175: ‘Realtime Decision Making’, with Ian Keough and Keith Fine

175: ‘Realtime Decision Making’, with Ian Keough and Keith Fine

Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel. In this episode, I welcome Keith Fine and Ian Keough. Keith is a principal at SLAM Collaborative and serves as the management lead for the Los Angeles studio, as well as the national director of innovation for the firm. He combines his unique experiences, including construction, technical architect, And leadership with his passion for design and innovation, forming a very broad and unique perspective. Keith holds a master's of architecture from Tulane University and is a member of the California Council of the American Institute of Architects on the steering committee for the Innovation Design Consortium and a technology leader in the AIA's Large Firm Round Table.

Ian Keough is no stranger to this podcast. His early work at Buro Happold identified a need for mobile applications to leverage BIM data. His software, GoBIM, was acquired by Vela Systems for their Vela Field product, which later became Autodesk's BIM 360 Field. His [00:01:00] open source visual programming language, Dynamo, has a worldwide community and now ships with Revit.

He co founded Hypar with Anthony Hauck in 2018 with a vision to deliver the world's building expertise to everyone instantly.

In this episode, we discuss the collaboration between SLAM Collaborative's innovation driven approach and Hypar's latest generative platform, 2.0, detailing how they work together to overcome industry challenges, streamline workflows, and enhance project outcomes. Those three things may sound like the same generic industry buzzwords that you've heard time and time again, so perhaps you'd prefer Ian's eloquent wordsmithing, which he says in this episode, it's that they wanted to go whole banana.

Either way, when you hear the story, I think you'll agree that they accomplished that task or at least are well on their way to doing so. Today Keith shares SLAM's vision for transforming healthcare space planning while Ian discusses Hypar's journey in evolving its product to meet their sophisticated needs.

Through their [00:02:00] partnership, they uncover how architectural design and software development can effectively intersect to reshape the future of the AEC industry.

Before we get into today's conversation, I would very much appreciate your support by subscribing to the show, wherever you watch or listen, and please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and tell your colleagues.

You can also support the mission by becoming a paid member at TRXL.co. Just click the Join button in the lower right hand corner. If you'd like to receive an email from me when new episodes are published, with all of the links and other information as those come out, I'd Sign up for that by becoming either a free or paid member at TRXL.Co. One of the paid membership perks are my episode analyses that I publish in my Leadership Edge newsletter. These episode briefs provide valuable insights for forward thinking leaders who are seeking innovation in AEC But are short on time, offering the context of each conversation without the need to listen to the full episode.

[00:03:00] But they're ultimately designed to keep you updated, spark your interest, and encourage you to tune in if the ideas resonate. Leadership Edge newsletters are only available to paid members of Troxel Plus, and you can become one at trxl. co. To get a taste of what's on offer, search for Leadership Edge at my website, trxl.

co, for previously published examples.

www. trxl. com This was a great conversation with Keith and Ian, and there is an extensive amount of additional information in the show notes. So please be sure to check that out.

now, without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Keith Fine and Ian Keough.

Evan Troxel: Today I'm joined by. Ian Keough and Keith Fine, and I am excited to have this conversation because this is, uh, you know, it's taking a little bit of time to put this together, get everybody's schedules aligned, but also the content, [00:04:00] some new things that are happening with Hypar and some behind the scenes integration of what's going on with Hypar in a firm setting, and that's why Keith is joining us today. So welcome, Keith. Welcome to both of you.

Ian Keough: Hi, Evan. Great to be here again.

Keith Fine: Uh, great to be here as well. Good to meet you. And, uh, always a pleasure to see you again, Ian.

Evan Troxel: Great to have you both. So maybe Keith, you can start out because been on the podcast a few times to talk about Hypar, but let's talk about Slam Collaborative and what you've been up to there.

Keith Fine: Yeah. So SLAM, we're, um, a national firm, nine offices, about 300 people. Um, multidisciplinary. So we have. You know, quite a bit under the hood. We hit a lot of different market sectors, um, and also have some engineering and landscape structure, civil, um, healthcare, higher ed, justice, sports. You know, we, we, we keep busy, I would say.

Um, and my role is the, uh, I'm our managing principal of the Los Angeles studio, and I'm also our director of innovation. And that's kind of how Ian and I connected, if you [00:05:00] will.

Evan Troxel: All right, Ian, it's your turn. Let's talk about Hypar and what's happened recently with Hypar.

Ian Keough: well, so those of us who, those of you who have been, you know, following Hypar for a while, you know, we started in about 2018, um, but in September of this year, we launched a new version of the Hypar product. So, if you go to Hypar now and you haven't been there in a while, it looks fantastic. Pretty different, and actually that's why I wanted to come on with Keith, because Keith was there at the beginning.

Like, he, when we first started reimagining what the Hypar interface would be, um, it was, it was, um, Keith and others in the industry who had an idea about how things should go together in the way that Hypar now allows you to, um, that really pushed that forward, and Keith, Um, and SLAM, and a number of other, uh, organizations for about a year helped us define that new product. Um, so, small pitch at the beginning so I don't have to do it at the end. If anybody who's listening hasn't seen Hypar in a while, you know, it's free to get started. Just go to Hypar. io [00:06:00] right now. Um, uh, and then we'll talk a little bit about, you know, how Keith and I kind of, kind of came together.

Evan Troxel: So you guys, you guys are close to each other regionally, right? You're both in LA. And so I'm sure that like that collaboration. I mean, maybe, maybe let's just start there. This relationship that you guys have established over the last year plus, like, tell me how important that's been. And maybe a little bit into how that happened, because I think.

You know, when it comes to the industry interfacing with software vendors, uh, this would probably be a good little bit of, of story to tell just to talk about why that's important.

Ian Keough: Yeah, just in terms of geographic proximity, I mean, I can throw a rock from my office and hit Keith's house.

So, so we, but we only found that out a little while after sort of working together, but I'll let, I'll let, Keith start by talking about, you know, he has a very specific kind of vision for the industry and, and, and that was really, really important when we first started these conversations in defining the next version of [00:07:00] Hypar.

Um, you know, Keith, you should, you should definitely talk about that.

Keith Fine: Yeah, no, happy to. Um, and I, I think, uh, that proximity obviously weighs into it, you know, um, a lot of virtual meetings that go on these days, but the in person, it was actually, uh, someone on sales side at Ian's, um, a lot of things that we're trying to reach out to connect and do a little demo of the software.

And, uh, I've been on this progression as our innovation lead, trying to understand, you know, first look internally and understand our company and our processes, you know, develop a workflow. Try and understand best practices of that workflow and then try and ideate an aspirational workflow. And so then, uh, there was a lot of, uh, focus on looking outward, you know, and there's just, you know, Ian's are out there.

There's a lot of them, you know, not to say Ian's a diamond doesn't because he's really a diamond in the rough. Um, but you have to sip through quite a bit of sand to get those diamonds, right? And so I remember getting, uh, [00:08:00] contact and, uh, actually, um, was it Eric who's reached out originally? And Eric kept trying to get me to go for coffee, uh, around the corner of Bar 9.

There's this great coffee bar, literally, like, right around the corner from my house. And it's also right near their studio. And he knew that I was, like, from Culver. It was all he knew. Little did we realize, literally, we're right around the corner. So Uh, and I ended up finally, uh, taking a discussion, I jumped on the website and it was early and the other thing about, you know, the, the startup software industry is like, it's just how fast it moves is, it's blinding, right?

And so, and the websites are always, well behind where they're at, you know, typically speaking until the product starts to get to a certain level of maturity. And so I remember looking at the website and not being impressed. It didn't like jump out at me in terms of anything that I was trying to solve at the moment.

And so I have this friendly guy who wants to have coffee with me and my time is pretty busy. So I remember setting up a little half hour demo thinking I was going to have about 30 minutes of a [00:09:00] vaporware presentation. And, uh, I kind of took control of the dialogue and just start asking more and more questions and got more and more intrigued about the depth of the engine and what they'd already start to put together working with private folks.

And we've been really focused on, uh, A very strong visual platform that's about real time decision making and trying to take concept and move that through with much more definitive decision making, but also looking at fabrication. I think we're, we're a company that has a very, very deep set of expertise, uh, and we do a lot of technical projects and where I think a lot of folks are trying to take technology from the standpoint of, oh, well, Let's go with the lowest common denominator and do, you know, multifamily living or take a bunch of boxes and see how well our, our software can take CDs of that stack of boxes and, and, and make it a set of CDs on, in a new site.[00:10:00]

We decided that we want to try and apply a lot of the technology that's on the field right now, um, to the most complex spaces. And so we quickly started, you know, kind of some regular dialogue between Ian and I. And it was. You know, we're a, we're a, you know, relatively speaking, we're in the large firm roundtable, but we're a smaller firm, you know, 300 people that we, you know, large firm has, you know, firms up to 10, 000 people and more.

And so, um, we don't have that great depth of like a, a staff of 15 people on R& D. And, you know, and then we're very, you know, cautious and careful about where we're going to invest our money. And that was where I think the partnership. Really shined is that we, we reached out to Ian and recognized that as we went back and forth and had a couple meetings over, over beers or whiteboard or both, that we were kind of starting to find a real alignment and overlap of where we were trying to head, and it was a way in which we could have a mutually beneficial [00:11:00] relationship.

To head towards a North Star.

Evan Troxel: Was the

idea that if you started with a really complex case study that you could then apply that to other project types in your studio? Is that why you went there?

Keith Fine: Yeah, I think, um, Well, we have a, you know, like, kind of an origin story to a lot of our workflow that started on the healthcare side that was really kind of triggered by COVID and unexpected circumstances and kind of virtual reality that turned into heavy game engine use and a very structured way to do that and so we, we were already kind of immersed in bending how we deliver work here.

on very technical work. And then more specifically, uh, there's like two, you know, like launch points, but one of them was, there was a, there was a problem we had to solve, you know, that we use, we're very big fans of face based objects on your families and it's very cumbersome, you know, and. I remember, you know, presenting to the dev team over at Autodesk.

We met with different third [00:12:00] party people who could develop applications. And it was in that first quote unquote non vaporware presentation where suddenly, you know, Ian was like, no, we can, we can solve that for you. There was a very simple workflow component and it was, and you know, I think it was simplified in discussion because it ended up becoming a little bit of a rabbit hole that they still overcame.

But I think that's, you know, Evan, how we started to focus on more technical work. Cause I think that's where we are. We're not interested in the, you know, take your multifamily living solutions and stack them up and give me CDs. Cause that's not our clientele, right?

Ian Keough: and just setting the scene a little bit, like, when Keith, when Keith first came to our office and sat down and we started, like, demoing him Hypar as it was, now this was before the new version of the product, so this is, for people who are listening who've followed Hypar for a while, the first few years were, like, building this platform that could do generative systems, and so I was showing him mass timber systems and siphonic drainage systems and all this crazy stuff that we had done on the platform, but it wasn't, [00:13:00] I wouldn't have been surprised if he had said, like, okay, I don't understand, like, why, how this comes together to help me. But at the tail end of doing that work, we were working with more and more people in, in, in space planning and automated space planning, especially, and things like healthcare. And so, we were really digging into this question around, like, What is healthcare space planning look like now? What are the problems specific to that? And so that's how we had this big list in our office of like, and I think actually when Keith came in, we had this big list of like all the top health care, you know, firms in the United States. And we were like, we're going to call every one of these and find somebody who's going to tell us about like why healthcare is complicated, why the tools for doing it right now are no good. And Keith was like a goldmine. Cause when he sat down, he started just like. like, let me tell you all about healthcare, not only healthcare, but all about like how the industry is changing and moving towards modular and prefab and like what this thing looks like in the next few years. And he just gave us like a [00:14:00] whole education in like 20 minutes about, and then he started talking about, I mean, Keith, it's probably worthwhile for you to talk a little bit about like chicklets, like just the concept of chicklets.

Evan Troxel: Jello cubes. Yeah.

Keith Fine: yeah, I mean, it's not, not, uh, like an invented, um, component, but when you're, when you're dealing with healthcare and you have departments and every department is made up of a whole series of different rooms and you're starting to try and deal with those at, at a very simple level, you know, so we, we refer to them as, um, as chicklets, but you Jell O cubes is another common, uh, reference point there, right?

Um, but we have a very different approach. Um, in terms of how we deal with that. I know a lot of our peers will just sit there in color and move their chiclets around. And we, again, from a technical standpoint, have had so many, let's say, painful lessons learned downstream. When you say, Oh, I met my square footage and it was more or less the same proportions.

And then you [00:15:00] have like minimum spatial requirements or access to a piece of equipment to be able to maintain it. And suddenly, you know, you go into DD and you've got a sign off from your client and it's like a Swiss watch. And then suddenly. Uh, you can't access your equipment, you can't, um, you know, get around the bed.

You don't meet your clearances for, uh, HCHI or ADA or whatever, and you're in a corner. And so we want to, and this is the way we work is we always try to have at least a lot of our core components within the room, in the room.

And so managing that.

And I think there's a lot of folks that, uh, especially on the healthcare side or, uh, life sciences, S& T, where you really need to have some of those core things that are driving the space to understand it. Um, and that was, that was our messaging to Ian was just like, listen, this is what you've got to do.

You know, it's like, we really need that level of depth. And then, you know, we also started projecting ahead that we got to be [00:16:00] thinking about. fabrication at the same time, you know, that's where the conversation started to expand, right?

Ian Keough: I think the thing that was fascinating in that moment that we kind of, that resonated with us is we had been thinking about technology and especially the kind of generative technology that we had worked on as a way to add detail without adding effort, you know, so in other words, we should be able to move from, um, LOD 100 to LOD whatever, with no added sort of fumbling around with all the content and the systems and everything else.

And what Keith laid out in that very first conversation was, I want to start with a chiclet, a Lego block, a jelly cube, whatever you call it. I want to plan at that level super, super fast. Like in an afternoon, I want to plan out a hospital floor or a department. And then I want to be able to seamlessly move, because now it knows all the equipment in the room as well, to having all the equipment planned in the rooms that accords with all of the standards and guidelines and everything else. To having framing and backing frames and everything else. And [00:17:00] he started showing us videos of like, and this is what we're going to do. And he, he, he even showed us this like crazy VR stuff, like getting down to the level of detail of like, here's individual backing frames that are being generated inside walls.

And we're coordinating those things in VR. He was going all the way to construction. He was like, we're going to go from a chicklet to construction. And, and it's going to be a completely seamless process. It's not going to be a bunch of people monkeying around and Revit. Like. Putting studs and individual studs in wall and trying to re host equipment and like doing all this crazy work But he he was just like the software doesn't do this right now.

We've tried to do it. The software

Evan Troxel: The traditional workflow is like, zoomed way out to, you know, end of CDs, zoomed way in, right? But, but what you're talking about, Keith, is constantly zooming in and zooming out, right? It's

like, you want to, you want to move at the planning level, but you also want to know for a fact. The fact that the equipment is going to work and all the serviceability and all that access and everything at the same time and have that confidence.

And if you zoom in and want to have a [00:18:00] conversation about the room or the zone in the room, you can do that. And then you can zoom out and that level of abstraction is there to where it makes sense for somebody who needs to understand it at that level.

Keith Fine: extremely, extremely well put. I think we're, you know, and a lot of healthcare is like looking at templating and whatnot. And I think we're trying to go deeper into that one in terms of how we manage it. We've completely adjusted our workflow so we can make a lot more. Uh, detailed decisions earlier on the process, but still at a cellular level so we can ingest it into Hypar and then work with it in there.

And so the discussion is, You know, we're looking at either through the way Hypar is ingesting program, which is also really clever, of trying to encourage IAN to allow us to start port more data entry into Hypar, or we've been looking at other solutions that we can use as a backboard for data on, uh, in the background, if you will.

And so it's trying to [00:19:00] capture what are the questions and the interface and the information that really drives the The organization of the room, the functionality of the room, the success of a room, the specificity to a certain client, and how do we maintain that and be able to turn that off as we go through the process.

So if we embed that information and it's down to, you know, I mean, we're, if you look at your traditional design process, it's almost like a watercolor, right? You slowly keep adding layers, but each layer you add, you go through the entire. Um, object that you're painting. If you're doing a big, you know, water scene, you have to go through the whole water scene to go and get it done.

Where, you know, We're thinking that we can bring in all that information at once and have it there and have it influenced and determined by past success and knowledge of the client. But the other thing is I think there's a lot of people start to approach prefabrication and generative solutions and templating as they get too rigid about the components.

And [00:20:00] that was the other thing that we really, I think, challenged Ian and his team is that, I mean, healthcare especially is like, Square footage is so unbelievably valuable that you need to be able to adapt and fine tune and adjust every component of every chicklet that you're working with. otherwise it's not successful.

I think there's, we're, we're working with an ecosystems where we have clients that are. that are not understanding that and struggling through that. And it, it helped inform our dialogue with Ian on establishing that as a priority, knowing that if this ecosystem is really going to be successful and work, we need to be infinitely editable, but still be able to harness and generate and pull, uh, past data, lessons learned and information forward and synthesize that in a way that we can gradiate our visualization and understanding and access to that information at different points through the design process.

Ian Keough: So as it as it relates to talking about the interplay between You know how Slam and Hypar work together. There's a great anecdote [00:21:00] here, which is like You know I don't know, Keith might not want me to share this, but we were, we were talking about these chicklets and the level of detail inside these chicklets, like the level of detail inside a room.

If you've been in a healthcare space, there's tons of stuff stuck to the walls. There's tons of furniture and equipment that's, that are in the space and all that stuff is very, very carefully sort of laid out. So when he first said to us, like, we're going to have, we have these modules for healthcare spaces and we want to just be able to like plan with these modules. Our, in our minds, we were like, modules are like the same size. You, you tell us what size they are and we will, and what key what, what the Slam team had done. And they're not alone in this. We'd seen this in a lot of organizations. They built an amazing Revit library of room types. And they even had Kyle Barron, who's on the SLAM team, built this incredible Revit model that he called, he made these grids and he called it the Dewey Decimal System.

It was literally like the Dewey Decimal System, like imagine grids laid out and in between these grids he'd have these like modular rooms. [00:22:00] And he knew if I was looking for this type of room I'd go to grid like 12. 2 and I'd find it. It was just this crazy model of all of these template rooms. And so our first version of our Revit integration, we enabled them to just like. Take that whole project and, like, slam it into Hypar as a bunch of, like, plannable modules. So now you could, like, push this stuff to Hypar, and now you have all these planable chicklets. And we thought we were so smart. We're like, we got this knocked, like Keith's going to see this. It's going to be incredible. So he puts it in the hands of his team. And the first thing they do is they, they drop one of these modules into their thing and they try and change the size of the module. And of course now, like all the stuff that's inside that module, all the furniture and equipment, everything else is all like a static block of stuff shaped to the module. And he's like, Well, the modules have to be able to adjust. And I was like, Hey, wait a second. Like these are supposed to be like modules that you're paying. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. These modules have to adjust. Like, you know, it's some subdivision of the grid [00:23:00] spacing or whatever. And so, so one thing that we had to tell him was like, okay, look, if that's the expectation, we have to kind of like back up a couple of steps. We have to implement flexible layouts. We have to rethink, instead of bringing in all the FF& E as like one blob, we have to bring it in as individual components. Then we built like a component library in Hypar so you could bring all that stuff in. And it was probably three or four months of like us going off and like re implementing this thing and coming back to them with a solution. But it was just like, in having that dialogue, it was hilarious because our expectations and his expectations were, we end up in a much better place because now we've got the thing that's super, super generalized and amazing. They end up in a better place cause it gives them that flexibility and everything else. But like, you know, you got to make sure that your expectations are aligned. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: internally. Right? So it's [00:24:00] like, it's like, well, yeah, this is how we work. And, and if you don't explicitly tell the software development team that that is what you need to do, the thing you need to do to accomplish your work, then it's not going to happen.

Right? They're going to

interpret it their own way.

Ian Keough: And our, and our team was frustrated a little bit. with Keith, specifically, because they're like, I think he's moving the finish line yeah. Moving the goal.

like, show Keith something, and he'd be like, okay, so when you re import that stuff back, cause Hypar has this like, you can push the content out, you can use the content to play on Hypar, then you can push it back into Revit, and it'll place instances of all the original families and everything else. Um, It keeps like, does that stuff re host to the walls when it comes back into Revit? And we're like, no, it doesn't re host to the walls. Like, he's like, well, it's got to re host to the walls or this thing is useless. So then we go,

go away. Like, okay, I'll re host the walls.

Keith Fine: Well, I mean, not everybody, at first you never mentioned that everybody thought I was moving the goal line and I want to say that I think part of it is, um, you know, like that first comment, it's like, well, You know, we need a knight in shining [00:25:00] armor, and it's like, oh, here's your knight in shining armor.

It's like, well, no, there's an N in knight when you spell it out. K N I, or the silent K in there. It's like, everybody knows how to spell that. And, well, no, we're, we're not building healthcare buildings every day, Keith. We're, you know, we're, we're, you know, cranking code out, and we're interpreting what you said literally.

So, I think it, it's helpful in terms of understanding that back and forth, right? But It's been an adventure, for sure, but I think also, you know, when we have some of our ideation sessions, we don't have the whole development team there, and it's tough to capture, well, one, the excitement and the energy, Uh, that we have in those dialogues, but also there's another concept that we came up with in our discussion is that it's very easy to get overexcited and to project forward when you're coordinating on the software development of the industry and not really, especially from our standpoint, not really understand the depth of the lift, right?

And so we realized that You're working on [00:26:00] tool A, right? Tool A, you got to get it going, and then you're kind of midway through tool A, and you're kind of feeling about like, okay, well, we're going to need like items B and C in here, okay? And you start kind of beginning understanding how to adjust your code so that when you're finishing A, you can handle B and C.

And then you're very quickly, you start to get excited and recognize like, oh my god. You realize this is going to be able to do E and F and M for us? You know how much time we're going to save when we don't have to do M anymore and this doesn't M? And it's like, you have to keep pulling yourself back and stay focused on A, B, and C and make sure you get those right.

But those conversations with regards to M, N, and P are also critically important to really understand. You're North Star, your trajectory, what you're aspiring towards so that you don't hit C and you go, okay, well, that's all we got. We now have to create a completely new product, but we really have a one runway and a trajectory for this ecosystem that like Ian and his team are creating that's going to have a tremendous amount of value, you know, and not only it coming out right now is where it like maybe, [00:27:00] you know, tool D, but like, F and G are not far away and they're, it's, I mean, the depth of, of ability and value is going to really intensify as we move forward, in my This

Ian Keough: is, this is,

Ian - Startup software value

Ian Keough: I think the thing that's, that's hard, not just for Hypar, but for any of the startups out there that are building right now, is identifying that you're valuable now, and you're going to be even more valuable in the future. You know, one of the ways, one of the patterns of engagement that we see is like, you go and you talk to an architect and they're like, Hey, this thing you've built is really cool. If it had X, Y, and Z, I would totally use it. And they think this is like a, well it needs to have X, Y, and Z in order for me to use it. But the cool thing about how we've manifested this new version of Hypar though is that it's so usable and there's no documentation or anything else when you get up and you get started running on this thing. We'll then see that same user that requests all those things go and work for like hours in the software. So it's obviously useful now. But, [00:28:00] there's this, well, you're a startup, you're going to build things on my behalf, you know. So you have to be very careful about, like, controlling the expectation of your, sort of, roadmap.

Like, this thing is going to be valuable now, it's going to be even more valuable when we implement these things. But right now, you can use it, you can get started. So, an example of this is that, like, in space planning, there are whole classes of space planning that don't care at all about furniture and equipment. You know, healthcare is one of those. Like in very early healthcare feasibility and concept and early stage schematic, nobody's putting any furniture in rooms. They just care about making sure that the allocation of spaces is correct. So the first valuable kind of thing that Hypar got out there was just the ability to like, ingest your program requirements, your massive, complicated program requirements, turn that into little chicklets, and make it super easy to plan and adjust and do that collaboratively. Furniture and equipment in healthcare doesn't really become important until later schematic or early design development. It comes in a little bit earlier in [00:29:00] workflows like workplace design where you have to like, you have to say this is how many desks you can fit in this space. But it's interesting like how you can actually provide little bits of differentiated value without having to provide the whole thing.

I think our industry is thinking like, well somebody has to replace Revit. That's like where everybody's coming from. Like, there has to be a thing, and until it replaces Revit, I'm not even going to look at it. But like, there's so many things you're doing in your workflow day to day, where you can inject value. Um, and so I think it's a little bit weird for the industry to think about like, there's going to be a bunch of tools. You're using something in feasibility, you're using something in early stage space design, you're using something more detailed when you get down to BIM and construction documents. but Keith if I could ask, go back to the, we didn't even talk about this at the beginning, the initial sort of problem, like why were you looking for new software at all, like you guys are master Revit users, you had Dynamo Automations, you had this crazy, [00:30:00] library of existing rooms and stuff, like what, you guys are sophisticated, what was wrong with that stuff?

Keith Fine: Yeah, I think it was, it was probably two components. I mean, the first was just the issue of trying to incorporate and speed up the process of, uh, building out the model to a higher degree of detail. We've kind of gone down a workflow where we put a lot more detail in our models than, than people typically do.

And when you do that, Like, you know, if you have a, an outpatient clinic and a, you know, with a lot of exam rooms, I've got 30 exam rooms, I have to take someone on production, and they have to go in, and they have face based objects, and they have to build every single room individually, you can't just copy the room.

If, unless you have floating stuff and then when you move walls later on, then your outlets are lost in a wall and you know, there's just, and there's tricks for all that stuff, but it's, it'd be so nice if you could just copy those things along. And so I think that was the initial challenge that we gave you to solve, but I think for me, it was.

There was a [00:31:00] lightbulb that went off on a project that we were doing earlier. I have a little video cued up here. But it was a really expressive sculptural piece that, um, helps me realize that there's a very different level of, uh, capability that we have now. Like we, we crossed a threshold in terms of what we could do with the software that we have available now. And, you can, you know, generate CDs, you can, you know, copy stuff around, we talked earlier about using generative solutions so that we could take like multi family and turn that into a set of CDs, right?

Um, now we have the ability to take, you know, Prefabrication and apply those concepts to highly customizable, extremely complex solutions. And that's where we're trying to go with it. And I think Ian, your team had developed a lot of solutions like there's this Symphonic Drainage. There was the, [00:32:00] uh, the Heavy Timber solution where you were able to, much the same way we had this model that was completely parametric.

Um, it's a. Basically a metal framed portal that's sculpted almost like a stealth fighter. And we were able to modify vertices within this object, and it would update all of the framing in real time, and then it could get output to the Hallock machine and get custom printed the studs exactly to size, exactly with your screw holes.

And it got assembled in eight days with a 64th of an inch of accuracy. And so that was where we started to realize that we could really take us to the next level. And it was like where I think I fell, I found you through the need to be able to take, these objects and transfer them around so that we could build out 30 exam rooms instantly instead of

for elements to get missed or what have you. There's risk exposure there. [00:33:00] If it's automated, you lose that risk exposure. But I think we fell through this trap door that allowed us to realize that There was a whole universe of, of automation and parametrics and generative solutions that could be tied to that.

So we could start to bring in modules, and those could start to remember the history of how you laid out different modules of those same types, and suggest those, or, and use that to be able to site adapt. And then, as we're bringing our templates to a higher degree of fidelity with more constructible information, you could start to understand, to realize, oh, The light switch should always be five inches off the door frame or when I have an exam chair in this corner of the room, these are the four pieces of equipment that need to be wall hung or positioned within the room relative to that.

And so now you start to see that intelligence, that is available. Like we have that intelligence right now in software programming and we didn't have that [00:34:00] two years ago. You know, we just didn't. Um, so I think it's a, it's an exciting future that, you know, we kind of discovered and, and, and partnering and seeing what you'd already built, I think up to that point.

Ian Keough: Yeah, you can imagine, for those of you who aren't going to watch the video of this, the portal demo that he showed I think is StudIO, right?

Keith Fine: Yep.

Ian Keough: So shout out to the StudIO guys, because it's an incredible demo, but it's basically like showing all the little flitch plates and stuff flying in, and all the bolts and screws and everything else. And here we are, Keith and I, just talking about like, chicklets. And, and then he's showing me this video. And I, at that moment, I was like, Oh, this guy wants to go like the whole banana. Like he wants to go all the way through. He's thinking like the moment I put one of these chiclets in a model, it has all of the information in it that defines everything about this room, all of its connectivity to like all the building systems, all of the framing, all of the everything he's like five years ahead of the industry, 10 years ahead of the industry, like [00:35:00] thinking about. How this stuff is going to go. And there was a fundamental mismatch between his worldview and the ability of the software that he has right now. Cause largely like Revit, and I, and I always put a caveat around this. We think Revit is great, built a whole career on Revit, but it was built around like building a relatively static model of a building at a certain level of representation and cutting really awesome, like construction docs. They were not thinking about, like, how are people going to, like, flexibly plan with this low level of detail and instantaneously move to this much, much higher level of detail? You know? And that's where, that's where we started to think, how do we take this sort of generative piece of, like, Hypar's platform that we had worked on before, couple it with this, like, really simple interface that we've built for the new version of the app, and start to recognize at least parts of, of Hypar's platform. Where Keith's vision was going.

Evan Troxel: And Keith, I assume that this is [00:36:00] because like, ultimately you want your design intent to be realized, right? And so like this level of control that you want over these things through the entire process, you're really talking about changing the way projects are delivered so that you have the confidence that what actually ends up getting built in the physical world is exactly what you had determined up front.

Keith Fine: Yeah, I think the architect sits in an interesting position in the whole maelstrom of the industry, right? And that we're the one that imagines what the end result is going to be. And also we drive all the interaction with all the players to get it there. And so, you have a lot of other folks that, you know, like we do a lot of this gaming engine VR stuff, and I've worked with a lot of different, um, other industries, uh, partners, if you will, that start developing their own VR with furniture systems, or demountable walls, or what have you, and you're just like, well, there's really no workflow that is appropriate to be able to have you lead this process, you know, [00:37:00] like, we need to lead this process, but I think, um, you know, maybe to Ian's point, you know, we've been looking at, probably from an efficiency standpoint, You know, there's just an enormous amount of waste in our industry.

You know, upwards of 30 percent of what's built these days is waste. You know, averages 18 to 22%. High performing team down to 15. 100 million dollar project, that's still 15 million dollars that's getting thrown away. And I think there's a lot of folks out there that are looking at that waste and they're trying to productize Uh, healthcare solutions is where I'm, I'm definitely seeing that.

But I think the folks that are doing that are doing so from a standpoint of, well, let me develop a template and have a couple of different models of my building and we can, you know, we'll do a go with model A or B or C. And I think that we recognize from our experience and the specificity of, of healthcare is that You're just, your sites aren't going to cooperate.

Your program's not going to cooperate. Your strategic vision's not going to cooperate. The [00:38:00] procedures you need to conduct and the equipment you need in a certain region's not going to cooperate. So it, it has to be flexible. And I think, as I said, we're crossing that barrier now in terms of where software can start to bridge that gap and allow us to leverage those things to customize and productize at the same time to really attack that waste.

But it is, it's about. Making sure that that vision gets there and intact, but also I think the more specific we get, we're also really leaning into cost estimating with this process from our standpoint now. So the more cost certainty you can get early on and tie it to these processes, the more powerful they're going to be, because I think that's a really big hurdle on the client side that we're focusing on.

Evan Troxel: I watched that video and it's like, tell me you're a control freak without telling me you're a control freak, right? Because it's that specific, but I actually like to use the term control enthusiast, it's less

Keith Fine: Enthusiast.

Evan Troxel: But, uh, I mean, this, [00:39:00] when Keith comes to you with this huge, huge, tall order, right?

This is a, this is a grand vision. How excited are you about this, Ian?

Ian Keough: Well, okay. So there's, there's two things. One, you know, again, people who follow us, they know we're like a venture back startup. And when you look at like who we should be focused on, we're going to sell to architects and some people are scratching their heads about that. They're like, why are you selling to architects?

You know, like why don't you sell the contractors or why don't you sell? When we talk with Keith and we, we realize like how. In my mind, and I'm going to make Keith blush here, that's what architecture is supposed to look like. like. we've all talked about the master architect for years and years and how do we get back to being the master architect and what he's identifying is that if we just like are smart about how we apply and start to bring together technology, we can get there. But it's not going to be, Um, I honestly don't think it's going to be, you know, the contractors [00:40:00] take over all the work of the architect because the big missing component there, if they know how to build buildings and everything else, they might use the digital technologies, make, you know, great models and everything else is the design piece. The experiential piece, like the architect has to be the fulcrum, you know, um, because, because they are pulling all of this stuff together. They have to be the, the shepherds of the design vision to make sure that that is met. They also have to make sure that all of this technology is applied in a way to reach a cost effective, safe, buildable sort of solution.

And so, um, I mean, the first thing that I thought when he was like, I want to work with this guy. Like, I don't know what that looks like, but I want to work with this guy and I want to work on this problem. And I think, like, if we're going to, if we're going to spend our precious resources inside Hypar, this should be part of the sort of vision that we have for how the industry moves forward.

Master Architect

Ian Keough: So like, you know, um, [00:41:00] there's a lot of talk that comes out right now, especially there's so much froth around AI and this and everything else, and what's the place of the architect and everything else. And I have publicly said that there's a future in which we might have fewer architects, but they are enabled with this incredibly powerful technology to finally regain that position of of being the master orchestrator of, of all of the technologies and all the processes and everything in the building. But, but it's just been, it's like everything has been so fragmented and the technology has, was all designed and conceived of two decades ago, as the industry was then, that there, there hasn't been the ability to, to do that until, as Keith says, like relatively recently. You know, but the workflows right now are still kind of chunky, you know, like Keith was showing us, he's like, they have this great downstream workflow where they do all their, um, visualization in VR, and, and, and [00:42:00] before that in Enscape, so they bring their actual, their user, who's a, who's a doctor, who's, um, developing, they're, they're, they're literally designing an operating room around this doctor,

right? So they're putting him in VR. And he's like saying, over here to the right, do this, over here to the left, do this, can you push this that way? And he's showing us these models of how they do that. He's like, well we use Enscape to do this, but behind the curtain there has to be somebody driving a Revit model and like moving the chairs around and stuff.

So the Enscape model like updates, like, so it's like people are imagining the future. But they're, they're, they're like trying to make it out of like sticks and baling twine and tape and stuff and, and, and so, um, I mean, yeah, I guess the, the full answer to your question, Evan, is just like, I was just like incredibly excited to work with somebody who had fully fleshed out. Like, I want to go from this chicklet to this fully designed thing. and and now it's really just about like, how do we, how do we march towards [00:43:00] that goal and make sure that we're delivering value at every step along the way?

Keith Fine: Yeah, I think the, um, another thing too, you kind of touched on a little bit is just how we have worked together. And I think that was a really unique and different experience, um, from anything I'd ever done, which is cool. And so, yeah, we get non disclosures and all that stuff in place. So everything is like, you know, hyper protected, right?

Um, but we really opened ourselves up. Um, and you know, we have, you know, Ian and team in the office with some frequency. We've done whiteboard sessions here. But we actually picked a beta project, which is like a, a stand alone ED expansion. And we had a chat stream open and we had our team actively working in Hypar and Revit.

And just the whole team in real time was constantly feeding back information while we were going through it in terms of like, Hey, I need this, this isn't working, or is there a command for that? And so either A, it was like, yes, you use this or that, or it [00:44:00] was, here's a, they would literally, they were pushing out updates to the software, I think within 24 hours.

I mean, it was like this mad sprint that we went through and. At the end of the day, the, the product from that exercise, we ended up having to kind of lift that back in, um, in Revit. And we, we put, we tracked those hours, so it went to R& D instead of to the project. Um, but we, the software development moved So far forward, there's so many discussions you have that are about, Hey, we need, you know, these are the eight things that we think the software needs to do to be functional.

And they go, okay, great. You know, we, we tested them all. And they all work. But when you actually get into an active project and you have a deadline and you have to get this thing turned around and in 48 hours or by the end of the week with a group of people that are like highly coordinated, uh, I think that's where a lot of people.

Pull the ripcord and they they jump out of the situation and won't commit to the exercise to really move [00:45:00] the Vision forward and I think that was something that we did was we we committed we established a pool of resource money and people and Just attacked it and and we found that we're able to have a strong voice in the direction of where this is going And that's the reward right and so we But it's been fun literally You Having updates at our request pushed out to support our dreamed and imagined workflow.

You know, it's pretty crazy

Ian Keough: I also gotta say, to Yana, David, um, Daniella, everybody who touched this thing inside Slam, thank you. I'm sorry, but thank you. Like, it's kind of like, you know, they were, they were like calling us up and being like, wait, I've got this like shared wall, I gotta mirror this room. And we're like, oh, we can't mirror rooms yet.

They're like, what? I can't mirror rooms. So I gotta like remodel this room and make it like a mirrored version of it. It was like literally stuff like that. So small, like every day that I'm just saying like, Oh, I'm struggling with this thing. And then. It just kind of like the [00:46:00] struggle reduces, reduces, reduces, reduces down to point.

And I, and I'll, and I'll also say that like now, Yana Pritzkala, who was on this project, it was fantastic. Um, she has become our canonical user. We now refer to our users who are designers. Our users are not design technology people. They're not BIM people. They're not like our users are designers. Yana, we refer to them as our Yanas. So like she's,

Keith Fine: Well, they've broken down

Ian Keough: be our Yanas.

Keith Fine: all the different like roles within the delivery of a project, and they've categorized them by the names of our studio, which is kind of fun. And they, someone will be talking about something. Oh, no, no, no. That. Keith would want that. Don't, don't worry about that. We need to focus on what the Yana wants.

Like, and what about a David? No, David's important, but let's focus on the Yana, but don't worry about the Keith. Put him down the list. You know, it's like,

Evan Troxel: the order. Well,

this, this sounds like an atypical match in, in the world of AEC and tech and software development. I mean, I think a lot of times people are used to getting a hard no. I think [00:47:00] a lot of times, uh, companies aren't willing to put in the effort and the investment, like from what SLAM has done as well, So, uh, I think there's been this integration that you guys are talking about is atypical, but I think it points to how successful integrations can happen, right? It's like you both have skin in the game, Which, which really helps and, and commitment to figuring this thing out. And also like, it's inspiring that it was such a tall order because I think, you know, a story that I think of a lot and maybe Ian, you might relate to this, like going to a structural engineer, right, I'm, your early beginnings were working with structural engineering, and. There's a lot of engineers who just don't want to do anything interesting. Like they just want to solve problems they've already solved. And the best engineers are the ones who want to solve cool problems. I think as an architect, it's like, like, we're going to solve this really cool. We're, we're going to figure this design out.

We're gonna figure out how to make it float or whatever, whatever it may be. Right. And, and it's like, the best engineers are the ones who are like, hell yes. Right. And so that's

what [00:48:00] I see Ian saying to you, right. It's like, Okay, like, I think, I think that we should do this, and, and, and you guys are both wading into waters that you haven't been into before, and you're both willing to do so.

Ian Keough: Yeah. And, and I would say to anybody who listens to this and says, Oh, I want to partner deeply with one of these startups doing this stuff, if they're not responding to your like crazy stuff with saying, okay, that's a great idea. We should totally do that. Let us, let roadmap to get there. Like, like embracing the notion that that's possible. Then they're probably not going to survive as a company. If I have to imagine, you know, that's what, why are, why do startups exist at all? You know, you know, we're all trying to find the place where we can differentiate and provide value. Everybody has Revit. Everybody has Revit, plus Dynamo, plus Grasshopper, plus, plus, plus, plus.

They've got a lot of sophisticated tools that do all the things, if you look at it in that way. So, so you could make an argument that you [00:49:00] can't provide value at all. But we're, in order to provide value, you have to be super excited about those crazy, weird ass problems.

Keith Fine: I'll take that as a compliment. that can actually deliver that, right?

Keith is a crazy weird ass problem. That's great.

Ian Keough: and I should say you, he's not actually that weird. Like we, we ended up talking subsequently as we, as we moved on this journey and we were building this thing with that team. I made it very clear to Keith all along, we are building this with you, but we're building it for everybody, you know? So, so understand that this is going to, your competitors are going to have this and everything else.

And that is, you know, um, real credit to Keith, he could have said at that moment, like, well, we don't.

Evan Troxel: Forget it then.

Ian Keough: we want this to be our IP, our special thing or whatever, but he's more interested in, um, in the success of the industry

Keith Fine: Yeah. Well,

Ian Keough: us moving forward towards that vision.

Only architects understand where true value can be extracted

Keith Fine: you know, a part of it is, is that [00:50:00] I think, uh, there's a lot of software out there. I've, I've, I've met a lot of different folks from different software companies. I can't tell you how many people I've gone and presented and they, they light up and they get all excited and they say, Yeah, well, I, you know, I'm an architect too, but they, you know, maybe, maybe they got an architecture degree or maybe they practice for a year or three years, you know?

And in the industry, like, you know, if you go up to someone who's not an architect, say name three architects. The average age of those architects is going to be between 65 and 80, right? It's a, it's a, it's a career that takes years to really develop that depth of knowledge, right? And so I think that when it comes to the software development, there's a lot of people out there that are trying to create value just as Ian is, right, and others, but they really don't know where the value is.

And I think it's, you know, like the work we do in the IDC, like it's, it's really architects have the best understanding. of where that value is and not [00:51:00] being created and what workflows we have and how those need to be augmented. So if that voice isn't getting to programmers in some manner, you know, whether it's going to Autodesk or whether it's going to Hypar or whether it's going to others, um, it, it really needs to be driven by people who understand the craft, right?

That's the voice that has to drive. It's not a control enthusiastic. Comment. It's just, you know, an observation that it's those, the people who are in it every day, who are trying to get the work out and trying to meet their deadlines and make their clients happy and make evocative, uh, solutions and spaces, uh, are the ones who know best what's not being done right or where they're losing time, energy, money, or not meeting their vision.

Right.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Well, we only have a couple more minutes, so let's wrap up here, but I have kind of a final question. I'm not sure who to really direct this at because I think it's for both of you, but, but really when you both have this vision of the future and you've had this vision that you've been taking bites out of it as you move along.

Right. And I know you're probably not all the way there. Right. Ian, [00:52:00] software is never done right. And so I would love it if you could maybe just give us kind of, um, a, Maybe where you feel you are in this process, and I'm sure, like, the timeline probably just continues to expand the farther you get into it, right?

Like, the possibilities are endless in some respects. So, just talk about, kind of, where, where you've gotten to, and then maybe, you know, next steps, where you think this is going to be heading in, in both of your organizations future.

Keith Fine: I'll, I'll give an analogy. Uh, you know, imagine you're, uh, you're at Yosemite and you're down in the valley. And you see a beautiful hill in front of you and you're just determined to get up on that hill, right? And, and it's not a huge climb. It's, you know, half an hour, maybe less, you know, pretty strenuous, uh, and, and good reward.

But you get up there and I feel like we're just kind of getting up to that first crest of hill. We're like, all right, we have something like, We can really work with that really fits into a lot of our workflow. It's not a, Oh, that's nice. That's a little [00:53:00] button click. They can save me three clicks. Like there's, there's a lot of those things out there that just don't really bring value, but once you get to that Hill, you see the rest of the park and you realize like, There's, there's a lot to do and there's a lot of hills that are not that, you know, Oh, what I'll have to do is go around that bend and there's a better Vista right over there And I could also go see that Vista and there's some tremendous, you know views up ahead So I kind of feel like that's where we're at right now I think we have a tangible tool that we can really plug into with You know, a little bit of lift from the backside to kind of, you know, get it to adjust to different project challenges, if you will.

And I think we have a lot of things on our dashboard right now that are going to just use that as a base and bring a lot more value and tie into, you know, things we have going on with other partners, too, and different aspects of project delivery, fabrication or conceptualization or ideation, all of that.

Ian Keough: you know, from Hypar's side, we are squarely focused right now [00:54:00] on building the most incredible, sort of simple, intelligent space planning app we can. You know, when I talk about like moving towards that vision, but like moving and providing value at every moment, you know, it's very easy for people who have known Hypar for a while to like, look at what we're doing now and saying like, wait, you're doing space planning now?

How's that like valuable? Remember, this is where every building begins. At some, well, every building really begins as a spreadsheet. And then at some point it turns into space. And the tools for doing that right now, that, that, Transmogrification from a spreadsheet encoding program requirements and a financial model into space are really bad. Everybody's trying to use the tools that we have to do that right now. SketchUp, Revit, Bluebeam, you name it. PowerPoint, everybody's doing that. So you have to provide value there first. Um, but, but again, you know, because we've been working on this problem for so long and because we've built this powerful [00:55:00] engine. that supports all of this sort of generative building systems. Our vision has always been to use that simple interface to enable people to build really, really richly detailed building models, again, without extra effort, you know, so, so moving almost declaratively from like your chiclets to your fully framed out, ready to construct version of a model. But it's going to take us. a while to get there. Um, and so you just, again, you have to have like a stable core business at every, at every juncture along that, along that journey. And then you have to find customers like, SLAM who are, who, who have that same vision and who are, who are okay with being on that journey with you because you're delivering value at every point.

Evan Troxel: I have to say, Keith, I appreciate the Yosemite reference as a rock climber of many years, been to

Yosemite many times, and I've, uh, I've been on those vistas, and I, and I agree, like you [00:56:00] get on top of one, and whoa, new perspective, right?

Uh, there's a lot more out there to go explore, and I think you both, um, make it easy to understand why you get up and do what you do every day.

I heard an amazing kind of wrap up from both of you about it. You know, where you are, but where you want to go. And it sounds incredibly Exciting and rewarding and challenging and all those things that really make for a rich experience. And so I appreciate you both coming on the show today to share that and to share an example with the rest of our community about how it could be. I don't think it's like that for a lot of people, and I think a lot of people are thinking, Well, how can we just efficient size? That's not the right word, right? But how do we do that to what we do? And you guys aren't talking about that at all. Like, there's elements of that, but that's not why you're doing

what you're doing, right?

You're, you're doing it to move the, like, back to Keysling, moving the goalposts, right? Moving the end line, the finish line. You guys are both [00:57:00] doing that, I think, and, and that, to me, is incredibly exciting for our industry. So thank you for taking the time to share that with us today.

Keith Fine: Yeah. Thanks for having us. This is great. A lot of fun.

Ian Keough: Yeah, and Evan, thank you for when I, when I came to you and said, Hey, I don't want to do this alone. I want to do this with, with Keith, you know, and, and talk about this way that the interplay between software and these sort of visionaries in the industry. I think this is a fantastic format. I hope people enjoy it.

But I also want to see more of these with some of my, you know, startup competitors, frankly, like I love this story. I love how things are getting built, not only in the physical world, in the world of atoms, but also in the world of bits. Um, so I don't know, maybe there's more of these, uh, in the future.

Evan Troxel: All right, I appreciate that, Ian, and anytime, uh, this has been a great, conversation with both of you, so thanks again.

Ian Keough: Thanks Evan.

Keith Fine: You bet. Have a good one.

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