously it would take eight hours to do one image rendering, right. And now we can live walkthrough a rendered building with Enscape. And so it's, you know, then it's much, much, much faster to go through the design process.

C So I think that that Enscape, like enabled that. But I also think that what we're also starting to see a little bit is a change in how we are working. And so this quote is not from me, so I don't want credit for it. But what the quote is, it said, previously we used to model to render, and now we are rendering to model. So it's a switch in how we are working where we can start using some of this technology and these tools to help us iterate and to help us actually do our design. But what we have to do is we have to start thinking about how we're going to go across the whole process differently. Normally we do the rendering at the end of a project. We're like, oh, we've done the design, let's render it, let's make it look pretty, let's show the client.

C Instead, we actually do a bunch of renderings first. Then we start to generate the model and use that as the iterative and design process.

A I want to talk about how people have been having conversations around AI being the next digital technology and they relate it to this timeline, right? Like there was this move from hand drafting to cad, CAD to bim, BIM to AI. But we all know that there are some firms who have purchased Revit and still use it only like cad. So first of all, what did the shift get wrong at the CAD to BIM moment that we might be at risk of repeating?

C That one's pretty obvious to me. I mean, that shift got wrong is that the deliverable is still a deliverable, right? You're building a model, but you're delivering drawings. And some of those drawings are helpful and necessary. But at the end of the day, a lot of the work that goes into that model doesn't get delivered in a drawing set.

B Yeah, I agree with that. I also think if you think of like just data, right? There's just so much more data in the world of BIM than just vectorized line work. Right. And I think it is actually something that can compound over time if you do it correctly with how you want to leverage that data. Right. And so with BIM today, it's almost a very different scenario because there is so much data. The question is like, how do you leverage it and how does your firm memorialize it and compartmentalize it in a way that's effective? Right. And that's a really hard thing to do.

B Right? Because if you think of just like how much data is out there, especially in our industry, it's actually leaps and bounds more than any other vertical out there because of how much is inputted into one single model. Right? But then there's one single model, which could be dozens and dozens of projects in one firm. And then however many firms are out there. So the amount of data that is at play in AEC is significantly greater than most industries today. And I think the question is, like, how do you. How do you capitalize on that and use it to a point where, like, just the CAD to BIM equation equivalent is a valid point, but I think it's just so inherently different because it's really just about what data can you leverage to just make your business more intelligent and productive and efficient?

A So my question is, and I definitely have my own very vocal thoughts on this, when people say AI is just the next CAD to bim, what is your response to that? Is it. Is it just the next CAD to bim? How do you view that?

B I think it's. I think it's very different because it's not necessarily kind of what Xander was alluding to. It's not necessarily about the deliverable. Like, it's actually about so many other pieces of the puzzle that if you think of CAD to bim, it's just design authoring, right? But how AI can play a role in just a firm and all the pieces of information and tools. It's really about, like, data portability across those different tools to have better output. And it has nothing to do with design authoring. It's actually how a firm can just be more efficient, all while retaining that quality. So it is incomparable in my mind.

A Xander, you're nodding. Do you have any thoughts on that?

C Yeah, well said. I mean, that's exactly where my thoughts went in that it's going to be more impactful across many different aspects of our work than just one specific thing, which is drawing creation, or design authoring. And I think that different firms are going to find different ways to get value out of it.

A Ross, I wanted to talk about your own path on the podcast. We often talk about it as architecture. And because you started off as an architect, you went from plant to plan Grid and then to Autodesk. Six years at Autodesk before jumping to Piros. What did that ARC teach you about how this industry actually decides to change? A lot of the architects that I talk to that are working on the tech side kind of get frustrated with that, with our lack of momentum.

B There's a lot to unpack with that question. I'd say one is that like architects. And you know, obviously we all came from the same cloth of fabric. We all went through this like incredibly arduous education of architecture school, like all nighters, working your tail off, right. And really critically thinking about your, your design, your product, your output. Right. And because of that, I think a lot of people inherently part of who, who have lived and breathed that just are thinkers. Right.

B So they are innovative in mind, but because they're thinkers, they sometimes can be slower in the, in their decision making process. Right. And that's just human nature, but that's kind of embedded in the industry of architecture. But I also, I think the one thing that I've seen, at least in my career is that architects really more than any other professional in the AEC industry, lean heavily on trust. Right. It's really, really deeply embedded into the way people think and like actually make a decision. And so there's very much a human nature of just trust and knowing that we have your back as a technology solution. And I think that's one of the reasons why when we were growing Puros, is that we put a heavy amount of our investment into our adoption.

B Because change management is so incredibly hard, especially at large scale firms, as probably Xander can allude to it, like Clark Nexon. So you have to have a team and it's not just one person. You have to have a whole team that's dedicated to that. And that's certainly something that we also had at Autodesk. We had something very similar with a massive customer success arm at Plangrid and certainly is a top priority for us at Puros, is that this is not just like, oh, you like the software, you're excited, good luck, have fun. Right? We very much. That's 5 or 10% of the relationship is actually the pre sales process, 90% is how you use it and the partnership afterwards. Right.

B And that's something that is only going to allow a company to be successful in the architectural space because we're all very much thinkers that need to think through that process. And even after you maybe pilot or give a software a shot, you have to see the value and then earn the trust still. And those two things come hand in hand.

A Xander, I see you nodding. I don't know if you had a follow up in terms of the change management or what it really means for implementation of the technology side.

C Yeah. So the change management part is really hard and that's a huge portion of my job. We were fortunate that Heroes does prioritize and understand what that process is and what needs to happen to be successful. So we had a lot of help from them in rolling this out. There were a lot of things that we did even before we got the guidance from Piros. We had to figure out how we wanted to do this and what the process was going to look like. There are two things here. Number one is it needed to be easy.

C We can't roll something out that's even harder than what we're doing before. Right. So I think that's a direct reflection of what the product is. The second thing is when we roll it out, we really need to be clear on where the value add is. And what I've found is that this is important to make that really clear and really easy to understand. And it does two things. It appeals to both the logical side of the brain and the emotional side of the brain. And if we can change both of those at once, it's sold.

C It's really like, it's really easy. If we can change one of them, we'll get somebody to come around. It'll take a little bit of hand holding and work. But if we can't do any of that, if they can't see the value add, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be successful. So we've, we did that through, through two methods. Number one, we got buy in from, from leadership, so. And we got buy in from the other end of that, which was like the production folks and we had a few champions in that group and that was instrumental for the success was being able to. Once those folks saw the value, we were off to the races.

A Big thanks to Pyrdos for sponsoring this episode. Every firm has that one person who remembers where every detail lives, which family is the right one, and what the office considers standard. But there's only one of them and they've got their own projects to run. Piros does that job across every project, office and team and see how it works@puros.com that's P I R R O S C O M Xander, I would love to get your thoughts on this because you know, a lot of architecture firms, when they talk about onboarding new technology, even testing out new technology. You mentioned you alluded to innovation under, under your work. You're at a larger DAF firm where you know you don't as an individual doesn't necessarily have to assign your hours to projects. But you know, there's definitely. You talked about the production team where they're expected, there's an.

A To be 80% or more productive. And even on the production side When I was working there, there's like that 20% gets filled really quickly with just administrative stuff that you have to do for your projects, even though you can't build them to your projects. So where does this extra change, like, where does this extra time go? And how do you convince leadership that it's necessary to do this professional development to onboard a new technology to really begin to move things forward?

C Great question. I'm fortunate that I'm 100% overhead. Right. So I don't have to worry about that. That is great. And that was a. What a relief to move from being an architect to this side of things. At the same time though, that's a big portion of what we're considering.

C When we're looking at software and we're wanting to make a change, we are looking at what those numbers are going to be. So we do some calculations when we evaluate software of do we think this is going to say, like, why are we doing this? Where is the value? And that can look as simple as reduced hours on a project. It saves time. We can spend that time doing something else. We could be more profitable. We can actually take on more work because there's more capacity there. So there's many different ways that we could do that. So that's a very simple way of doing it.

C The other way of looking at it is more of does this make it easier? Is this less work for like emotional work for. For the end user? And so if we can improve their. Their work as well, that there's some value to that, their work experience.

A But you still have to create the time. Right. For the production team.

C Let's use Puros as an example. Right. So when we started with Piros, we started with 25 seats. So we had 25 seats that we used. We. We identified specific people we wanted to use for it because we knew that those people were high performers. They would really be able to test it, provide the right feedback, all of that. Our firm is, well, we're bigger now.

C So since we started piloting this, we were collect next and we've been acquired by another company called jmt. So we're a bit bigger than when we first started. But when we first started, we were about, I would say 250 production people that would potentially see this. So we had 25 seats for it. You know, we knew everybody in the firm. So we could really identify who wanted, who could use it, who could provide the right feedback to us, and we just let them go. It goes back to the point I made earlier, which was it's gotta be clear and it's gotta be easy. And so that really helped with the adoption in the pilot program was this was not a difficult program to learn.

C People understood it very, very quickly. As a result of that, they understood the value add very, very quickly as well. I think very soon after we started using this, I wanna say within, like the first six weeks, one person called me up and said, I don't think I can work without this anymore because this, this gives me access to everything I need. And so as soon as we start hearing that type of feedback, we start to understand we need to start pushing this a little bit more. We need to start bringing other people into it and seeing where it can grow. And then for us, moving on from that, that 25 people then grew to a hundred. A hundred people. And when we did that, we saw a big jump in the adoption and the use for it.

A Ross, you. You're, you're nodding your head. Is this a similar story that you're hearing from other architecture firms when you talk about onboarding and, and how does Peroes help them along with that?

B Well, every firm is a snowflake in many ways, right? And, like, how they want to approach software and technology decisions and, you know, review, like, you know, what's working and what's not. But I would say the commonalities between what we see as like, an exceptional rollout and partnership, like, what Xander's alluding to is really around what he just said, is that in order for a software to be successful, I like to call it the sandwich effect, you have to have buy in from people who are leadership, you know, partners and principals, C suite folks. But you also have to have, like, acknowledgement of value from production staff members, right? And what you're gonna find is you're gonna find people in between the middle, but also on the top rung and the, the production rung. That what we call as like, activation champions, right? And in order for something to be successful, you need to have people really understanding the value from their perspective, from their role of, like, how this can impact their business. And then that helps build, like, a better case to roll this out. Now, a lot of times we see firms like Xander's side start with like, our, our package of like 25 users to just go through this validation, like, phase, right? But then they get a select group that ideally is a blend of people from different roles, different perspectives at the firm to come together and make a decision like that. So, like, yes, what Xander is talking about is very much like a Very typical way we see successful rollouts. But again, like, every firm is different.

B Even their decision making is different too. So sometimes we see different. Even branches have budgetary silos or some that are across more of the firm more broadly. We also see at times IT or BIM have their own budget versus, like, you know, at the C suite level. So there's, there's different ways that we have to, at least as a company, dynamically change our approach and just our partnerships just to understand what they need to do. And obviously we go into all of our, like, conversations with potential customers with a trusted advisor lens. Right. We don't want to go into it and just like pitch Piros, we want to go into it and like, consult and like, suggest what we see as successful.

B Because every business is very different. Right. And like, that's what Xander has been doing with our team, like working with people like Talar and just really figuring out the firm's dynamics and like, what we can do to like, show what good looks like for each person that comes to the table that's interested in Peros. Right. So it is always something that keeps you on your toes and just, you know, we evolve here on the pro side, but every firm is different. And then also we go into it with a consultative mindset.

A Xander, I want to go back to you because you mentioned about the data points that you use to sell to leadership. Looking back now at what Puros like does, what are the data points that you can say have like really shifted since you started using Puros?

C The real thing that has changed for us. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I don't know if this really is a data point. But the thing that has changed for us for the better has been people are getting their content from a single source that goes through some sort of a vetting process, and they're able to access it quickly and they're able to access the correct data. And those two last things are key because the way that I look at it is if somebody's going to go after a detail in a project, they're going to find that project, whether it's a PDF of the final CDs or the Revit model that is six versions back, and they're going to get it and it's going to take a lot of time with Peros, and we'll just use Details as an example for this. They're able to search for whatever they're trying to find and they're able to see content that is curated by the firm for the firm. And I think that that is really beneficial because we're able to focus what knowledge they're getting and what information that they're getting, and we're able to. To make it easier for them to get it.

A Ross, is there anything you wanted to add in there?

B Yeah, I mean, that's spot on, right? Like, it's interesting when people come to us, they. They look at us as just a place that they can have a library details, which is actually something that we, we. We try to like, teach, like the mindset out of, right? Because you could have a library details, your classic wall partition details. And I'm going to take Xander's detail references kind of like the, you know, analogy here. But what really is important and the problem that like Puros is helping solve is really the aspect of people in the industry really think in projects, right? Like, what was the last product they worked on? You know, what did they do maybe three years ago on a specific product type, maybe with the same client? And we took that mindset and that's what we baked into our platform, is that people route back to, like, what they're familiar with. And we're all creatures of habit in a product that they work, that they know a detail, they trust lives or like, you know, potential problem they solve their family, right? And so when that product is completed, like back in the day, like, all of that hard work in that product is inaccessible for the firm to get value from, right? Unless you know who to talk to specifically or where to look. And if you're at a larger firm like Clark Nexon, it's hard to find where to look because there's a lot of subfolders and subfolders and subfolders. And so basically what Pros does is we help surface that, right? And help kind of curate what we think you need, but then help really compound that, that knowledge of, like, problem solved so that people can build upon that and build out standards and build out the quality they want.

B Because unless that product, you know, is done and you know where to look, it generally just gets buried forever. And someone's going to go through the same process of trying to solve that same condition or moment if they didn't have a heroes, for example, right? So really what we're helping do is just make sure that knowledge does not get lost.

A This is kind of a question about how much this has evolved in firms too. But when I started practicing architecture without dating myself, a lot of the learning was built into kind of the redoing of details, right? Understanding the Layers of the waterproofing to get all the waterproofing right, et cetera. So how does this begin to change and evolve that apprenticeship model, and how does that learning change if it's all now in this knowledge based library?

C Yeah, great, great question. We actually have addressed that with kind of our approach to rolling out Peros and the way that our firm handles it. So I know that, like Ross said, a lot of firms have different ways of, of using Piros. What we do is we take our projects after they have gone to bid or been built. So including all the revisions, and those are the revit files that we upload. So they've gone through a full vetting process at that point, in theory. And we put not everything up there, but the top projects are going up there. And so when people search for detail, they're searching through all of those projects for that detail.

C What I tell people and what I tell our architects and engineers is when you find a detail, you still have to do your job as an architect or an engineer. When you put this into your project, you still have to make sure that that roof curb is detailed correctly. You can't just put it in there and expect it to be done. You still have to, it's going to get you 70% closer to the finish line, but you still have to do your job to get it that extra 30%. So I still think that we're preserving the need for architects and engineers to do their job in that process. But what we're taking away is we are removing some of the work that is unnecessary. And so they still need to look at it. They still need to understand how it goes together.

C They need to do their job. Pretend they're the contractor and they're building it, what layers go in which order. And you could go through all of that and run your pen through something to make sure that your waterproofing and your air barrier doesn't have any gaps in it. Do all of that stuff like you've always done, but you're just building on the knowledge that the firm already has.

B I think Xander captured that very well. I am a huge believer in the fact that we are not flattening creativity when it comes to how people critically think about, for example, details and like complex problem solving. That's not our goal. Our goal is to actually be like a centralized reference system to learn from one another. And going back to like what Xander and I were talking about is like tapping into that knowledge is critical, but still having the potential guardrails and permission set that require Maybe junior designers to go in and collaborate in a very low barrier to entry environment with a technical leader or designer and critically think about why this matters in the next condition. Like Xander says, getting 70% of the way there, but you still got to problem solve the remaining 30% and think about, like, how these things come together. Right. And I think that's critical in preserving what is inherently the IP of a firm.

B Right. Is like really how you creatively think, how you problem solve and like really, really just work as a team to make sure that this is like the way you want this environment and this building to come together. And that's. That's something that I know we deeply bake into our platform. And like our philosophy here at Puros is that we're not here to flatten creativity and just be a place where you copy and paste. It's a place where you learn, you mentor, but also ensure that, like, you don't go through the tedious tasks of reinventing the wheel each time and basically spend a bunch of hours hunting for something that you are trying to learn from.

C Yeah, I joke around all the time like architects with the details that architects do. Every building is special, right? Every building is unique. Nobody's done it before and all of that, and that's fine. But I bet somebody's done something pretty close to that before, and I bet our firm has done that too, or somebody else in the firm has done something too. So I still think that there's the opportunity to learn from more people because you're able to query more projects, more results, instead of talking to one architect. And then you only have that one architect's knowledge to pull from. It's every project that the firm has worked on. You can see all of it, every way it's been done or detailed.

C Or I could be working in a different office or a different studio, and the other office or studio could have, whether it's a detail or a family or something else that they're using all the time. I had no idea about it until we're able to connect that knowledge together. So I think there's a lot of value in that and there's still the opportunity for people to, at all experience levels, learn from what the firm has already done, the content that's already been created.

A I want to talk about where Puros is headed. So, Ross, do you want to give us a little insight on next steps and recent rollouts from H1 this year?

B Yeah, I would say there's a lot to talk about there. I mean, basically where Peros is headed is in a direction of capturing. We have this new tool that was released a month ago called mira, right. And it's like a. It's a Revit agentic copilot with you in Revit. Now, MIRA is the AI engine that operates Peros altogether and kind of in theme with a lot of the topics we talk, topics we've talked about. It's really around understanding deeply how a firm makes decisions and you know, specifically maybe on product types with certain, you know, leaders or in certain regions or, you know, and so forth. And so I want to just point out that like, AI is not coming for architect's job.

B It's really working more within Puros as like, as like, if you guys are familiar with the concept of like a second brain for the firm, it reflects how a firm makes those decisions and you know, mirroring those that knowledge back to the people of what potentially could be skilled or used. Right. And like I mentioned in theme of what I was talking about earlier, in order for AI to be powerful and Peros is capturing all this, it's really about the different aspects of the design process. AI is only as powerful as the data behind it, like I mentioned earlier. And so it's all about data portability. Right. And today where you see some of this data is scattered across servers, old products and a few senior people's heads, right. And when they retire or they're on vacation, it kind of walks out the door.

B So the idea is, is that, you know, heroes can help capture and surface, you know, what you need in that moment. Right. And so there's a lot that we're going to be building in the coming months and quarters that we're really excited about. And certainly if you're going to AU this year, we'd love to to meet up as well because we'll be releasing a handful of exciting products during then. Zander has been a part of some of our beta programs as well, of products that we're ongoing building right now. And again, just going back to what we're working on is that we are helping surface what would be a knowledge hub for the firm to make better decisions and learn and improve your quality and efficiency altogether.

A Xander, anything on Peros's roadmap that you're really excited about or that you've been experimenting with?

C We have a few people that are dipping their toe into Mira agentic chatbot within Revit and the feedback on that is really impressed with that. I think, you know, suddenly being able to do this within Revit is A is a bit of a game changer for everybody. And so there's a bit of a. An adjustment period as well. And we're still, I think we're in uncharted water here. We still don't understand the full potential of what a tool like this could do and how it could be utilized. And the great thing is, is we have a bunch of really creative people that are going to be able to use it. And so it'll be really interesting to see what they do with it and where they take it and where they find value and what they want to use AI chatbot for versus what they want to use their own brain for and how they use it to help them do their design.

C Ultimately, at the end of the day, the tools that we look at are to help us design, to help us do architecture and engineering and create better work products.

A I think there's a lot of changes happening in the industry right now, especially around AI and technology choices. Zander, let's start with you on if architecture firms do this well, what changes in the next five years for architects? Whether it's how they work, whether it's the value that they're getting billed for for the clients. Where would you like this to really move the needle on the practice side?

C Where I see this going is I see there being an AI layer between the human and kind of the data, and I see everything kind of going in between and through that layer. Where I would like to see it go is I would like to see the AIB being used as a tool to help the designer with their designs, to enable them to be better at their job. I don't have a crystal ball. I can't look into the future and see kind of how this is going to change the industry. I think it's going to. I think that we have to be careful as well, especially with buildings. You know, there's the health, safety, and welfare of the general public. We need to understand how that plays into it as well.

C But overall, where I see it going is there being just this layer between the data and the people.

A How about. Ross, how about you? What has pros changed about the AC industry or the A side of how we do things in the next five years?

B Yeah, I mean, I think Xander is spot on in that it's really leveraging something that's the connective tissue of helping a firm be better, but also retaining, like, you know, this deep institutional knowledge that has made them successful to begin with. Right. And I think there's a lot of AI tools out there today. And people are looking at, what do we do? Firms really don't need a bunch of AI tools that do what I call features. Right. They need an AI platform that understands how they design and operate. Right. That's really, at the end of the day, what's going to help make them successful.

B And I think if you look at just. I don't know if you guys saw that anthropic chart, but it says the potential of leveraging AI like AEC and architecture is very much has one of the highest potentials because there's just a lot of repeat work. Right. And really just lack of knowledge transfer. With firms that are growing quickly, that knowledge transfer is getting more and more critical as firms grow, as people move on to different positions, maybe retire. Right. And I think, like, what will be most successful as it pertains to like PERO is being a part of that connective tissue and ensuring that what is best needed for that designer or that architect or principal at that moment gives you optionality of how their firm would potentially make that decision. Design to be more productive.

B Right. And all the while improve that quality. And Piros is very much a part of that conversation. We're excited to be a part of that conversation and we will hope to continue being part of that conversation as we grow. And it's, I think, one of the most exciting times to be in this industry and also in technology because, yes, things are moving fast. There's a lot of different tools out there, but we are at this, like, paramount moment where we can really make sure that this industry gets what it deserves, which is, you know, allowing people to do what they need to do at the end of the day, which is design, be creative, collaborate, and I think AI will help just help that out altogether.

A Hi disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all the of of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers and other disruptors in our community@practiceofarchitecture.com community. Our social media handle is practiceofarch. That's practiceofarch. We'd love to hear from you. So feel free to drop us a DM and say hello.

A Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.