205: ‘Rethinking Your A/E Practice’, with Robert Otani and Alexandra Pollock

205: ‘Rethinking Your A/E Practice’, with Robert Otani and Alexandra Pollock

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Robert Otani and Alexandra Pollock. Rob is a longtime engineering leader known for bringing computation into practice at scale, and Alex is a design technology leader who has bridged architecture and engineering roles, to make better tools for teams.

Together, they've helped translate ideas from project rooms into digital capabilities that improve how architects and engineers work every day. In this episode, Rob and Alex share lessons on product thinking inside a services business, how to measure the ROI of innovation. And what it takes to reduce redundancy so teams can focus on work that actually moves projects forward.

A key takeaway from this conversation is how they are fundamentally rethinking their practice around new technology. Instead of treating digital tools as add-ons, they are building their foundation on them, making technology the core of their operations, and what I think is going to be a multiplier of their future potential.

It's a bold repositioning that challenges traditional firm structures and points towards what is possible when leadership commits to transformation at every level.

As usual, there's an extensive amount of additional information in the show notes, so be sure to check those out. You can find them directly in your podcast app if you're a paid supporter of TRXL+, and if you're a free member, you can find them at the website, which is TRXL.co, which is also where you can join to become a supporting member.

I really appreciate it. Lastly, please help the podcast by sharing these episodes with your colleagues and by commenting and sharing my LinkedIn posts, you can also leave a comment over on YouTube and engage with me and the other listeners. All of that really helps me get the podcast out there. And now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Robert Otani and Alexandra Pollock.

Welcome to the podcast, Alex. First time on this show. Rob, we've talked together on our other Confluence podcast, and we've talked about some really neat things that you guys have been doing at CORE Studio and Thornton Thomasetti. But Alex, this is a bit of a shift for you.

I mean, and not super recent, I think, I think it's been about a year, is that right? Since you've

Alex Pollock: about a year and a

Evan Troxel: into Okay. A year and a half. And, uh, we got to catch up. I, we all got to catch up in, in various incantations of that at the AIA conference, which was in Boston. And it was great to see you both there.

But Alex, I would love it if you could kind of introduce your story as it's shifted maybe over the last few years and kind of where you were and, and how that has changed and, and what your experience has been going from architecture to a more focused engineering aspect to your role.

Alex Pollock: Sure. Great. Yeah, happy to be here, um, with you today, Evan. Great to catch up. Um, a little bit about my story. Um, uh, I went to school for architecture for undergraduate degree. Um, really loved it. and towards the end of my time there, um, really kind of transitioned towards a focus on technology and computation. and decided to do a master's of engineering, um, at Stevens, which was, uh, the first year of this program, which is called the Product Architecture and Engineering Lab. And it was a mix of, um, design analysis and computer science. So really kind of touching all the areas that I was, um, super interested in. Um. So from there I joined SOM, um, where I spent about eight years, um, really becoming an architect. I worked on a pretty wide variety of projects. I became licensed, uh, but I also did a lot on the technology side. So, um, a lot of computational design, um, different types of analysis around environmental or people movement, um, as well as really starting to dive into Revit and BIM as that started to become the main documentation platform that we were moving towards. and so that was a really great experience. I worked with a lot of really great people there. Um, and I'd say also during that time, I taught some at Stevens. I taught there for about five years. I taught, uh, a class called Application to Numerical Optimization, which was based on some of the, uh, thesis org I had done as a student there, which is really about, you know, how do you use, um. Math and algorithms to define and solve different types of problems. Um, and so I'll kind of circle back around to that, but a few of the folks in CORE Studio actually took that class, which was, uh, kind of fun. Um, and so from there, after SOMI joined FX Collaborative Architects, another really great firm, and I was there for about 11 years. I started as the Director of Design Technology there, it was a new role at the time, and they had begun their transition to Revit, but they were really looking to expand, um, how they used technology throughout the entire firm. Um, so I spent the first five years kind of building up our tool sets around different areas of visualization, BIM computation, virtual reality, GIS among others. and then about halfway through, we kind of took a step back and rethought about the technology strategy. Um, and at that point I took on the role. of CTO. And that was to really kind of oversee our design technology, business technology and it. Um, and so that's a little bit of my history. and about a year and a half ago I joined Thornton Thomasetti, which has been, um, really amazing. Like you said, it has been a shift from architecture to engineering. Um, but the thing that really drew me to TT was, um, the, uh, both the kind of commitment and investment to innovation and research and development, um, that the firm has here. And so that's really given me the opportunity to delve more into that space and have more impact there. I think one of the. Thing that's been most fun moving from architecture to engineering is that it feels like, it kind of brings me back to those optimization roots a little bit. You know, the idea of, you know, how do we really use technology to define and solve problems? And in engineering there are concrete equations to some of these, uh, problems that we're trying to solve.

And so that has been really fun to me. You know, there's a little bit more deterministic rather than just, um, you know, qualitative parts, uh, to that process. So that's been really great. Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

I, I'm just trying to think of like where I go from that. I loved how you said rethinking, like, like the strategy, and to me that's really the theme of, of our conversation today is, is actually, and I'm, I'm curious because you've gone through this and then, and, and Rob, I would love to get you in on this too.

It's like, when do you notice that's what you need to do? When do you notice that you need to step back, as you said, and rethink? And so I'm just curious if, if that brings anything Alex to, to. To, you know, elaborate on a little bit in your story. Like what was the push that said, Hey, wait a minute, we need to stop and rethink this.

Alex Pollock: I felt like, um, like we did a lot of really great stuff within that first five years and we're building our technology sets and I felt like we plateaued. Like I wasn't accelerating like, at the same pace. And I kind of took that as like a bit of like a warning sign, like, we should be

Evan Troxel: Hmm hmm.

Alex Pollock: so, um, and, and I had some ideas about areas that we should be getting more into around, um, especially around data, um, as a firm uh, you know, fx, uh, our team was pretty small. It was myself and a few other people on the design technology side. Um, and. We actually ended up deciding to bring in a consultant to help with the road mapping process.

So we brought in Nate Miller from Proving Ground, um, and he went through this really great process of, um, you know, meeting with the different user groups and pulling out insights. Um, and I think working alongside somebody who was like a little bit removed from it was helpful to help kind of give the right perspective.

So we were able to get a lot of perspective, um, from Nate in that process and then combine that with our own to kind of create a new strategy moving forward. and for us at the time, a lot of it was, um, really breaking down the silos that we had in the firm to be able to connect the data together in better ways.

Um, you know, we had certain data with accounting, certain data with project management, certain data and design technology, but we weren't necessarily tying that together as a story. So that was really kind of the goal of that, the kind of the repositioning.

Evan Troxel: Rob, I'm curious from your perspective, I mean, you've, how long have you been at at TT now?

Robert Otani: Well, I'm a boomerang, so I started, uh, my career at TT in 1995. So, uh, worked for eight, uh, five years, sorry. then, um, at TT and then left to two different companies for a span of eight years, and then came back

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Robert Otani: 2008. It was, and then I've been there ever since.

Evan Troxel: Okay.

Robert Otani: Um, so yeah, it's been a little bit of a journey, but a, a good one.

Evan Troxel: I I ask how long you've been there because I feel like, um, you've probably, and this, you, you talked to me a little bit about kind of going through a, a rethinking process again, but it's.

probably not the first time since you've been there for a while. I'm curious to hear about that.

Robert Otani: 22 years if you kind of roll up. Um, and I think part of the, part of how I got in technology in, in general was, um, you know, just, just to be, to be honest with you, just to be a better and more, you know, uh, thoughtful and productive structural engineer.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Robert Otani: And I knew that, and I, I I, I, I've been saying this recently, day that we had, we, we all had computers at our desk, which was about years after I started actually.

Uh, so we didn't have computers, um, for everybody. We had a shared computers. Um, was the day that technology became the method in becoming a good engineer, uh, a good designer. and, and productive everything that we did was on a computer. Um, so, um, that's how I got into it. And I've been just, you know, I'm a, I'm a person who always believes that there's a better way to do things and, um, I'm, you know, yes, I've learned a lot over my career, but there's always someone better.

And so I always kind of want to be to

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: what I do.

Evan Troxel: right Well, let's talk about this new. Rethinking that you both are experiencing now together? Um, this, to me, I think was, is really where I, I, I love hearing this kind of thing that it's actually happening, but it's, it's hard to find people who are willing to say it. Um, and which is like, there are these, uh, you know, I, clickbait version is like these existential threats to the industry, right?

And, and then there's the realities of, I love how you framed that, Alex, right? Which is, is you felt like you plateaued, you weren't moving fast enough or. You know, you didn't have this upward trajectory continuing, right? And so that to me is just one of those signs that, okay, we, we need to do something different.

Let's step back and do it. And Rob, you mentioned to me that, okay, we've got this, we, we talked on the, on the other podcast about what you guys have done with, um, with AI and, and training based on some certain expertise that exists inside, or it did exist inside Thornton Thomasetti. And you were able to use that information and, and, and create a tool from it that then brings value to your, your engineers.

But it didn't stop there, right? Like you did this really cool thing that I think not a lot of firms can do.

because they don't have this incredible corpus of material to pull from to build a tool like you did. I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes so that people can refer to it, but. But you then said, okay, and where are we going from there?

I think this is what happened. And so maybe, maybe just kind of kick us off here and, and let's start to talk about what, what you've been dealing with, and then maybe we can get into how you're addressing it.

Robert Otani: I will say, um, you know, we started in CORE Studio researching, um, machine learning and AI in 2015. So was, it was, you know, a developer that, that worked for me. His wife was a data scientist. explained, I had no idea what, what machine learning was. And he explained to me what it was. You know, basically you take a bunch of solve problems, which is smart information, smart data.

You use some, you know, algorithms to train that, uh, train a model from that data, which is, uh, which is if it's done right, it's gonna be a smart sort of, you know, information to our tool, smart tool. And I said to myself, know, I was thinking at the time, isn't that what we do? Isn't that what a principal does?

Like, over time they, know, solve problems. And in their head they have, you know, this sort of machine learning model, if you will. And, uh, and that, that they, someone asked them a question, they know the answer right away without thinking about it. It's based on their experiences.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: And so my mind was, my thinking was, what if we take that information, it within the, you know, the intelligence of the firm, which is.

Kind of what we are built on is the intelligence of the, of the aggregate of the company, um, and have it accessible by those who don't know someone that's young or hasn't dealt with that type of project before. like incredibly powerful for a consulting firm. We, you know, I, I, I this before, we as a consulting firm, we, yes, we produce models and drawings and reports, but the reality is, is we are basically, you know, get paid because of our knowledge

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: and the, you know, sort of the, the level of the common denominator is very high, right?

That's we, and we, we think it could be much, much higher if we have this, this really crazy, powerful tool called AI that we can actually, um, you know, sort of get all that knowledge out to people at the

Evan Troxel: Yeah. right Alex, I'm curious from your perspective, uh, coming into Thornton Thomasetti, these sound like some really incredible projects to work on, especially in, in the role that, like where you're at. I, and I'm just curious how, how that landed on you. Like, is that, is that what you felt? Is that something you were, that was drawn, that drew you to working at t?

Alex Pollock: Uh, yeah, for sure. Um, you know, I remember having conversations early on, um, the interview process about, you know, how do we, um, you know, manage knowledge as a firm and how do we disseminate that? Um, and you know, that's something I had been thinking about, which was. It's, it's really hard to get people the information at the right time.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Alex Pollock: our industry, we work on really complex projects, um, like, you know, continue to get more complicated, um, with really big teams. And I think AI is like a really great tool to be able to leverage the knowledge that we have internally to be able to deliver that information at the right time to people.

Um, yeah, there's, there's so much that you need to know and you can't take it all in at once. So if we can leverage AI to do that, um, it's definitely a big one.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I rob the thing that you just said about, you know, a principle and, and delivering like, like that's what Alex is talking about, right? Delivering that in that years and years of experience and wisdom in the moment. And somebody recently, I think it was Chris Parsons on a recent episode here, he was like, experts don't know.

What they know, like,

Alex Pollock: true.

Evan Troxel: you know, all this stuff, but you don't know that, you know, all that stuff. Like, because it's just, it literally happens in the moment and I think that is such an interesting thing about humans in this space, but then also taking that, that information and actually storing it somewhere where everybody has access to it.

Robert Otani: it's, well, yeah, I, I mean, I might rephrase it a little bit differently in that humans a lot, right? Especially professionals in our, in our business. What, what, what is always difficult is. For, for those professionals, those subject matter experts to, a grasshopper terminology, decompose, how they got to that answer.

They probably don't remember all the,

Evan Troxel: Sure.

Robert Otani: you know, the events and the situations, but they have that embedded and that's like, also why it's difficult to get those, get it out of those people as well. Uh, it's just, it's, it's buried in their, in their, in their brains and I'm just as, just as guilty of it. Um, it's an interesting problem, will say.

Evan Troxel: So one, one thing that I think is, you know, striking me now is kind of this idea that, um, you've, you are a service oriented firm. You get hired for your expertise. Actually, that's my one interaction with a TT employee was as a cur I had a curtain wall consultant on a project,

Robert Otani: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: I was just constantly like, enamored with this guy.

His name was Mark. And he, because he, he, he was an expert and he knew, he, it's like, okay, we need to come up with a detail for this. And it was just, he, he would, he, Yeah.

And he would, he would just draw it out. And it was, it was so fun to work with him because he had all the answers and he could just literally spit it out in real time.

He didn't have to go away and say, let me think about that. Which is, you know, it's a valuable trait too, but, but it was also just so fun to work with Mark and, and. I'm thinking about how, you know, you've, you've got this service oriented firm, you have a reputation years, how old is tt?

Robert Otani: Uh, I think all told over 75 years old.

Evan Troxel: Okay, so I mean, like, hu huge reputation, right? And, and, and you need to kind of now think about rethinking the way things are. And I'm, I'm just curious for what do you, both of you, I mean, well, let's start with you Rob. Like, when, when you, how important is it to rethink your practice and, and be, because like 75 years, obviously there's value in doing things the way you've done them.

And I think there's a lot of firms who think like, well, let's double down on that. But then there's this other perspective that you're bringing, which is like, oh, okay, there's new tools, there's a, there's this new, like, we should actually step back and rethink this. And then I'm curious, you know, where this goes because it's like, then it's the hard part, like how do we actually.

Set a new course. If it is potentially like a totally new course, how does, how do we get everybody on board to do that?

Robert Otani: Well, we do have to rethink what we do. Um, uh, because well, I, there's, there's a lot there.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I know

Robert Otani: there's a

Evan Troxel: we got time. I hope you have time.

Robert Otani: Okay. Yeah. No, it's fine. I, I would say one, traditional method of how you learn, like I did you know, years to become even reasonably, I would say. You know, to the level that Mark was right, to have that sort of corpus of information just very in your

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: long, long time to do so.

What we're seeing with AI is that you can infuse that if you will, much, much faster. So instead of 15 years, it'll take five or 10 for someone. Or whether they know it or they have access to it from a consulting standpoint is the same thing, They'll have an answer

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: smart, that is the right thing to do, or right, advice to give.

one. So how the, the rate of which we get to become a, a productive professional is going to change if, if people adopt the technology the correctly. The other is, um, a lot of the startups within our space are trying to do what we do. I mean actually doing structural engineering and architecture.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: And, you know, robotics will do construction tasks. And our clients, you know, just from the ones that I talked to are very interested in those. They're investing in those, those those startups. So what does that mean? That means that there's gonna be a portion of what we do

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: performed by a, you know, a startup, I'm sorry, an application,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: um, that leverage the best technology using AI or other methods, needs and methods to an answer, which is good enough for what they need to do.

Particularly at, in my, my, my thinking is early design phases, you

Evan Troxel: Right.

Robert Otani: Um, so, so with, with all of that, um, I think that we need to rethink what we do in terms of, we can't just think about doing the conventional, because the conventional consulting, 'cause I think it's gonna shrink. If we don't get ahead of it over time.

Evan Troxel: yeah, and I think about like, um, tools that you've developed, right? Like I, I, I've mentioned this before to you, I think it was Daniel Seagraves at a USC Bimbo talking about asterisk, which was, you know, a, a tool that you guys put out there to, you know, you could upload a Rhino massing model, you could choose one of three different structural systems, and it would kind of, it would actually do a lot of the calculations and it would give you kind of a breakdown and, and it was a really amazing tool that.

Is doing what you're ex, exactly what you're talking about right now. Except, except it was you. You were doing it to yourself. Right. Which I think is su super interesting.

Robert Otani: yeah. It, it, so, you know, the inter asterisk was, and we, we, we have, we, we call it asterisk two. Now. We have a, a new updated, you know, version, which is much more accurate, more robust, but. What was interesting about that at that time, which is about 2017, 2018, when we, we had that out there was that engineers, um, one, uh, were, were a little bit scared of it.

They were like, wait a minute. That's what I do for a living.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: Um, but also because we're trained this way, engineers are trained this way that, uh, it wasn't a hundred percent accurate, so therefore it was not reliable, which is a valid statement, except

Evan Troxel: percent accurate at early concept is, is anything a hundred percent accurate that early?

Robert Otani: but that, um, that's again, that's it. It is, it's a, it's, it's both the human thing and, but

Evan Troxel: Yes.

Robert Otani: just that's what is in their mind.

That what they, the work that they produce is 100% accurate. And so this app that was producing less than a hundred percent, it's probably 90% accurate. Which again, for an experienced engineer is good enough

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: It's, it's the level of information that the architect needs to keep moving with their design, potentially feed off of that information that they're getting and come up with a new design.

Who knows? But that was an interesting one. And it, and AI and at the time was very, very black box. we didn't document anything about the app. It was like, here it is. That's it. Take it or leave it. Um, so, but it was doing, you know, basically a team's worth of work in a minute that would normally take a team like two or three weeks to do.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: It's just, it wasn't, again, in, in the, in the, in the minds of engineers at the time, which I think was justifiable, was not, uh, trustable,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: uh, to use in, in a real project.

Evan Troxel: You remember that tool, Alex?

Alex Pollock: I do. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, uh, TT came and gave a, a demonstration where I was working at the time, uh, which was really fun. A really great tool, very exciting. I think, um, you know, Rob and I have had a lot of conversations about Asterisk since I've

Robert Otani: Yeah,

Alex Pollock: and I've seen him present on it a few times.

Um, I think of the things that I really, um, love about Asterisk 1.0 is, you know, what it did for CORE Studio and for tt and there's like so many lessons learned that happen in that process. Um, Rob was saying, that idea of having more transparency, building more trust in the results that are coming out.

And that's something that's been incorporated into a lot of the AI tools that we create now. Um, you know, it focused on one building topology, so our new version focuses on multiple Um, but it also like that early experimentation into AI and like that time to try something. Get those lessons learned back in Rob, you said it was like 2017, like that's what's helped accelerate, um, what the team's been able to do, kind of moving into that space.

And I feel like that's part of like why we are where we are now with the tools that we have. So I think

Evan Troxel: yeah,

Alex Pollock: cool. I,

Robert Otani: yeah.

Evan Troxel: I, mean that you, you've gotta build. Over time to get to, I mean, you guys are an amazing case study and I, and I, I actually want to take a step back. Rob, can you just explain the whole CORE Studio concept where that came from? Because, because you are now a case study, how did you get to become a case study? I would love to hear the story.

Robert Otani: yeah. I, I mean, I would say CORE Studio, all the way to the beginning, started in about, uh, 2010 or 11, and it was basically just myself and, and, and Yuan Schumacher, he was a Katia expert and I was, you know, structural engineering guy. Maybe I knew how to draw a line or two in Rhino, and that was the extent of it.

And, but I was also a special structures person at Port Thomasetti. So, you know, advanced modeling and FEA was, was an important part of what we did. So we, I, I was teaching at the time at Pratt Institute, I, and I saw the students using Grasshopper, um, and I said, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Parametric.

It's, you know, sort of very customizable, um, looks like it's fairly easy to use. So we both took Grasshopper courses from, I don't know if you remember those guys, but Go Mode Lab, um, in Brooklyn, um, and um, Greenpoint. And, uh, he became an expert at it. And I'm still a beginner to this day, we understood, at least I know what the power of it is.

And we started using it on project straightaway. Um, having connectors. You know, to Revit and instructional engineering tools. And so again, I have to get credit to the CEO at the time, which is Tom Scar Jello, who saw the value in all of that. Um, we were getting better work product, faster, uh, sort of response time for with our clients, a lot of our clients were using Grasshopper as well.

So it was one, it was, it was a way to communicate beyond, you know, A PDF sketch,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: right? The, it was, we were sharing models, so that's how it started a modeling, purely a modeling team. And then we started getting more into r and d. And so that's when we rebranded, um, which was originally called Advanced Computational Modeling to, uh, core Core, which, uh, really stands for computation plus research and.

Again, it grew from there. We started to hire application developers. Um, you know, uh, at the tone at the time, Justin Nardone ran the r and d part of it. Those are the firm wide RD part of it, and he has his own company now. Um, and, uh, and now it's much bigger. We, you know, we have uh, digital design, which is, you know, sort of the BIM work.

We have the Tela team, uh, delivery team, knowledge and data, um, app dev, and also the modeling ai. So it's a much bigger team, and that's where Alex has been really instrumental in, in, in, in getting all of our ducks in a row because, that, you know, we, we, we were not nearly as large in the beginning. So it's become not just, you know, a cool and d team, but also sort of driving, our practices.

Um. Uh, accelerating what we do in our practice work.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Alex, obviously this, this is an amazing new role and I want to talk about what you're doing. Before we do that, though. Can you kind of compare and contrast what Rob just talked about with kind of this vision that the CEO had of creating this advanced modeling group and then what turned into CORE Studio and like that vision of intentional investment to get from here to there and not, maybe not even knowing where there, there was, but just saying, wow, there's potential.

I love how you said it, Rob, like you're still a beginner at Grasshopper. I remember teaching the executives at my firm Grasshopper. I'm not teaching them so that they learn Grasshopper. I'm teaching them so that they understand the potential of it so that they enable people to use it. And I think that's a, that's a, a good internal strategy for those out there who, you know, who are struggling with.

With why are we using these tools? Why are we chasing down the, okay, they're, they're not the tools that we use. These are, these are other, that's a good way to, to get people's kind of awareness and, and the right exposure to it. But Alex, can you compare and contrast that with what you've seen in the, in the architecture side of things with this intentional vision about internal r and DI, I'm curious about your experience at FX and, and maybe previous to that SOM, but just your, your general perception of, of the architectural site as well.

Alex Pollock: Yeah, I mean, I, I think everybody in the industry wants to do r and d and wants to be innovative. Um, I, you know, I have felt that all the places I've worked, um, but I think that, uh, until you actually make the commitment at the firm-wide level to make the investment in the time and the people, it can be difficult to pull it off.

Um, and I feel like I've, I've gone back and forth over the years, the different places I've worked. Um, you know, I, I, I do think that, um, you know, research and development within projects can be. And it, it gives you the place to actually have like a real world problem that you're developing a solution to. But one of the things that we would often run into is just the time constraints of the project timeline and the space to develop that research and development. so I think by enabling some overhead to do the research and development and start to prep that, so when that project need comes along, that then you can partner with the project and drive the innovation forward. Um, that seems to be, uh, a better, um, approach, uh, kind of

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Alex Pollock: more traction in that way. So, um, yeah, for me, I really think it's the, it's, know, intentionally making that commitment within. financially with the people and with the overall culture of the firm too. You know, you, you wanna feel that if you try something new, uh, or you wanna develop something, that you're gonna have the kind of buy-in of the leadership of the firm, and you're gonna be recognized for it.

Evan Troxel: How much of r and d is failure if you were just like, put a, a, a, a gut percentage on it? Because I think this is one of the things that actually, like people we're, we're starting r and d, we're starting this innovation incubator inside our firm. Uh. And this is like the early story of Revit, right? Uh, export to AutoCAD, we give up, right?

Like, that was those early projects. It was like, we just can't handle the amount of failure. Uh, we just need to go back to what we're, what we know. I'm just curious from a gut level, what each of you, Rob. Rob, what do you think that number is?

Robert Otani: I, I, you know, I think it also defines what you, we consider failure. I would say

Evan Troxel: for sure. For sure.

Robert Otani: know, I mean our, I, you know, failure being, you know, something that we completely discard

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: is a small number. I think everything that we, we, we do, um, we either, at a minimum we do a better job at next time.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: we may create a better tool next

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: Um, and Alex has been involved, you know, since he's been here with the firm-wide, um, r and d program, which is called Core Lab. And you know, I would say the ideas that come from our staff, particularly the ones that participate in this program, which is not everybody, it's a select view, tend to be really, really good.

I mean, there's probably a 95% success rate those projects. So very small failure. And, um, you know, the, the hope is that it inspires other people as well. Um, so I don't know, Alex, you could

Evan Troxel: Yeah, jump in.

Robert Otani: comment on that as well.

Alex Pollock: great. Yeah, core Labs is like, uh, one of my favorite, uh, things here at tt. Um, and so there's a couple different ways that, um, the firm solicits ideas. Um, so one, are these innovation tournaments that will happen at a local office, that they are these full day events and go through this process of, um, just ideating different ideas, creating what we call a quad chart that kind of explains like the business plan and how you would develop it. everybody gets like 60 seconds to present their idea. We vote on it. There's like four finalists and then people team up and they take those ideas to the next level for the second part of the day, and we vote at the end and have a final winner. So, but out of that we'll come, you know, 30 to 40 different ideas that all have quad charts already. And then the other is that there'll be like a call for, uh, proposals twice a year. Also quad charts you can just submit anytime. Um, and then peers within the firm volunteer to review those and then vote on which one should get funding. And so actually a lot of the, the, um, the r and d proposals are funded so people get time and money to work on that.

Sometimes it's time, uh, money towards certain equipment that they would get. Um. like what Rob said is it really allows, the ability to generate those ideas from the grassroots. Um, like, what's working on your projects, what's not working, what's a new business area that we could go into? Um, and that's a really fun way just to see what everybody is thinking in the firm about, like where we can build efficiencies, where we can build innovation.

Evan Troxel: Th this whole like quad chart thing in budget, I want to ask you about if, if you have like a, not, not like a dollar figure, but maybe a percentage of like what you guys are actually spending on r and d, um, versus like revenue. Because, because I know, like Nate, you brought up Nate Miller earlier, Alex, right.

It's like, I think he said in his presentations, it's like less than 3% of of AE firms. Budget will be spent back into r and d. It's a really small number. Right. So again, like going back to that perspectives question about innovation in the industry, that's probably gone up since I've seen that presentation, which was admittedly a while ago, but still it's, it's probably still a small number.

And so I know it sounds like you guys are investing decently into this and this idea of a quad chart, it sounds to me like you're actually charging your staff to think about this entrepreneurially and I and, and that could, I guess, you know, it could, it could be a tool that's only internal. It could be a tool that you just, you're gonna spin off into another company, I guess.

I mean, I'm sure there's various options here, but that's super interesting to me that you're basically saying you have to kind of think of the business plan as well when it comes to this. And maybe, I don't know if that's what the quad chart really is, but, but is that what it is?

Alex Pollock: Yeah, the quad chart, it starts off with like,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Alex Pollock: idea? Why do you think it's important? are you gonna do it? the business plan? And, you know, what's your, um, just overall strategy and timeline and people that are required as well as budget.

Evan Troxel: Because I,

think a lot of times it's just, oh, it's just blue sky. Oh, we want to,

Robert Otani: yeah.

Evan Troxel: and there's no, we don't know where we're going. And then therefore we don't know how we're gonna get there. And we don't know how long it's gonna take and we don't know what the resources are, but we're gonna go, right. And I, we see that over and over again as well.

Robert Otani: So, so the innovation, the idea of the innovation tour, we didn't make up, there's a book out there, I think it was developed at the Wharton School of Business, it's, and it's, it's, it's, uh, was introduced by us, by our, uh, applied science, uh, practice leader Pablo Walke. And, um, you know, there's, there's three sort of buckets of, of r and d.

You know, there's the adjacent, the incremental, what's our last, uh,

Alex Pollock: transformational,

Robert Otani: transformational, which is like the blue sky and, and, and the ideas due trend, you know, with most being, um, adjacent, thumb being incremental and one or two being blue sky.

Evan Troxel: Because it's like scratching your own itch kind of a thing. Like you've got Yeah, Okay.

Robert Otani: Yeah. Um, and so the other benefit of all that is that Alex and I get to see trends.

So we go to various offices that could be a different region, different, you know, speak a different language potentially. Um, but the trends tend to be for us. Um, 'cause then we can make decisions based on what we do in our studio, um, you know, for next year or whatever, to make some impacts.

Because I think, you know what, what, what the, what executives in the firm don't see is the trends.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Robert Otani: they're not hearing about it on the ground like we are, which is part of our job is to sort of do that translation.

Evan Troxel: So can we talk a little bit about budget or if you have any, any, if you have any guidance, because I, I'm curious what you guys are, what you guys are intentionally doing around that to make sure that you're innovating, you're, you're, you're making sure you're innovating, you're not just hoping it happens.

Robert Otani: so I just did the, the math on

Evan Troxel: Oh, you're an engineer. Of course you did.

Robert Otani: I just, I had to do it on my, because I'm terrible doing math in my head. So on, on pure r and d, firm wide r it's only like 0.1%. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Wow.

Robert Otani: it's not a big number. I mean, we're a big firm,

Evan Troxel: It sounds cultural though, like it just sounds bigger than, like what you're describing is bigger than 0.1%

Robert Otani: 0.1% is, you know, for, for a company as large is not small number.

Evan Troxel: I, yeah. Yeah.

Robert Otani: thousands and thousands of person hours. Uh, that's, that's what it boils down to. you know, because it's, it's direct rates. It's not, we're not, you know, we're not charging our clients our,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: ourselves.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Robert Otani: so it's, it's actually a lot of hours and it's a lot of output, um, to the point where, you know, we, we struggle with figuring out what to do next with a lot of these ideas.

You know, then we have to start to prioritize. We can't do everything.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: You know, get it to the next level, but we can to prioritize again. That's where sort of, you know, the business impact comes into play. Um, what if something takes 10 years or five years or two years, and then we have to weigh the impact as well,

Evan Troxel: But it sounds like this is kind of happening all the time. I mean, so, you know, some firms will do like, like this innovation tournament kind of a thing. Maybe they'll do it once a year, maybe they'll do it every other. I, I'm just kind of, you know, I, I'm, I'm projecting out there, um, and, and that what you just said, where it's like, we have to figure out what we're gonna do next, but it sounds cultural.

Like these, these ideas are just constantly coming up and there's no shortage of good ideas. Right. And then you have, you're in the position of having to prioritize great position to be in, right? You've got all this stuff. Let's now work on the stuff that's gonna have the most impact. But it sounds like the.

Uh, you know, the participation is obviously awesome, right? So, so how do you, how do you keep that going? Because how do you get that to be cultural? Because I could see if it's just a once a year thing that, that another firm might do, you pick up steam and then you lose steam and then you've gotta rebuild again that momentum again.

And that's hard. Right. And so it sounds like you guys are keeping the momentum going.

Robert Otani: I mean, I don't think Alex and I would be here if it wasn't part of our culture,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Right.

Robert Otani: I mean, that's just so you know, if you go back to the roots of Thornton Thomasetti, which is, you know, uh, Paul Weinger, Weinger Associates, uh, Lev Zitlin. And Charlie, Charlie Jordan, and Richard Thomasetti and on and on.

are all innovators. I mean, you know, we

Evan Troxel: it's, in your DNA. Yeah.

Robert Otani: it's, it's in our DNA and again, we wouldn't be here if it, if it wasn't for that. Um, so it's fun to see. I mean, we're bystanders in most, uh, if not all of the, the, the r and d projects. Um, we just sort of use our experience to guide them in, in the right direction, make sure they're not doing something that we've already done before, say.

but it's, it's cool to see actually.

Evan Troxel: Alex on the architecture side, I think a lot of times that innovation is seen as happening on projects, but not to the firm itself. I, mean, what's what's your perspective on that?

Alex Pollock: Yeah, I think, um, that's assessment probably for a lot of firms, um, you know, the projects really do provide a great opportunity to, um, work towards that innovation. Um, and I think, you know, because. Projects are one off. You try to recycle what you can from one project to the next and reuse those scripts or reuse the innovation that?

you were doing. so I, I do really strongly feel that projects are a fantastic way to drive innovation, but you just have to be able to carve out the time and the project to do it. So maybe there's some non-billable hours that you could put in there to help drive some of that innovation as well.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, it's also you have these different departments, especially in these larger firms that, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to share information between stuff's locked inside people's heads. And I could see, again, like a huge opportunity for, you know, this idea of scratching your own itch where you've got people on the ground who are throwing these ideas out, and then the firm intentionally investing in those to take care of those things as the firm itself gets more complicated.

Not just the projects, right, but the teams

Alex Pollock: Yep.

Evan Troxel: and the projects and the departments and the number of offices and the way that they communicate and share information and find information when it's needed. All of that is getting more complicated as we accumulate more time and as there's turnover and churn and all those things.

Uh, and so I mean, it, it does take a, an intentionality to work on the business and not just on the output of the business. Right?

Alex Pollock: Yeah, do feel like there are firms that are diving into that stuff as well. Like I know at fx, like. were really looking at like transforming our data infrastructure and how we did project management and all of that. So I do think that work is happening as well in a lot of firms.

Maybe it's not publicized as much 'cause it's not as

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Alex Pollock: as that, you

Evan Troxel: It's not sexy, right?

Alex Pollock: But, um, you know, I, I remember this discussion I had where we said like. You know, to be data driven, like you really have to have a good foundation. And that foundation is like our projects and our project data. And so I think a lot of firms are in situations where maybe they don't have the best project data to build their data foundation on, and that work of cleaning it up is not, it's like you

Evan Troxel: yeah.

Alex Pollock: it's not sexy, it's not, uh, you know, super exciting thing that you can post on LinkedIn. Um, but I think it's actually one of the most transformational things that firms can do is to really get their foundation set

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Alex Pollock: data infrastructure to drive some of that other stuff.

Evan Troxel: Rob, you were gonna say something too.

Robert Otani: No, I was, I was just gonna say, you know, one of the side benefits of our innovation tournaments is that, um. It just gets people in one location, they can actually talk to each other.

Alex Pollock: Yeah.

Robert Otani: be, you'll be amazed

Evan Troxel: Sounds so simple, right?

Robert Otani: sounds so simple.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: you know, I would say the, the, the interpersonal relationships and communication and, and how they work together gets supercharged

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Robert Otani: one day of activity.

'cause they get

Evan Troxel: Cool.

Robert Otani: other, they get to know that they have common interests.

Alex Pollock: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: I mean, they're, you know, the, in today's world, you can be sitting 10 feet from someone and not actually have a conversation with them or, or a meaningful conversation. I would say

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Alex Pollock: I,

Robert Otani: happens.

Alex Pollock: I think that's a

Evan Troxel: Parents?

Alex Pollock: back to the culture thing that you were saying, Evan. Um, and, you know, and even like the presentations that we do, um, for Core Labs across the firm, it's open to everybody in the firm. It's like open to all 2000 people can join and

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Alex Pollock: to the work that happened over the cycle.

Evan Troxel: Nice. Rob, can you give any examples of the things that you were now rethinking or attempting to rethink? I don't even know how to categorize it, but, but it sounds overwhelming to kind of think about this as, as a new paradigm and, and think rethinking, like, rethinking, rethinking, not, not, not like the lightweight version, but the heavyweight version.

Can you give us some ideas about that?

Robert Otani: I, I, I think the heavyweight version is going to be, um, how we, well, let's just say it's been very, I would say, you know, status quo in terms of how we deliver our services and schematic design and, you know, DD and the CDs and all of that. and I think, um, in the near future, you know, we're gonna make, we're gonna make, uh, you know, shortcuts and to how we get our information directly to fabricators.

And, um, so that's one part of it. So, you know, we're uh, thinking very seriously and working on. does it mean? Because we kind of do that on certain, on very high profile projects. Um, get, you know, get the construction started way, way earlier than what we normally would do, for, for known, um, items.

I think the other part is rethinking how we you know, design with, uh, with, with our, with our architect clients. Um, it's the conventional way of, know, like you had mentioned today, well, I'll go, I'll go away for a week and come back with an answer. And as you know, being on the architecture side by a week is a, is is an eternity it comes to design iterations and thinking.

um, what we're trying to do with our AI tools is create these, you know, almost real time feedback loops with the understanding that the design will. You know, change just from a normal process or potentially be inspired, you know, to go in a different direction based on our feedback. So it's, it's, it's kind of is, is, uh, recursive in many ways.

Um, as it goes to the engineers is back, back to the architects, which I think is fun. The, the fun part that's, that's providing a real valuable service. The, the worst thing that can happen is, uh, which is, which happens on projects is that, uh, we're not getting information in time to be meaningful,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: uh, to have a smart design.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: That happens All the time.

Evan Troxel: Yeah,

The the first example that you provided about getting to fabrication. Directly. I think that's super interesting because you see, uh, incredible ideas being put out there, but it sounds to me like you're really trying to go directly to making it real instead of, because we see early on, like, especially with the image making and the video making stuff, you see amazing stuff that, you know, it cannot be built.

Right. It's like, and that's fine, like early stage is the best time for that kind of stuff. Like let's just say what if, and that's fine. Like, that is a lot of the design process. It's, it's about the ideas and about communication and then having those conversations and learning through those, and we get to reality.

We, we have to get to reality or else it's worthless process. Right. It sounds so interesting that you're kind of really keying in on that so that the stuff that you're working on, like you said, these known items. Can get built and, and, and communicating directly with, I would assume the machines in those shops to be able to pull that kind of stuff off with different material tolerances, depending on what you're working with.

You know, I, I, I.

think that's super interesting that you're going directly to there as a service provider for architects.

Robert Otani: Well, I mean, I mean, before it gets to the machine, we, you know, we, we have a whole practice, which is one of our most profitable practices, that all they do is steel modeling,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: modeling for contractors. The vast majority of the projects that they work on are th to city projects. Not always, not all, all projects are designed by us.

Um, but, you know, they have the expertise to know what's possible, what's not possible in the field,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: and the faster you can get that information to the design

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: um, the better. We're not gonna go down, you know, some crazy road that, you know, we get to a CDs and figure out, oh, that's, you know, 20% more than we anticipated, or it's just not possible in the environment that there is today.

So, um, yeah, I, I see that not just from all, you know, sub subcontractors, uh, being away. We should. Again, this goes back to a very philosophical issue is, you know, back when I started it was kind of very clear what was, you know, when we issued drawings, what was meant to be inter interpolated by the con subcontractors sort of, you know, um, you know, gone from an LOD 300.

We didn't even use those terms back then to an LOD 500 level. And with the advent of bim it kind of got blurred a little in, in, in, in a, in a way that was potentially not good, which was they, they anticipated a very high level of design, but they were still only getting PDFs at the end of the day, right?

The same information as what they had prior. So, um, what gets sort of interpol interpolated by the subcontractors, um, was sort of not communicated or not a hundred percent understood. So I think once we get to the point of having subcontractor is very clear what data, forget about the drawings, what data they need to have a really tight, tight bid or have a, you know, a, a a build buildable set, um, of maybe not drawings, maybe it's just a bottom, a buildable model.

the industry will take a huge leap, but we, we, you know, we're, we're gonna, it's gonna take a long time to get there because standard of care issues, mainly we have the capability right now to do that.

Evan Troxel: Hmm, Hmm. I, I'm curious what advice you would give to firms out there who aren't rethinking. Right? I, I, things are changing whether

Alex Pollock: Hmm

Evan Troxel: people are participating or not, right? And so, uh, I'm curious from, from both of your standpoint, what would you advise them to do in this situation?

Alex Pollock: Um, I, mean, I, would say that they should start somewhere. Um, they shouldn't just stay still. Um, it could be as simple as, you know, taking a short course on AI and understanding what its capabilities are and starting to think about how you apply that to practice. Um, I do think that, you know, if you stay still as a firm, you know you're not gonna grow, you're not gonna progress.

The opposite's gonna happen. Um, so you need to be out there. Seeing what's happening, you know, looking at how you can adopt new strategies and methods in your firm. You don't have to do it all at once, but just start small. Start somewhere.

Robert Otani: I, I, I don't think, you know, like, I think, you know, when, when BIM came around in 2004, whenever it was, you know, certain thomasetti was for all of our new projects, we went a hundred percent BIM in 2008. Which was early, and a lot of engineers at that time took a wait and see approach and it took 'em years to, you know, they had, it had to be written in the contracts right, For them to actually do it. And

Evan Troxel: The engineers said, make me, yeah.

Robert Otani: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was a process. We, we had a whole training regimen for engineers to learn, learn, learn Revit at

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: Um, so look, even if it's just training staff, you're upskilling to some level, you know, do better Revit, learn rhino inside Revit, learn grass, whatever. gonna increase your, you're at a minimum, your level of, of producible your, you increase the sort of deliverable.

Um, but at best you're gonna have, you know, get, be profitable with some investment, There's some investment that's needed, um, to, to upskill people. And people are not going to, they don't have, the people don't have the time these days. Not that it, had the time back in the day either, but I think it needs to be intentional upskilling, whether

Evan Troxel: I'm,

Robert Otani: even not ai.

I mean, ai I think is, is, is is the big gorilla

Evan Troxel: yeah.

Robert Otani: that needs to be addressed. But

Evan Troxel: It does seem to be, yeah.

I'm curious if you see these tools and, and ways of working in this rethinking adding value so that you can actually, you know, it's like, I'll just reduce this down. Can you charge more because you have these skills or, or is it we're just trying to stay at this stasis, like we're trying to do better with what we have and just be more efficient at what we're doing.

I think, I think a lot of times these, there, there's, there's kind of this rethinking and then there's this just, okay, how do we apply this? And just how, you know, how, how do we make it fit into our current way of working versus rethinking what we're doing. So I think those are two kind of different mindsets.

But, but I'm curious, like when you, when you see all of this investment happening, is it making you more valuable? Is it allowing you to charge more? Is it allowing you to reach certain goals? Like, I don't, money may not be the answer. It might be something else. I'm just curious like how. How you see that playing out?

Is it just relevance? I don't know.

Alex Pollock: I guess, um, I could start off with this one. I think, you know.

Rob was talking before about the kind of like the core, the adjacent and the transformational. So I think you can do kind of both of those things at the same time. I think you can work towards like building, you know, efficiency around the things you do every day at the same time thinking about how you can transform things within the practice and new ways of working. Um, so Yeah, I, think, I, think you do both.

Robert Otani: Yeah, I, I, I think you have to and, and, um. It, it's, it's, it's, again, I'll say it's just, it's not easy because, um, our projects, you know, fees are tight. No question about it. They're gonna get tighter. I guess that's, that, that's, that's, that's the issue as, um, as things go down the line. I will say also it's also important that our clients getting educated as well, and they're starting to use ai.

And so even to be, you know, in line with the thinking of your clients, you need to have the same mindset as they are. They're seeing the value. I think that's what the biggest sort of, um, you know, transformation of generative AI is that anyone can use it

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Robert Otani: What's like, grasshopper, know, sort of, you can get a lot information from using chat GPT or someone, one of the other Gen AI tools, and it's pretty amazing.

so, you know, our clients are smart. They're saying to themselves, how can I do, you know, do a feasibility study, uh, without spending, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and hiring an entire team?

Evan Troxel: Right.

Robert Otani: And so we need to be thinking the same thing in a way, like to align with what our clients are thinking and the goals of our clients, um, and have the ability to do it.

You know? Um, look, we're even seeing AI clauses in our contracts

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Robert Otani: now. sometimes, well, I know 'em for, for a fact in state of state of California to do public work. You have to, there's a statement of of gen ai, um, in those, in those projects. But are, some of our clients are, have a clause, you know, that they potentially want to restrict AI tools of like, you know, I, I'll use an exam because there's, there's danger there.

If someone uploads a project brief to chat PT the world has it now and there's a lot of, you know, you know, items in there that are under NDA clients don't want that information being floating around the internet. Um, so, to, you know, to to both of our points at a minimum, I start with awareness, I would say in education, um, around the latest and greatest 'cause.

It's moving fast, like really fast. I'm sure you've used the latest tools. It's, it's pretty amazing.

Evan Troxel: Absolutely. I just wanted to finish up a conversation and talk about the, the a EC tech event that's coming up in November. And the reason I bring that up because is because you're obviously investing inside Thornton Thomasetti quite a bit, but you also host this event, and could you just kind of introduce what that event is and we can get down to how people could potentially attend and, and, and participate.

Robert Otani: Alex wanna take a shot at that?

Alex Pollock: so, uh, a EC Tech is our external event, like you mentioned Evan. Um, and the big event that?

we do in. New York, um, happens over a week in November. Um, and it starts off with some, uh, virtual workshops. Then we have some tours. Uh, one day is tours kind of around New York looking at different, um, buildings or structures.

And then another IT day is a tour within offices throughout New York City. and then we have a day That's focused on workshops. And the workshops. Uh, we really bring in experts from around the industry to come and do like really nerdy, uh, workshops in different areas. Um, so if you wanna get like really into the weeds of like what an MCP is or, you know, really into coding something, they're great. Um, and then, uh, we have the full day symposium. Um, and so that we typically have, um. A full day of speakers. Some are round tables. Um, sometimes I'll have a keynote, have a couple presentations. It would kind of mix it up each year. Um, so, uh, and actually, um, I spoke at the first a EC tech, um, in 2012.

So it's been going on for, um, 13 years now. and it's just a really great place to connect with other folks in the technology community. I find that the technology community in the a EC has always been really willing to share ideas and knowledge with each other, um, which is something that I really appreciate.

So it's just fun to get together with different folks. Talk about what you're doing at your firm, what's working, what areas are you innovating in? so that's awesome. And then, uh, it's kept off with a hackathon. Which is, um, typically over the weekend it's about 24 hours. It starts noon on Saturday and I think ends around noon on Sunday. Um, and we get people from all over. We do these like lightning round where people talk about either they're interested in building or they like to do, like they like to code or they like to make PowerPoint presentations, or they're good at strategy Then after that lightning round, people just organically form groups.

It's like people have never met each other before and they just form these groups and they like, let's work on this idea for the next 24 hours. and so you get people from different firms, different backgrounds, um, different capabilities, and yeah, they work on it for 24 hours. They present on Sunday.

Hopefully they sleep a little bit in between. Um, and then there's like, there's a judging that happens for, you know, best, uh, overall, best collaborative hack. Um, and there's

Robert Otani: That's open source, I think. Yeah.

Alex Pollock: source things. Yeah,

Robert Otani: Yeah.

Alex Pollock: there's been just really amazing ideas that have come out of that community over the year.

Um, speaking of open source, everything is open source, so that's one of the, um, requirements, like everything you develop during that time has to be open source. Um, and, but from that it's also been some like, cool different products and companies that have even started. So, um. It's just a great way to get involved in the tech community.

You don't have to be a programmer, you don't have to be like super nerdy to participate. You know, any kind of involvement you have is great. Um, Yeah. so that's kind of a synopsis and so if people are interested in joining, they can go to the AC tech website. Um, you have options, you know, you could pick just a symposium, you could pick symposium, hackathon, um, but Yeah.

Robert Otani: Yeah, it, it, it, it's a great community builder, I feel within, within, you know, the individuals that, that come, uh, that make it. And I, and I, I was mentioning this to Alex last year and 'cause I, you know, that lightning round is, again, people just, first of all, there, there's usually about a hundred people who join this.

You know, they're not getting paid, they're doing this for fun. They, they're, they're there to, to learn something. I think there was about 35 ideas that were pitched in about 15 to 20 minutes. I would say maybe it was a half an hour in about 15 to 20 minutes after the pre presentation of those ideas, teams were formed.

I don't know the psychology of all of that. Something happens something in the air, in the vibe

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Robert Otani: of the, room. They find their home that they wanna spend the next 26 hours on.

Evan Troxel: That's so cool.

Robert Otani: it's really cool. It's crazy. I can't explain it, that, that happens. And, you know, they're, they're friends forever. I wouldn't say forever, but they're, know, they don't know each other.

These

Evan Troxel: They're developing friendships for sure. yeah.

That relationship's really cool. And and what, what are you guys doing during the ha during this, this event? Like through, through the hackathon? What, are you walking around? Are you keeping keeping tabs on things? Are you giving people pep talks? Are you, I'm just curious.

Robert Otani: Usually we're sweating it out to make sure that the wifi works

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: uh, um, you know, the, pretty much it. We, our, group, because we have a lot of good, uh, software developers tend to act as, uh, either join teams directly or act as sort of, uh, technical support. my role is just, just make sure, make sure there's enough food and drink coffee to keep

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: happy.

Um, but that, that's pretty much it. Um, you know, it's, it's a fun event.

Alex Pollock: Yeah.

Robert Otani: it's, it's worth coming to various pieces and parts of that

Evan Troxel: How competitive is it? I mean, I'm just curious. I, I'm sure it's like a, a comradery competition, but, you know, these teams are, are building something and they, I mean, they're, they're, you only get a certain amount of time to do it. So there's some, I mean, there's definitely like some, they're, they're going for it.

Like, what's that like?

Alex Pollock: a, it's a fun, competitive, it's,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: Yeah,

Alex Pollock: surprisingly laid back, like very, very

Evan Troxel: You're saying there's no sabotage. I, I wanna see Yeah,

Alex Pollock: No,

Evan Troxel: no. sabotage happening.

Alex Pollock: maybe rob his stories.

Robert Otani: Well, first of all, you know, we do give prizes, but the prizes is not gonna, you're not gonna be retiring on these prizes,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: be like, fun things. So I, I would say people just help each other out, even

Evan Troxel: That's cool.

Robert Otani: Um, so yeah, I think that's the fun part of it. And, um. Some really, really cool stuff, uh, comes out of it.

We, we, we, we, we put the, uh, we even give, give GitHub links, I think, to all the projects on our, on the AEC tech us website. So, um, yeah, it's, it's really fun. And I will say from, from, from our perspective, um, it's a way for us to keep sort of, you know, on, uh, you know, sort of up to speed of what is, what's kind of happening out there,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Robert Otani: just to keep a pulse on, what's happening.

And it's, um, certainly our thinking over the years, um, of which way we think we're going. I mean, I didn't hear about CPS until we did the London Hackathon in April.

Alex Pollock: Mm-hmm.

Robert Otani: You know, it was relatively new technology. Everyone was running, you know, jumping up and down about it. And I was like, what is all this?

now we're using it in our own practice, right? So six months, you know, 10 years ago was not a, not, not significant today it is that significant.

Evan Troxel: Yeah,

Robert Otani: From adopting new technologies,

Evan Troxel: that's a great position for you guys to be in. But it's also, I mean, it takes an incredible commitment to continue to keep doing this. And I mean, it's, it takes resources and it takes planning and yeah, e events are not easy.

Robert Otani: credit, credit goes to Dave Manz, who's, you know, who's, uh, you know, you don't know Dave Manz. He's like a grasshopper, uh, sort of, uh, uh, king out there. Um,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Robert Otani: more, uh, open source tools than probably anybody out there, but, he's the one who organizes, uh, the entire thing,

Evan Troxel: Awesome.

Robert Otani: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Well, I will include links to everything that we've talked about in the show notes that I can think of that we, that we did talk about. Um, and I'll put links to you two so people could, could connect with you on LinkedIn and follow along with the cool things that you're doing with CORE Studio and Thornton Thomasetti and the event that's coming up in November, right in the middle of November.

So, um, thank you both so much for taking the time to have this conversation today. I Appreciate

it.

Alex Pollock: Thanks Evan.

Robert Otani: Appreciate