166: ‘Dirty Little Secrets’, with Parley Burnett and Chris Shafer

Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel. In this episode, I welcome Parley Burnett and Chris Shafer. Parley is the CEO of Iconic BIM. Previously. He has led product and customer success efforts at UNIFI Labs.Worked as a BIM manager. Led large content development efforts for manufacturers and served on several different BIM standards committees.

Chris has nearly 20 years of experience as an architect and leading large firms in their adoption of design technologies and Revvit he recently joined Parley .To help digital design and BIM leaders better support their staff in their use of Revvit. Previously, Chris was a senior project architect and the digital delivery leader for HDR Architecture, where he led global teams in north America, Australia, and Germany, developing and implementing firm-wide digital design technology. standards and [00:01:00] processes. Previous to that. He worked with Perkins+Will and CBT Architects in Boston.

In this episode, we discussed the hidden inefficiencies within the AEC industry. We discussed the automation of industry standards, educating software users in real time, streamlining processes, the importance of BIM model health, eliminating technical debt and the ROI associated with these things. And more. It was a fantastic conversation with both Parley and Chris, and I hope you'll not only find value in it for yourself. But that you'll help add value to the profession by sharing it with your network. Please give this podcast a boost in the vast media landscape out there by subscribing wherever you listen.

And if you'd like to receive an email, when new episodes are published with all of the links and other information from the episode, sign up at trxl.co. You can also directly support the show by becoming a member at the site as well. So as always, [00:02:00] thank you so much for. For listening. And now without further ado, I bring you Parley Burnett and Chris S ​

I am joined today by Parley Burnett and Chris Shafer, and it's great to have you both here. Welcome to the TRXL podcast.

Parley Burnett: Thank you, uh,

Evan Troxel: Yeah, it's going to be great conversation. I, I am excited to hear kind of where we're going to go. I think of this, uh, the topic that we're going to be speaking about today is kind of like the industry's dirty little secrets, but there's other ways to, to phrase it. I think with waste in the industry and, and things that, that people actively ignore.

The, the idea of, of Dirty Little Secrets, I think is a good enough clickbaity kind of, uh, title for this episode. So, uh, that's why I'm going with it. But, but before we get to that, um, because I think a lot of people will be able to kind of nod along in agreement, but also I'm hoping we can, we can really hear about some ideas to, to [00:03:00] move forward in, in the industry.

Let's hear your stories first. So Parley, why don't you kick us off and tell us how you got to, uh, where you are today?

Parley Burnett: Yeah, perfect. try to keep it brief, I guess.

Evan Troxel: No worries. This is long form. This is podcasting, man. This is where people get to get to know who you are. So yeah,

don't, don't try to keep it brief. Just, Just,

tell the story.

Parley Burnett: yeah, I guess I, I usually, I, I usually say that, um, fundamentally I'm a Revit nerd, right. So just to begin with, been basically working with Revit since 2005, and I think I quickly gained a passion for Revit having come from AutoCAD architecture desktop, um, and basically kind of. Went into drafting, thought I wanted to be an architect, quickly changed my mind, thought I wanted to be a developer. I think I got a D in my first class of, uh, of, of that.

Evan Troxel: D for development. I mean,

Parley Burnett: yeah, D.

Evan Troxel: [00:04:00] sounds right.

Parley Burnett: So I, I guess I

was sort of not sure what to do, but I knew I had interest in the building industry and design industry. So, um, went to UNLV construction management, But really have always been working with Revit in one way or another and kind of had my own drafting service for a time there to get through school, but then really gravitated towards especially the content side of Revit and the content strategies, everything else that goes around with that created a lot of content. And I think perhaps most. impactful to my career was my time at Unifi Labs. So I joined up with them in the very early days. It was 2010, really, before it was even called Unifi. We went through several different names, and I was, I think, the third person there. [00:05:00] And together with a couple of really close colleagues, kind of, Conceptualize the idea of cloud based content management, and, uh, that was a, an incredible learning experience.

Um, it obviously kind of took hold on the industry as a, as a concept. Um, now there's other products, of course, and now UNIFI is acquired by Autodesk, as a lot of us know, but during my time there, my 7 or 8 years, I, I, was, uh, a manager of content creation efforts for like manufacturers back when Autodesk Seek was a thing.

So we've developed a lot of content for that. And then I became a product manager and then near the end I was leading our customer success efforts. So, um, you know, I, I, there's been a couple stints where I was a BIM manager, but typically for like smaller [00:06:00] firms where things were much more nimble. Um,

but then that was kind of complimented by a lot of conversations held with other firms during my, my time at Unify. Um, so kind of to the Guardian story, I guess, um, back in 2018, left Unify and really wanted to do something that was unique for the industry. A lot of times I would be on the phone with, um, firms of different sizes, different disciplines. But I would always hear the same kind of problems, right? And a lot of them trying to address those problems in the same way. So, first off, it felt like an opportunity was there to kind of level that out a little bit and not make everybody take on so much on their own. but also do things in a much more, like, natural, intuitive, um, way. in the [00:07:00] flow kind of process, right? I, I, I had seen firsthand how anytime you have software that requires user interaction, like, literally any buttons that you have for users to click on, that's a barrier for adoption, right?

So we

really wanted to do

Evan Troxel: you say this and I'm like thinking about the apps that people use on a day to day basis and there's hundreds and hundreds of buttons, right? And so you're saying anytime there's a button, right?

Parley Burnett: anytime.

Chris Shafer: Yep.

Evan Troxel: it's like, you pull up these, like, it just reminds me of like the dashboard of an aircraft, right?

It's like, Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of buttons here, right? Uh, I can, it's completely overwhelming for a lot of people. And, and you're talking about software that it just keeps adding buttons, like is, that's kind of a fundamental feature. It's buttons. We added buttons. Yeah.

Chris Shafer: Yeah.

Parley Burnett: Yeah, a feature is that we removed buttons, right? That's kind of the way we [00:08:00] would like to think of it. Um, that just introduces more complexity. So we really do think hard about any time we're adding interface for the users. Um, that's it. That's almost a bad thing. It has to be done out of necessity.

So, um, kind of quick profile now. It's been about six years. We work with firms all over the world now and the hundreds, and it's just been quite a wild ride. Chris has been a big part of the story actually, even though he's joined the team recently.

Chris Shafer: Yeah. Parley and I go way back. Um, him and I first met, uh, during the unified days. So, um, he was, you know, he was our customer. with my previous firm and, and we just instantly, I think we instantly connected on a lot of things he talked about, especially when it comes to the content and the, and the, the problems [00:09:00] that, that we're both seeing, um, and, and fundamentally understood them from, from the same perspective.

I actually come from. Come from a whole different perspective and kind of path kind of getting to where I am here at Guardian is I actually started off as an engineer in the aerospace industry. Um, but I was really lucky early in my career, um, you know, working for General Electric producing jet engines.

I was actually part of a team. They call them the, uh, the blue sky team because they always said their heads were in the clouds. And, but we were, we were responsible of converting the assembly process of jet engines from a analog one to a digital one. And, this was a really interesting learning development for me was we were, we were responsible first and foremost to solve problems that were kind of plaguing the assembly of jet engines.

Um, and, but as we did that, we would introduce technology into solving the problems and making sure those problems don't reoccur. And one of the things I really [00:10:00] learned as an engineer solving these problems was. At the root of every problem, there's the lowest common denominator, and that is the driver of that problem.

And it's through research, it's through data analysis, and, and just testing to get to what is that lowest common denominator. And so, fast forward, always wanted to be an architect, but for whatever reason, at 18 years old, I chose, chose engineering first. Um, but then, after doing that for almost six years, I decided to go back to school and become an architect. And as soon as I got into architecture, I was like, Whoa, this, I'm, I'm stepping back 20, 30 years from a technology perspective. Um, but then Revit came out and I was like, wow, all right, this is the tool. And, and I started using it in about 2008, 2009. And I was like, this is the tool that will drive the industry to the future.

Um, [00:11:00] and, and I kind of fast forward, um, many years as, as being a, a project architect, um, leading projects, you know, make, you know, through design and construction, done everything from, you know, from the very beginning to the end of the projects, every step along the way. Um, and. I really came down to, there is a few drivers in our industry that is really preventing us from really maximizing the potential that's in the technology that we have in front of us, right?

And one of that was, was content, and I think that was partly had mentioned as well. Um, you know, simple, simple logistics, right? If we are digitally building buildings, we need the parts and pieces for those piece, for those buildings at our fingertips. It's not available. What do we do? I think we all agree.

We just kind of all make it up. So early on when, um, when I went to HDR, I just went back as, um, when I moved to [00:12:00] HDR, I was like, all right, I'm done with the technology side of things. I'm just going back to architecture. And, and so it's been my first year there doing architecture and designing a building in the Boston Seaport.

And then, um, Then I just happened to see, someone had mentioned to me, um, within, within the office, like, oh, I did see there's this corporate role for a content manager opened up, and I was like, I'll give it a go, I'll give it a go, and that's when I took the role, um, I met Parley and Parley had, Parley and I had a lot of conversations about, you know, content management and the, the issues that kind of plague the industry and so on and so forth, um, And then, then Parley went and started Guardian.

Um, and from, from then, Parley and I spoke almost on a weekly basis for the last six, seven years, um, about what's happening. So, um, as, as my career grew at HDR, we're, um, end up leading our, what [00:13:00] we call digital design. It was, um, digital design and delivery, which is alternative to digital practice. Um, you know, We were always talking about, you know, what are those needs and what are these fundamental problems that's, that's, that's limiting the industry, um, and from, from really meeting that, that potential that's right in front of us.

Um, so yeah, um, after, after kind of, kind of, In my off hours helping Party help from time to time, uh, this past, this past spring, I finally made the leap and said, All right, let's give this software development thing a try. Um, and so it's been, it's been an interesting three months now since I've been here. Guardian.

Evan Troxel: Nice. The thing that you, you mentioned about when you were, when you were working at GE and transitioning from analog to digital process in order to solve problems that were plaguing the, the process of building these [00:14:00] engines. I'm curious how you, do you see an, an analogy there, I mean, with what you're doing now?

I mean, the whole point of, technology implementation is typically process, right? It's, it's on the, rarely do people focus on the people side, right? There's, there's, which I think is, is another issue, right? Like you can't just put software into the pipeline and, and then just say, okay, check, done, solved, right?

It's not like that at all, but working together between people and process is the key thing here. And, and I'm curious if you. Like you said, at some point, Revit came along, you saw that as the future, and you said, Okay, like this, because before that, you said we were 20 to 30 years behind what you had already experienced.

Aerospace, right? So I, I'm just curious, like I just threw a bunch of stuff out there. What, what do you see as the, both of you, what do you [00:15:00] both see as kind of the current state? You, you have your fingers at, you know, you're on tap with a lot of people in the industry, across the industry, you have international customers, as well as.

You know, customers here in the US, what are you, because, because you said something earlier too, that, that just, all of this is just kind of firing off in my brain at the moment, so I apologize for it being so sporadic, but, like, you, you hear the same things all over the place, and I'm, same thing here, I hear the same things all over the place, I think a lot of people think, oh, we're, only we're having this problem, um, But it's not true, like everybody's having very similar problems, if not the same problems.

And so, just thinking about all that, I mean, your story, the development, the path that you've been on, the trajectory that you've been on. really matters when it comes to kind of thinking about these industry wide issues, touching base with a lot of customers, really matters when you're, when you're considering how you're going to solve problems for people.

And then there's [00:16:00] implementation and then there's training, like there's the actual people side of it and getting back to Parley's initial thing about adding or removing buttons, right? That's to the actual user of, of the implementation to solve these problems. And, and all of this kind of ecosystem, I'm just curious, what are you guys hearing, feeling as kind of the pulse of the industry?

Are we still really far behind? Are we not far behind? Are we, are we cutting edge? Like, where are we on the spectrum? And then, like, what, what are you still hearing as kind of the issues plaguing the industry? Either one of you, take, take that and run with it,

Chris Shafer: probably if you don't mind, if I'll start off with sort of the analogy that you asked about that is one, it does start with people. Um, that is one of the things I first learned about, um, when solving these problems, these the majority of time, unfortunately, it was people problems, right? It wasn't, It wasn't intentional or, or, um, [00:17:00] bad intentions, um, by anyone.

I mean, if you think about it, it doesn't matter what you're doing. And I would say, especially if you're doing something where you're producing something, the same thing over and over and over again, it becomes mentally taxing. Right. And when it comes to the jet engines, one person would be responsible for fastening, say 700 bolts over an eight hour period.

One of those bolts wasn't fastened to the proper torque. That was enough for an engine failure. And so like, how, how do we use technology to ensure that everything is done exactly the way it should be the first time? Right. So, So you don't have these downstream mistakes. That's just human nature. And, and kind of time us back to, to architecture is we are a, a deadline driven industry.

Um, there's big deadlines, there's small deadlines, there's daily deadlines, right? [00:18:00] Always, we're always working at 100, 110%. When you're working at that capacity, you're bound to make mistakes

Evan Troxel: or take shortcuts, right? Like that,

Chris Shafer: or, or take shortcuts. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. Um, and, and so, and that's where I kind of see Guardian comes along, and I'll let Parley kind of extrapolate on that, but it is, there's so much of what we do is, is really repetitive, and it is common, um, throughout the podcast.

All of design. Um, you know, one may argue that when you're doing commercial construction versus residential, you know, the parts and pieces are a little different and whatnot, but if you're in commercial design, if you're designing high rises or whatnot, there is, there's a lot of, you're using the same kit of parts.

more or less. Um, it's just the arrangement. So there is a lot of repetition and commonality in so much of what we do. Um, and I think there is a, [00:19:00] I think there is a, I don't know how to phrase this, but a A thought in the industry, what we do each and every time is unique. And, and the way I see what we're doing is we're saying, well, let's be honest here that there, there is this thing we do over and over again.

Let's figure out how we can apply technology to that. So, you know, those little mistakes aren't happening, or we're not cutting corners because we, to prevent those downstream impacts on, on all of that. And partly, if you want to. expand on how Guardian is, is helping, you know, solve some of those.

Parley Burnett: Understood. Yeah, I think it's, those are great questions and it's true that we do talk with a lot of different firms every day, right. Um, and it's fascinating. It's really interesting to kind of, um, step back a little [00:20:00] bit and ponder what the what's this culture at this firm look like. Right. and you and you can see a lot of themes kind of extend throughout.

The entire workforce that we touch and talk with, um, kind of on the software side, we kind of look at ourselves as, as software, of course, but, but really more on the human side of things, where we're more of a reflection of a firm's existing culture. Um, basically everything in Guardian, just in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, everything has a setting and it's highly customized.

that setting. So as you're a BIM manager, a design technologist, kind of setting up Guardian, it tends to reflect your own [00:21:00] personal style, really. Um, we're there as a tool to kind of just allow you to scale that, right? Um, so I think that's, that's what we see as, um, you know, maybe Guardian is sort of an analog tool, basically, in that You've got the soft skills that are still required.

Um, and then if you develop that, then it can be very effective to driving culture and change at your firm.

Chris Shafer: I think there's one thing that's, sorry, go ahead, Evan,

Evan Troxel: you go ahead, go for it.

Chris Shafer: is I think that's one of the things that's, that's really important is when it comes to digital practice, we'll just use that as the kind of catch all phrase is, is from my role and I, you know, from my, my peers in the industry, a lot of conversations we've had is everything that the practice does. The, [00:22:00] The crossroads of where all the, you know, the, the marketing, the, the sales, you know, the project management, the technical leadership, you know, the project delivery, it all comes to that crossroads at the, at the interface of people and technology. And, and so understanding those dynamics and understanding the people behind it and what their needs and how they operate is really important.

And I think that's, um, from my own career, that's what I've seen is, is really understanding what are those needs of the people. Um, that are doing the work and making sure that all the other externalities within a firm and those requirements are being communicated and being, being adhered to throughout the process.

Um, And because at the end of the day, when that deliverable, you know, when the deliverable is, is out the door [00:23:00] or whether it's, you know, doing the QAQC process, you know, all that is, has to be done before that, that, that juncture in the project, right. And getting the people to start thinking about things kind of ahead of time, you know, before, before things become problems, before they become mistakes.

Um, it is about really understanding. The people, their mindset, what they're thinking about, what their priorities are and how they like being communicated to as well. I think that's a big aspect of what we do is understanding communication in a firm, big and small, is really difficult. And how do you communicate the needs of technical leadership or design leadership or whatever it may be while you're in the flow of producing? So I think that's a really important, um, aspect of what we do is, is think about the people and how people communicate and how [00:24:00] people interact with one another.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, it's interesting for you to bring up the needs of the technical leadership, because I'm trying to think if I've ever heard of that being phrased like that before. I feel like the thinking in firms is that the technology is there to serve the people, as tools, but not to serve the people. Not that there's needs there that need to be met.

It's more like, no, the function of this stuff is just to do what I tell it to do, however I tell it to do it. But you're reframing that to say, like there's a structure that is required, it's required that you adhere to it, so that we get the value, the benefits out of it. You know, probably later, right? But a lot of people are totally willing to hijack later for the, the, the comfort of like now, and by comfort, I just mean like getting something done, right?

Like I just need it off my list. [00:25:00] Um, and that's where this kind of perverse incentivization happens, right? Which is like, just take shortcuts now. The idea of technical debt creeping into projects because people aren't willing decisions, or they don't know what they don't know, you know, early on to benefit the project, to benefit the value of what technical leadership needs out of projects.

Um, that, that just gets, you know, the, to use the Karate Kid metaphor, right? Sweep the legs, Johnny. Like, just, just cut the legs out from underneath, underneath it now, because it just, I have a deadline, like, to your point, Chris, I have daily deadlines, right? I just need it to, Kind of work now, and I'm, I'm, you know, screw around and find out, right?

That, that's what ends up happening, right? And so, this idea of kind of, okay, so, so, okay, so here's the other thing that's going on in my head, based on what [00:26:00] Parley was saying, which is It's every firm's the Wild West, you know, and to what you said, Chris, every, every project is unique, right? Everybody thinks their project and, and, and to some extent, yes, unique assemblies, unique site, unique client, um, environmental orientation, all these things.

Yes, but using the same parts to put, put things together. And so, um, what's interesting to me is you guys are responding to. That situation and saying, well, your, your culture is unique because it's made up of individuals. who come together to form that culture and we want to meet you where you're at rather than force you to use a tool in this very specific way, which is big platforms kind of do that, right?

They force people to use the software that their way. Um, and that's where all of this screwed up. Behavior happens, right? It's like workarounds, like that's what this is because it's complicated and not everybody has the same training [00:27:00] and the same know how and, um, they haven't been using it as long as the person, you know, the expert over there.

And so I don't want to ask somebody and look stupid, risk looking stupid. So I'm going to like YouTube it, or I'm just going to try to figure it out and I'm going to figure it out, not the. standard way that the technical leadership needs. Like we've seen all of this happen all the time, right? And I think it's really interesting that you're approaching this problem from a different perspective, which is, okay, your firm culture is unique in what you're doing and how you're delivering it and how you're using the tools because you have different people.

You've got different standards than that firm. You've got different content than this firm. You've got different market segments and different project types and all these things, right? Those are, those are differences. And you're saying like, we tailor it to you rather than forcing you to use it a very specific way.

When I. Throw all this at you. I, I apologize. Like, I feel like super unstructured about how I'm, how I'm talking about this, but this is [00:28:00] very much like, Oh, I'm working all this out in my head. And I, and you prompted it, Chris, by saying, you know, what technical leadership needs and, and based on some other things that they came up before that, like, this is the kind of stuff that I think lots of people are struggling with.

Right. And, and I know firm leaders out there who have just said, like, we just declared digital bankruptcy and we let the teams figure it out. Right. And, and then we're just there to put out fires and we're there to kind of smooth over the road bumps and we're just trying to just keep it going. Right.

Just keep the tire, keep the wheels on. Right.

Chris Shafer: Exactly.

Evan Troxel: and there's another, there's the other side of that coin, which is like, it's super structured. You have to do it this way. Um, and, and I mean, You know, trying to limit technical debt buildup. So if I throw all this out there, I mean, I'm really interested in how you're kind of approaching this from a different angle than like the big platforms even can.

Right? You can't. And so what you're saying [00:29:00] is like, Guardian is super customizable to the way firm cultures and people use the software and what their technical leaders need to get out of it and all these things. Um, I, I just imagine that, like, at some level, and maybe I'm wrong, that's got to be a little hard to manage because everybody's doing it a little bit differently still, right?

Um, there's no industry standard here, right? Like, this is still kind of firm culture, firm standard kind of stuff. So, I mean, what does that trigger for you guys? Kind of, like, me bouncing this back at you.

Chris Shafer: One of, one of the things, hearing, hearing that is, take a simple thing, say, browser organization. is

Evan Troxel: You're talking about the Revit, like,

Chris Shafer: the Revit browser, Project Browser Organization, right? Something as simple as that, right? All that is, is an, is organizing of your views and sheets.

Evan Troxel: Mm hmm.

Chris Shafer: Um, Especially early on in, in, in my career and using, using Revit.

And this [00:30:00] happens with everyone in architecture. You kind of bounce from project to project, right? And you go from one project to the next. And the browser organization is completely different than the other. There's a learning curve. And there's just, you know, talking about waste in the industry, right?

That's, that's just waste.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Chris Shafer: And then you would have, then you would have, say, you hire a new architect or a new architect or a junior architect and like, well, my last firm, we organized it this way. And they go in there and start changing their organization right within that active project to that organization.

And then you have just, Layers and layers of all these other standards, and at the end of the day, you've got nothing, right? Everyone's just confused and I think we've all been there. We spend 20 minutes just looking for a view. And so with, you know, one of the things with Guardian is we're not saying what that browser organization should or shouldn't be.

We're just saying, hey, this is something that is set up by the company as a company standard. Those, you know, [00:31:00] the administrators, the digital, digital design leaders in the firms, they're the ones who's responsible for setting that up. But Guardian just ensures whatever was set up by those leaders that is being adopted and adhered by all the team, all teams and everyone on there.

And if, if the Guardian administrator chooses to do so, people are prevented from changing it, right? So they're being asked to kind of follow the rules and there's a lot of layers of tools that make sure that, you know, those, you know, those standards are set. And they're easily adhered to. And I think that's something that's really important is it's one thing to say, Hey, here's your standards, but it's another thing to say, say, well, we're making it easier for you to do your job by the standards are kind of set.

You don't have to think about it. They're there. And whenever there's something that is not meeting the standards, we're, we're just going to change it for you. We're going to change it to the [00:32:00] standard. Um, but partly actually has a really. Um, cool history on, on where he ran into a situation where, um, someone wasn't a big fan of, of the standards or lack thereof, and, and how, how a simple interaction, and again, come back to communications and people, um, how that led to, um, actually winning someone over.

Parley Burnett: Yeah, yeah, it's a fun one. Um, but, and I'll share it, but Evan, I think you said it better than I did. You know, we, we do try to arrive at where they're at from the beginning and we kind of view our role in, in the lifespan of our relationship with a firm as consulting them and guiding them. And taking the good parts that we see at other firms and kind of allowing them to kind of morph into a more positive culture. Um, and technical debt [00:33:00] for sure is a, is a concept that as, as software developers, we're, we're well familiar with, right? Um, and, and the reality is like, we are technology people. And so sometimes we're not aware of the technical debt that we're accumulating. Now, think about Revit, right? We're working with artists and designers who, who may not be as technically minded, they don't even know they're creating that technical debt.

Right. And so, so we kind of see that as our role is to kind of bring that to light as well. And the story that Chris is talking about, um, in software, we, we often say, or there's this phrase, you know, we need to eat our own dog food. Right. And so, um, early in the development of Guardian. We put it into practice with a close firm here locally, um, kind of in partnership with them.

We deployed it to the users and, you know, we, I think we had a [00:34:00] prompt show up to users when they went to the line styles management dialogue, um, that basically said like Chris was saying with the project browser, okay, this is our standard. If you're going to make a change, tell us what you're changing.

And, and we had a user there that was like, well known for being the bull in the China shop, right? Just kind of go, go, go. Um, very quick, um, not really caring about

Evan Troxel: Move fast and break things. Right. Yeah.

Parley Burnett: Just break everything. Yeah. Notorious for this. And he sent me this message of the guardian dialogue. Like, Hey, how do I get rid of this?

Right. He's, he was quite adamant about this. And I basically had a conversation with him. I was like, well, why do you want to get rid of it? Well, I'm, I see it every time I go to Align Styles. And then I asked, well, What are you trying to do there? And he's like, well, I, I'm trying to make a red line style that I can mark my plans up with so I can come [00:35:00] back later and make changes as like, well, sounds like that's something that you're doing on every project, right?

It's like, Oh yeah, for sure. It's like, well, now that I know this, I can add that line style to the template and you'll never have to do this again. Right. And that's when the, the light bulb went off to that user. Um, and became almost the biggest advocate for it at the firm.

Evan Troxel: Something you mentioned earlier, Chris, was the 20 minutes that somebody could spend just kind of learning how to navigate a project. And this is, I guess, what I was alluding to in the very beginning about like these dirty little secrets. It's like nobody really wants to recognize that this happens all in many different forms.

with, right, it is not always just the inexperience of, of a user, right? It is, it is often because we are, you know, ad hoc, you know, as a previous title of an episode, AEC is an adhocracy, right? It's like this [00:36:00] idea that every team we disperse, we come back together in a different form. Uh, different phase of a project, different project type, different template maybe for that project, different project leaders, different technical advisors, uh, different structures in these files, these giant databases that we all get into to work on a project.

And, okay, so what we've buried so far is just like what Guardian does, and you've mentioned a few things about it, but I think from a, I, I would like to, uh, to set this up so that you can talk about what Guardian does in a more comprehensive way so that people can get like, they can actually say, Oh, okay, I get it now.

Um, but using this as like the way to get into there, which is like this 20 minutes that somebody spends just learning how to navigate through the views, how to find a view that they're looking for in a, in a project browser. That's one example. And you've talked about line styles and you've talked about content and you've talked about kind of these, these pop ups that happen that [00:37:00] You know, maybe they give somebody information, maybe they ask them to make a decision, maybe they're, you know, they're these prompts that happen.

Um, so all of this has, has been stated, but now I, I want you to kind of give a, a, a broad overview because I know we can't get into the specifics of every single thing that Guardian does because it's so comprehensive. It's like as comprehensive as Revit is itself, right? It's like, Yep, it does everything, um, but, but at the same time, like, I want you to give it, give people an idea, like, why is it called Guardian?

Like, what is it guarding? What, what is going on here? Um, and, and how is it addressing, um, The dirty little secrets of every single project that people get into and how nobody wants to actually say that time matters and it adds up and it is worth something. What can we do about it? Right? Like to me, that's, that's really what we're talking about here.

And we're talking about a tool that kind of helps us address those issues. I

Chris Shafer: Yep, Parlec. [00:38:00] Yeah, I'll take that. Yeah. So, Guardian, um, at its core, what it does, it automates consistency across standards and processes and best practices. It educate users in the moment of, you know, what are those best practices? that firm's standards, best practices and, and, and processes. Um, but then also provides, you know, actionable insights on how people are actually utilizing for, to actually execute their projects.

And so we really see that, that standards and process is, is such important to the culture of what a firm is. And, and so what Guardian really does is, does it kind of on a almost a command by command basis under tries to figure out to how are your users utilizing that command and how does your digital practice, your digital delivery leaders, how are [00:39:00] they working to make sure that everyone understands what are those standards around those with the process around each and every command.

Um, and in addition to that, you know, it, having the, the data behind all that, it helps. It helps the digital practice leaders to understand with this particular command, and we can just go down the list there of, of all the different features, um, and commands that, that Guardian is addressing. By providing that data, it gives them the opportunity to say, well, I see this amount of people are using this command incorrectly.

Maybe I need to focus our training this week on that. on that command or, or that process or that best practice. So fundamentally it's a way of providing consistent standards process and, and communications around that. Um, I, I think what [00:40:00] most people know Guardian about is, is the command prompts. When a user goes to execute a command, rather than instantly, Going into that command, Guardian will prompt the user a customizable message by the firm, which can also be customized at the project level as well, um, of how, how this command is to be used, the best practice, the process, and so on and so forth.

And so it's a great tool of just communicating standards, processes, and best practices.

Evan Troxel: want to raise my hand here and say, okay, that sounds, and I'm no, no offense, Chris, that sounds terrible. That sounds terrible. And because I think people are going to hear that and be like, what do you, now it sounds like everything's going to take twice as long, right? Because every time I click on a tool, it's going to prompt me.

And I know that's not how it works. So I want, I want you guys to, to, to, to, Take that little bit of feedback right there in the way that you talk about your tool and talk [00:41:00] about that because, because addressing that is definitely going to be a concern for people. It's like, because I mean, one thing is as a former digital practice leader myself, right?

It's like, we talk about the difference between handcuffs and freedom when it comes to standardization. of processes, right? And, and the way that we use things. It's like, some people say, that sounds terrible. That sounds like handcuffs. And at the same time, we're, we're saying, okay, but if we reframe it to say like, okay, now you don't have to think about that stuff anymore because we've taken care of it.

And now you can go focus on stuff that really matters. Like that's one, one example, right? But the things that you're talking about here, it's like, it's not, It's not slapping you on the hand every time you do something, right? It's, but, but it is a training tool in the moment. And I love how you said that, where it's like, it's in the moment.

And it says to, to Parley's point earlier, all I wanted to do is create a red line, right? So that I could mark up my, my drawing so that I wouldn't forget what [00:42:00] to come back to. And it's like, well, and then it, then it enables. It's a communication to happen for people to understand because what's the ratio of BIM managers to users out there?

Like what are you guys seeing? Is it like 50 to one? Is it bigger? I don't even, I don't even know where it is, but it doesn't scale. Everybody knows it doesn't scale to all the problems that happen on a daily basis with all the team members. And this is another dirty little secret in the industry, right?

It's like it, that it doesn't scale. And so we need tools like this to automate that process of. Engagement and not accruing technical debt over time so that we can get the value out of these exquisite models that people craft on a daily basis. And so I, I want you to speak to that point about like, okay, it's not like just, it's not gonna take twice as long to do this stuff because it's actually training people to not have to worry about doing it like the wrong way again, right?

Chris Shafer: Yeah, exactly.

Parley Burnett: Chris has some good experience [00:43:00] implementing

Chris Shafer: Yes, yes. Um, you know, having implemented to over 1000 users, I've seen and heard it all over the years. Um, but just from my own personal experience, um, you know, I having been a Revit user, a Guardian user for years, I developed a little saying. I don't get in a car without fastening my seatbelt.

I don't get into Revit, without having Guardian, um, even as a power user myself, I've experienced where, hey, our natural tendency is to, you know, to just, to cut corners sometimes or, you know, I can, I can, I can get away with this, right? I'll come back to it. And sometimes those gentle reminders are like, Hey, you're, you know, we're all prone to making mistakes, especially when we're in a hurry or under the gun of a deadline.

Um, I actually have a, an interesting, my very first project utilizing Guardian, um, [00:44:00] we, this was a developer driven. building in, in Boston, you know, very fast pace and whatnot. And just, just five, you know, 400, 000 square feet. And we were, it was a really interesting case study here where, where we had the team.

all operating, um, in the same direction, rowing in the same direction. Right. And, and another saying I have said over my career is, you know, Revit's like death by a thousand cuts, right? It's never this big thing. It's always this one little thing, but over the course of a project, you know, all these little cuts add up to something big.

And what we saw with this project, with the help of Guardian, is we stopped. Cutting those, those cuts never happened, right? And so what you saw was you're constantly just moving the ball down the field, right? You're going towards your project deadlines [00:45:00] more efficiently and you're in many ways you weren't, you know, fixing mistakes along the way, right?

You weren't being that firefighter that you had mentioned earlier. It was all about just moving that project forward, everyone in the same direction, and it And that in the day, um, it was a very tight schedule, a very tight budget. Being developer driven project is always a tight budget. We ended up making 17, 17 percent profit on that given project, which was unheard of.

You just stop doing the little things, the little things that set you back and moving it forward, that's when you start seeing the real value that That not only Guardian provides, but also Revit provides, right? Is, is coming, we talked earlier about the potential that Revit has. When you're actually getting that potential out of it, some great things can really happen.

Parley Burnett: And, uh, yeah, I think it's definitely a [00:46:00] case of like how you message that too, right, Chris, like sharing the wins with the users, um, can really build that consensus, that, that kind of mentality that this is a good thing for us. We do talk a lot about, um. communication. So like before you put out a dialogue that you kind of communicate to users, but what that's going to look like. Um, and then the other thing is, um, just to shed a little bit of light on some other aspects of Guardian too, because it's not just like workflow prompts. It's also like, Hey, somebody else is syncing their model right now, right?

Evan Troxel: Mm-Hmm.

Parley Burnett: Just, and so users appreciate knowing that so that they can add themselves to the Guardian queue.

without having to face that like 2x sync time that they would have faced otherwise. So like, over time they really start to [00:47:00] see the benefits of that. And there's other things behind the scenes like works at automation, things get put on the work set just automatically as things are placed or drawn. Parameter prompts. There's a lot of like automations behind the scenes. That's, that's what I would like to say is that it's not always a prompt and there's a reporting component to it as well.

Chris Shafer: One thing I would like to add regarding the prompts and that you had alluded to, Devin, is like, oh, I'm being slowed down, but that's prompt. Um, and one of the things, and who I heard this mostly from was the power users. And, you know, as, as someone who was leading. You know, the whole firm of, of Revit users is.

I would always remind them, I'm like, well, usually as the power user, you're the person responsible for fixing the mistakes of others. And so while, yes, you may have a prompt that, that pops up once [00:48:00] every, you know, two hours when you're working in the day and that prompt takes you five seconds to read and go and to clear and whatnot, that is much less time it takes than cleaning up the mistakes of others on your team.

As the power user, you're the one who's responsible for. doing the cleanup, doing the fixing, and that takes a lot more time. And so the peace of mind knowing that the others on your team who are prone to making mistakes just from inexperience or not knowing or knowing your firm standards or whatever it may be, you know, just that actually creates more time for you and whatnot.

Um, but then ultimately there are tools within Guardian to you know, for your power users saying, well, you know what you're doing. You don't, you know, you don't need this as well. So, you know, there's coming back to finding that balance of how do you communicate, but not over communicating or being too much of a burden on this user.

So, [00:49:00] you know, there's something as party alluded to earlier that we're always striving for is, is how do we, how do we figure out how to lessen that impact

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I think part of this is, you have to communicate this to all the different levels, right? You've got, you've got the user level, like, and then there's a spectrum there, beginner to expert, um, user level. Then there's technical management leadership, and then there's, like, firm leadership. And just talking about the value proposition at every one of these levels has got to be, you know, I mean, I'm interested to hear from you guys how you do that because I think a lot of technology vendors need to do the same thing, right?

Um, and, and I'm just curious how you do it because I'm reading this book by Cal Newport and, and the idea, like he's, he's had a few different topics kind of all around this idea of, Pseudo productivity, uh, and [00:50:00] doing deep work, right? Like, like our life is full of distraction. We've got teams or Slack running all the time.

There's constant messaging. There's email, there's notifications. There's all these things. And yeah, I'm busy. I'm busy doing email. Like nobody became an architect to do email. Right. Um, but that is what, how much of our day is spent like just. Addressing the inbox, right? New things to do. Like that's what your inbox is, right?

It's new things for you to do given by somebody else who didn't have permission to tell you to do something, right? It's just like, but that, that's what it becomes, right? And, and firms don't address like firm leadership. If they, if they actually counted how much time people spent in Outlook every single day, they'd be like, what?

We're not doing projects when we're, when we're doing Outlook. Like you may be addressing a client's concerns, or you may be kind In a roundabout way, you know, getting something done by assigning somebody a task or, you know, consult, you're [00:51:00] talking to a consultant or something like that. But in an inordinate amount of time gets spent doing email, which is not doing architecture, right?

So if, and we don't talk about that, like we don't talk about how much time people are just spending. Chatting, which is, you know, maybe it is project oriented when they're chatting on teams or slack or something, but a lot of times it isn't right. And so, and it's not like we need to be 100 percent productive all the time.

That's not what I'm saying, but there is a huge amount of like, we just don't address the waste that's going on here. And so from a leadership, like people who do the work know exactly what I'm talking about. It happens all the time. We're all guilty of it. Um, and at the same time, we're, we're. Quote unquote using these tools to get work done, but we're kind of not at the same time, right?

And so from a messaging to the leadership standpoint when you guys talk about addressing Waste that's going on. And what is the return on that investment of getting that time back? How do you [00:52:00] communicate to those people? Because to me, like they're the decision makers in the firms, like users of any level can go say, Hey, like I heard about this thing.

It sounds incredible to actually get us all on the same page and, and, and enable us to get more value out of these intricate, incredible models that we're building over many years and it's standardizing our data and it's standardizing, you know, when, when. Sally goes from this project to that project.

She's going to know right where to pick up because we're developing these with the same standards and there's lots of value to be gained in that. How do you communicate that to leadership so that they actually understand that?

Chris Shafer: So I'm going to provide a little antidote here to start answering that question is when when I first implemented our model health strategy and Guardian was a vital tool in that process with my previous firm. It. In my role, and I guess my, [00:53:00] my boss who I reported to, we never felt like we had the, the authority to actually require it.

And then after a couple of years of doing this on a, I wouldn't say a voluntary basis, but we were, we were really focused on our largest projects, um, getting the teams to utilize, uh, utilize the model health strategy. Again, Guardian was a critical part of that. And, um, And that equate that covered about 60 percent of our firm and and as we are wanting to do and grow and, you know, ask for for for more money to do other things as well, we were presenting the savings that we were seeing with.

And with our model health strategy and one of the things that we were presenting was just say sync times party had mentioned earlier is we were through that model health strategy. We were able to reduce our sync times by over a minute across the firm. Um, and when. each

Parley Burnett: sync.

Chris Shafer: [00:54:00] each sync. And so when you look at that across the board, you know, that equated to almost a 600, 000 a year savings.

Just, you know, obviously not all that is seen or gained or whatnot. The reality and coming back to dirty little secrets, everyone knows as well, people kick sync and then they go check their Outlook or they go to their IMs or they go get a cup of coffee. Right. So. That two minute, right? So that two minute syncs ends up being 10, 15, even longer, right?

It becomes a distraction. And so

Evan Troxel: doing something else, right?

Chris Shafer: exactly, exactly. So how do you eliminate the simple setbacks, the simple distractions that lead to larger distractions? And one is, is, is, is quite, I'm going to say, you go down the list of so much of what Guardian does and you start looking [00:55:00] at how, how much this actually costs a company by not preventing, you know, mistakes or misuse or, or whatever it may be, or the lack of standards.

And, And on its surface, the ROI is just instant. It, you're just like, wow, you know, this, this pays for itself in a matter of weeks here. But then the layer of additional waste that comes out of this, you know, the, the secondary, the tertiary, um, downstream impact, you know, that's not really accounted for that.

Um, and, and a lot of times making this argument to leadership and say, Hey, having everyone operating in different ways And we're not even, don't even have the word to bring up the word standards, because even a lot of leadership, they start to like, Oh, here goes the standards thing again. Right? Um, just saying, Hey, just, just having people just all operating in the [00:56:00] same direction and doing things really in the same way, really being a team and the way that they do things and making sure the needs and the of the project and the needs of the team are being met throughout the course of the project.

That alone has tremendous value and it's measurable value. Um, and And when you see it in the profitability, um, on projects, you know, that makes it, you know, makes it an easy, sometimes an easy sell.

Parley Burnett: And Chris, you even got your hand slapped a little bit by leadership once they understood that, right? They're like,

Chris Shafer: Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Parley Burnett: why aren't we using this on every project?

Chris Shafer: yeah. Um, where, like I said before, I never felt in my role that I had the authority and, and, and my boss, who I directly reported to didn't have the authority to say, no, this is mandatory. And the president was like, why aren't we doing this on? This is such, this provides such tremendous value to the company.

Why aren't we [00:57:00] doing it on every project? Why isn't everyone following this? And I think that's something a lot of people in that digital practice role. They're kind of caught between right there They're given this tremendous responsibility to make sure the firm the fundamentals of the firm are being Executed but they're not given the authority to do so

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Chris Shafer: And, and what Guardian does is, is it ensures that the best practices, the standards, but more importantly, the knowledge and experience of your digital practice people are being, being gained by everyone, all the time, by every project.

And, and there's a tremendous value about having that knowledge and expertise right there as people are doing their work. And not being, and not being the firefighters, right? You know, preventing mistakes before they happen versus being the person for cleaning up the [00:58:00] mistakes.

Evan Troxel: Right. It seems like that kind of just in time methodology of of providing. Insight prompts, um, you know, action items, training. There's a lot of different ways you could kind of categorize these things is so important because I mean, to your point earlier about kind of, you know, technical debt and just saying, you know, I'm incentivized to figure out a work around right now and I'll come back and I'll fix it later.

And then you get distracted and you're doing a bunch of other stuff. And then. It's, it snowballs, right? Like you forget about this one and then somebody builds on top of that, which relies on what was already done and it was already done wrong. So now we have to do it a little bit wrong, some more, right?

And then, and that, that just keeps snowballing. And at some point it's like, who's going to fix this and what do we do? I mean, how many times early on in those, in those early days, Chris, 2008, 2009, right, did you say, okay, export to AutoCAD right at this [00:59:00] point, because we just can't We can't deal anymore, right?

Like everybody's, everybody who's been doing this a while has lived through that, right? And at some point, like now, now that's not an option, right? It's like now we just are completely weighed down for the rest of the project because it gets so bad. And I'm, I'm just curious, like what other kinds of examples you have besides like sync times when it comes to communicating, you know, so, so a more fundamental question is like, Are architects very good at like, valuing their own time?

And I, I tend to think no, because we're all trained to like, just solve the problem, no matter what it takes. Like we're up for the challenge. We know that there's an answer. We'll figure it out if we just try hard enough. And everybody, like to your point earlier, Chris, like everybody goes to work wanting to do a good job, right?

Like they don't, they're not going in saying, man, I'm going to take a bunch of shortcuts and leave early today. Like that doesn't, doesn't really happen, right? So, [01:00:00] so people want it there. They want to do the right thing. But at the same time, like they do have the real constraints of deadlines and, and sync times is one example.

But like. When it comes to learning how to value our own time, let's put some values on that right now and like, what are some other kinds of qualitative or quantitative metrics, either category there that you're really seeing that tools like this can, can provide to the users and the firm leadership alike.

Chris Shafer: Yeah. Um, one of the things I would just quickly hit on, we have a feature called delete protections, um, where, so for instance, is when someone goes to delete something and there's a, an item that is hosted to that element. Well, everyone has conditioned themselves to ignore the yellow warning box that Revit produces.

And just hit delete, right?

Evan Troxel: even sees that corner of the screen.

Parley Burnett: If it shows up. Yeah.

Chris Shafer: Right.

Evan Troxel: Complete blind spot.[01:01:00]

Chris Shafer: and, and so, so what Guardian has done is provided a prompt that shows you everything that's being deleted and all it does, and, and, and I've heard you mentioned this another podcast, you have to go, you have to go slow to go fast. This is slowing people down just enough to say, yes, I intentionally.

want to delete all this other stuff that I don't see in front of me, right?

Evan Troxel: You're right.

Chris Shafer: Um, and, and

Evan Troxel: think I shared a story with you where every day I'd come into work, and the main stair in a three story school classroom building was gone. Every day. And it was like, somebody was deleting something. They had no idea that somebody else had pinned another out the stair to that element.

And they were like, this, this element does not need to be in here. Like it, but, and so, so every day we'd roll that model back to grab that piece out of it and bring it back into the new model. And then the next day it'd be gone again, because somebody would be like, what, [01:02:00] what I thought I'd delete, I'm going to delete it again.

Right. And, and it's gone. And so to your, to your point, it's like, if you don't know, You're, you're not doing it wrong on purpose, but if you don't know, I mean, all you're doing is saying like, Hey, here's some additional context you might want to be aware of.

Chris Shafer: that's exactly right. And, and it is just communication, right? Communication. Hey, these are, these are the things, because we, we understand, Many of us understand with Revit, I, I call it the butterfly effect, right? You touch one thing and something on the other side of the model is, is impacted. A lot of people just fundamentally don't understand that about Revit, right?

There are things outside of your immediate view that you're impacting. And, and all we're doing is bringing awareness to that. And we're seeing that in the data, how, how frequent people are actually saying. No, I don't want to delete all this. Right? Um, and so when we, so I don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head on how [01:03:00] much this is being used, but this is one of the most common data points that we see is people just have stopped, um,

Evan Troxel: Well, and if you use my story as an example, like every single day, we're going back and opening the old model. We're pulling that piece out. We're copying it. We're pasting it into every single day. And then somebody else is finding that element and deleting it every single day for a week, right? And it's like, okay, well, there's, that's just one version of, of.

you know, why this kind of thing exists, right? And it's like, it is, it is an actual amount of time. It is not incidental.

Chris Shafer: right? And coming back to your example is, is And why does someone keep on repeating that? Because they don't know that they're, they're deleting the entire stair while we're at it, right? And so, having the information about who deleted it, when, and where, and what not, provides the BIM manager, the model manager, to, hey, this so and [01:04:00] so went and deleted the stair, let's go have a conversation with them about, hey, I understand that you're just, you weren't trying to delete the stair, you're only trying to delete this, right?

This provides an opportunity to have an educational moment and say, well, by not knowing that they're deleting this shows a, a, a fundamental misunderstanding of how Revit works and also opens the opportunity to have a teaching moment and say, Hey, this is, this is the way, say, annotation and Revit work and so on and so forth.

Right? Um, you know, annotations, views, specific, well, model elements is, You know, in every view. Um, and you know, those type of things, you know, a lot of that is, is missed. You know, those simple opportunities to teach are missed. Um, and by not knowing and kind of sweeping it under the rug actually doesn't really help. Anyone in that situation, and especially the person, um, the person who's deleting the stare, right? No one, no one wants to make that [01:05:00] mistake, right? Um, and so have an opportunity to, to help people before they get into that situation is, we feel is like the, the better opportunity or the better position to be in.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Parley Burnett: We've, we've heard from a lot of interns and that junior level of designer, Brevitt user, um, appreciate the fact that the guardrails are up right to that point. Nobody wants to make the mistake. Um, on that feature, the number, Chris, is about 50 percent of the time users are canceling. So, so we do track, um, the cancel rate on every kind of prompt, um, which is incredible information to show leadership.

That's another way that we kind of go up there, Evan, and kind of inform them about what Guardian's doing. Um, yeah, 50 percent and the numbers aren't small too. We're seeing a lot of cancels and it does track the actual elements that would have been deleted. So [01:06:00] when you see that, there's a lot of work product that would have gone out the window.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Parley Burnett: Um, another

Evan Troxel: gotta be, I'm interested how you talk to firm leaders who say, what do you mean I have to get another piece of software to plug all these holes in the main software we use to deliver projects? Like, I mean, that's gotta be a sentiment of, you know, You know, I've I don't know what, you know, we've got to be frustration there for sure, right?

But, I mean, it's great, great for you to be able to create a business out of all the holes that do exist, but the, the platform is not solving these problems. And that's got to be a little disheartening for, for people to say what, you know, we already spend probably the biggest chunk of our software budget on this platform that everybody uses differently in very different ways, you know, and, and, and there's all these.

potential problems that just creep up here and there. And now I've got to get [01:07:00] this other thing to help do that. I mean, what, what do you, how's the story go? How's the communication go around that?

Parley Burnett: I mean, back to that example of, um, CAD and, you know, like, Let's, let's just print this all to CAD, right? And kind of scrap it,

Evan Troxel: Right.

Parley Burnett: export to CAD. I think there's been enough of that in the past that, um, a lot of leadership does feel like the promise of Revit hasn't been realized, right? And it's unfortunate. I wish it wasn't like that. Um, I think we, we try to convey that we're a complement to the tool and providing a level of customization that, like, Um, a company like Autodesk isn't likely to, um, who knows, um, seek, seek after providing. What's your take on [01:08:00] that, Chris?

Chris Shafer: Yeah. And, and if you think about it, is Revit's designed to, to the tallest skyscrapers in the world to

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Chris Shafer: residential sheds, right? Um, and, and, and a little inside joke. Um, um, and, and everything in between, right? And, and how do you, how do you create a tool that has to work? that broadly. And, but then so specifically for a firm that does a residential versus a firm that does healthcare specifically, right?

Um, I don't know how Autodesk, um, could do it, um, in a single platform. And then I think that's where Guardian really comes in is like, well, Guardian is really providing that layer of your firm's culture, your standards, your processes to that where you can customize basically [01:09:00] how your users are using Revit to deliver projects in the way that you want to, um, and, and not have this sort of open, open book or open process.

Um, so in, in many ways, and this is something that I've heard over the, over the years, um, whether it was in my previous firm or, you know, here with Guardian is, is there's a, there's a level of comfort and you, you had mentioned freedom, right? There's a level of comfort knowing that. A lot of this has already been figured out you, you have the runway to focus on your job, right?

You know, the standards, the processes, everyone doing the things in the same way that's taken care of. And then you can focus on doing your job.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Interesting. I, I know that this, this is sounding, I don't know, maybe people think it sounds too good to be true. I mean, everybody [01:10:00] has that story. I have this, I hear this story from my wife all the time who literally hates using Revit every single day. And, and I know not every, there's a lot of people who love using Revit every single day, but I, I do want to, like, to your point.

I saw a comment earlier, Parley, about, about junior architects or graduates coming into firms and saying, because every one of them, I guarantee you is coming with bad habits to your firm, right? 100%. Like this, the, the training that people get in school when it comes to digital tools is probably zero and they're learning it on their own from their friends and the internet, right?

And so when they come in, like, I guarantee you they're doing it. Wrong, right? In air quotes, because they're not doing it to your standards, your firm standards. And I mean, you mentioned it also from people coming from other firms and how we did it there is how I want to do it here, because that's my experience and that's, I'm comfortable with that.

And so I want to implement that on my [01:11:00] project and bringing that consistency back to the firm's, you know, culture, technical leadership requirements, you know, profitability, like all of these things. It's a really big deal, like in, in, in, in, or we mentioned earlier, like this stuff just doesn't scale with a per at the personal level because the technical staff, there's just not enough.

There's never enough. Right? And, and these tools are table stakes. They're just a guarantee. We're going to use these tools on every single project. This is how we deliver projects. We don't deliver projects any other way. We're not going back to hand drafting. We're not going even back to CAD. We're not doing any of that stuff anymore.

Right? And so to not understand that, that. This has a huge business impact, as well as a culture and training and professional development impact, like you have to realize that in leadership at these levels to understand why any of this matters, um, and, and to me, like, I know [01:12:00] at some level, maybe this does sound too good to be true, but at the same time, like, it's not.

You guys have done it. And, and that's why I wanted to highlight it on the podcast, because when I saw what this is, like, I have all of these scenarios and I started out this whole rant right here about what I hear from my wife, which is like, I've, Why doesn't it do what I want it to do? And like, she's working for very small architects here and there doing modeling and every one of them does it differently.

And, and so constant battles, constant internet searches on how to figure this stuff out. And so Chris, like you bring it up, like somebody's already figured this out so that you don't have to. And having a way to convey that to staff who doesn't know what they don't know. is huge. Like it's just absolutely huge.

And so kudos to you guys for, for doing the work and, and plugging a lot of these holes that do exist. And, but, but also like educating people through the process and meeting them where they're at. Right. Because it's not [01:13:00] just handcuffs and it's not just slaps on the, on the back of the hand or on the back of the head as sometimes it might be.

Right. But it's like, That you're, you're taking a different approach to it. And I think it's a, it is a very personal approach, uh, and it's a very human approach because those are the people who are actually using these tools to deliver these projects. And so it's worth highlighting, like absolutely worth highlighting.

And, and so I appreciate you guys coming on the show to talk about that today. And I want to give you the opportunity, if there's anything that I've missed here that we, we need to talk about. I think we've, we've talked about a lot of the problems, but we've also talked about ways to handle that. And, and some interesting ways to handle these things through, through the people approach to the culture approach.

Um, is there anything that we missed that you guys want to bring up before we, we call it quits here? Yeah,

Parley Burnett: It's been fun to talk about it with you. I think I, um, I would just say that we're not done yet. Right. It does a lot for sure. It does a lot, but the, [01:14:00] the challenges there in Revit are quite many. So we look forward to continuing the path.

Evan Troxel: I don't hear the same rant from my wife every time. It's always a different thing, to your point, right? It's like there's, there's a lot more work to do. So, uh, and, and I, I appreciate that you're up for it because I know obviously there's a business case for it, but at the same time, like you're interested in.

Firms getting better at what they're doing, delivering better products to their clients, because I know you guys as, as people, right? And these are the things that, that you're passionate about. So, um, yeah, so thanks for bringing that up because I, yeah, like it's not over. It's, and, and software is never done, right?

You, there's, there's, I'm sure you've got a roadmap that, that, that's enormous. So, um, that's cool to see. It's cool to see things coming out, new ways to address these problems. And, and, uh, thanks for taking the time to talk about it today.

Chris Shafer: Yeah. We really appreciate the opportunity, Evan. [01:15:00] Um, this has been, it's been fun.

Parley Burnett: Yes, it has. Thank you.