207: ‘The Tech Leader’s Compass: Risk, Value, and Timing’, with Craig Barbieri

207: ‘The Tech Leader’s Compass: Risk, Value, and Timing’, with Craig Barbieri

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Craig Barbieri. Craig has spent nearly the last two decades in the trenches of design technology, standing up new tools and standards, guiding teams through change and translating business goals into practical digital workflows. From the early days of Revit rollouts and AIA Large Firm Round Table meetups to coordinating with contractors and reality capture in the field, his through line is simple, make technology, serve projects, people, and the business. Not the other way around. The thread I'm pulling on today in this wide ranging conversation is the value of seasoned, battle tested leadership. Craig's stories aren't theory. They're scar tissue and pattern recognition from two decades of doing this work inside real firms with real constraints. His playbook will surface during the conversation, including how firms can structure training time, where to invest first for outsized risk reduction and how to frame ROI so that your teams and your CFO actually get on board. As usual, there's an extensive amount of additional information in the show notes, so be sure to check that out. You can find it directly in your podcast app if you are a supporting member of TRXL+, and if you're a free member, you can find them at the website, which is TRXL.co.

So now without further ado, I bring you my wide ranging conversation with Craig Barbieri.

Craig, great to have you on the show. Welcome.

Craig Barbieri: Hey. Nice to be here, Evan.

Evan Troxel: I think our paths have crossed, you know, many times at LFRT meetings throughout the years, things like that.

You've just recently gone through a career transition and, uh, I would love for you to be able to tell your story today and provide some insights, especially from the practice side of implementation, strategy, adoption. I don't know, but we'll see where the conversation goes when it comes to actually implementing technology in large architectural firms.

But it's great to have you here, and I would love it if you could just kind of kick us off and tell a story of, how you got to where you are now. I think you, you, you've been at many firms over the last, you know, couple decades and just give us a kind of an overview of that.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Well, so I went to graduate school for architecture. And here I am, uh, an architectural technologist and, and, fractional CTO, um, which is, uh, if you asked me in the year 2000, uh, where I would be in 2025, I would not have said,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Craig Barbieri: you know, where, where I'm right, what,

what I, what I'm doing. I was all set on, on being an architect until, I actually started to practice. And the, and the reality of architecture in my own personality, my own sort of likes, led me down the road always, always heading down the road of, of, uh, technology and innovation and pushing the new the, the latest software and the latest tools and lid is hardware forward. Um, and so. The reason I got into the role that I did was really because I was an early, early Revit adopter as, as I'm sure a lot of people are. I had the hardest time finding a firm that in Philadelphia that, um, was using Revit it.

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Craig Barbieri: so I, I was working for this design firm here, uh, Daroff Design, who did a lot of hospitality, very famous for doing hospitality work, um, and, uh, airports and, and that kind of thing. Um, I, I was there and I heard from a friend that a firm called Clang Stubborns was gonna start the largest Revit project ever attempted.

Um, in an I, like my eyes like lit up. I was like, wait, I have to get on this project?

Evan Troxel: What, what year is this? What, what? What year are we talking

Craig Barbieri: This was, uh, this was 2007,

2006, 2007, because I, I joined Klink Sevens 2007. So, um, and I joined the interior design group because they were the, they were the only ones who, who needed, needed someone, um, at the time.

And I was like, dead set on, on working on this project 'cause I'd been using it for so long, right? Uh, and, and finally I could use it in a sort of more professional, like a big, a big project in a, in a real firm. And, uh, and from then it was, it was helping get that project off the ground. It a great, there was a great team working on it, a great IT team as well, um, installing Riverbeds and, and you know, a lot of technologies that, that were, were really new to me and, and the entire farm. And I think probably the industry as well at that time. And then, um, I, yeah, I would just, I just kept sort of harping on how wonderful Revit was, and I did like little presentations in the company and had like wine and cheese discussion forums and pull together other sort of like-minded people

in, in engineering and interiors.

We were like finding, seeing the value of, of Rev. And then the, um, one day the, the CEO came to me, Mike Lorenz came to me and, and asked me if I wanted to go down this road and road and,

and be the, be the director of, of, uh, practice technology at the firm. And,

Evan Troxel: Okay.

Craig Barbieri: and that was it. I was like, yes, sir.

Evan Troxel: Were you, so, so you were voluntold basic. I mean, he, he gave you the option, but, but you were, it, it, it was a good alignment for you.

Craig Barbieri: It was, it was because. Um, I, I mean, I, I still love designing things, but I am, I'm, I'm sort of at home with technology.

I, I like the tools. I like the tools a lot, and I like, like the hardware. So, um, when, yeah, when he asked me, um, I, I had, I had actually already proposed the idea to him, um, in an, in an email. Um, but, uh, didn't, didn't really expect too much out of that. And then

voila,

Evan Troxel: When, when you, when you did, when you sent that email, were you looking at other firms and like things that they were doing was just this, this is just something you saw the need for in your own firm? Like where did that come from?

Craig Barbieri: so, so, uh, yeah. I've always been sort of driving down the road with blinders on when it come, when it, when it came to, to, to Revit. Like I had just learned about Autodesk University,

um, what two, that same basically that same year. And the IT guy said, oh, you should go to this conference. Why don't you go? Um, and I was like, what is this Autodesk University? Isn't that like an AutoCAD thing?

Um, and uh, and so I went and I, it, it was, you know, huge eyeopener of course, right? Because here are like a bunch of like-minded people and they're talking about the software that, that I, that I think is fantastic. And, um, I hadn't, I hadn't realized honestly, that other firms were heading down this road and, um, were running into the same sort of issues and having the same challenges that, that, that we were, um. Outside of like, I guess the, the Philadelphia Robert user group, which a friend of mine, Robert Manna and I started around, around that time, two,

2009, I guess maybe 2010, something like that. Two,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Isn't that interesting to like, like firm? I think that that's just a common trait amongst firms. It's like, this is, it's just us. It's just us that are dealing with it. And then you go to AU or you go to an LFRT meeting and it's like, show of hands, who's dealing with this? And all the hands go up, right?

It's like, oh, okay. I don't feel so alone anymore. What are you doing about that? What are you trying? And, and it's, and then it is just like opens up the conversation of, oh yeah, we're all dealing with the same stuff.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Yeah. Especially the, yeah, the LFRT, it was especially unique, um, in with that because they, you know, large firms. Similar kind of large issues. Um, that's actually where I met, um, Anthony Houck.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Craig Barbieri: He with the first, um, they called it the bii. I, I don't know if, did you attend that? I

Evan Troxel: I did not, no.

Craig Barbieri: I was going, going back, um, the Bii and Anthony came and he gave out a little presentation, and I think that was his first, his first, first time

Evan Troxel: Was that when he was still at Autodesk, or was that

Craig Barbieri: still

at auto. Yeah.

I'll do that. This is 2000, whatever, 2008,

Evan Troxel: Oh, okay.

Craig Barbieri: 0

Evan Troxel: Yeah, no, Craig, I'm a few years behind you in like adoption of, of this stuff. I remember I, I started at, at HMC around the same time that you, you just mentioned like 2007,

Craig Barbieri: Oh, okay.

Evan Troxel: Revit was not on the list of things to do yet. At least it wasn't publicly like, oh, we're doing it until 2009.

That was like the, the date when it was like, all projects are going. And of course it wasn't all projects and there were many, you know, declaring bankruptcy, uh, during a Revit project. It just got too much. Just export to AutoCAD. Like, you know, we saw every version of, of that, you know, um, for the next couple of years.

But, um, and I don't think I became aware of AU until. 2014 even. Like, it wasn't even a thing that, because, and, and so I think like, you know, thinking about how difficult it was to get outside of the silo of your own firm and who's talking and where are they talking and is anybody talking about this stuff publicly?

You're digging through forums on what, like that's all it was back then. It was just forums. There was barely any social media. Right. I think Twitter started it, like, I started on Twitter in 2006, 2007 and we built an architectural community, but it wasn't around technology, it was just around the broader practice of architecture.

So, um, yeah, I mean these are, these were early days for sure. And just finding this stuff. It was all about your network, your personal network. I think.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah, I, I think that that is, uh, that, that's one of those, one of the aspects of, especially on the technology side with the architectural technology side, um, that, that was just really valuable in, in my career.

Um, and, and I think in, in, in. My colleagues' careers as well is like, so I, I've since built some great relationships.

Um, and and then, you know, one of the reasons why, uh, Robert and I started the, the Philadelphia Revit user group way back when, um, was because we, you know, we came back from, um, from AU when we were like, I wanna, I wanna like recreate that kind of atmosphere where we can, you know, talk about these things and figure out, you know, see how other people are accomplishing this, um, using the tools. Um, and it's that that creation of that community is, has really been sort of essential

with, um, with getting me, you know, really keeping me in, in this role for, for so long

too. I, I don't, I'm not sure I would have stayed in as long as I have without that.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. So you became a practice technology director, and where'd that go?

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. So, uh, I rolled out Revit firm wide, um, with, you know, help a lot of people, of course. Um, and then Jacobs came in and acquired us, uh, Jacobs Engineering to a big company, 63,000. But their architecture group, their global buildings group was um, gosh, four, 4,000, I think 4,000 people still. That's a lot of people.

Right.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Craig Barbieri: Um, changed the dynamic significantly. Uh, and they actually had what, four, five other directors of, of, uh, design technology. I think they called him, um, Sean Foster, and uh, uh, I don't remember everybody. But, um, anyway, so Jacobs came in and I, I helped in, that's my, that was really my sort of first experience with an integration with an acquisition, merger integration, which, uh, which was pretty interesting, um, to, to see that. And so we went, you know, basically, um, to all of the different offices.

Jacob's really kind of worked, um, much like a lot of large firms work where each, each larger sized office had almost their own standard and their own way of doing

things. Uh, I've seen that. Yeah. Just throughout my career, basically every, every firm is, is every large firm at least, is very much like that.

It's hard to maintain a set standard, um, across the board. Um, but we had, at Kling, ubs, we had developed a lot of content and a lot of workflows. That made us really good at, at what we were doing in, in, in building information modeling. So, um, so they adopted a lot of, a lot of, a lot of those techniques. then I moved on to, um, uh, where'd I go after that? Maybe Pan, which is another, that's an engineering firm. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Yeah. Yeah, pan. It's pan anyway.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I know. I know exactly what you're going through right now. Wait, what? The timelines are blurred.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, a, a long history of, of a, a great bunch of fool firms, I think. Um. Honestly. So that's, uh, and, and that's what's really given me, I think, a perspective that, like when I joined Ewing Cole, there were people there that had been there for 40, like one of the guys who worked for me and worked there for, he celebrated his 40th year.

And I was like,

ah, how do you do that?

Evan Troxel: Right?

Craig Barbieri: I mean, he's very good at what he does, right? He's actually an Autodesk expert, elite, um, um, can, can candid person,

I dunno what you call him. Anyway. Um, and, uh, yeah, I, I, I, uh, I owe a lot to the number of different roles I've played in different firms. Everything from con engineering, architecture, interior design, um, construction, high end design. So it's, it's, uh. It, it gives you, I think it gives you a lot, uh, uh, a much broader perspective of what's important,

especially construction. I don't know if, if you've had any experience with construction firms, um, that was a nice break from the design technology, uh, realm to, to dive into construction technology.

'cause you ever wondered what happens to your, to your firm's models once the contractor gets it

Evan Troxel: Yes. Tell us,

Craig Barbieri: Some, some of 'em are used and some of 'em aren't.

Um, but, uh, yeah, that, that was, that was such a great experience. It was nice to see, um, see the model, have it, have its sort of, its life continued.

Um, not in the way that, that I always imagined, but that just in a very useful way. And I actually was. Lucky enough to work with, um, the, uh, gosh, I'm blanking on his name, but the, um, uh, developer of, um, assemble, um,

Autodesk acquired Asem Assemble. right? Um, he actually wa he actually works at the construction company that, that I was, uh, working for. And, um, we had some, we had some good, good discussions, but it was nice to be able to see that that building information model go from the design side or the construction side and be made use of, and, and, uh, sort of carry on its life.

'cause

Evan Troxel: But you also learned why, what, what was unuseful about those, and then that informed,

Craig Barbieri: yeah.

Evan Troxel: when you go to you and Cole, right? It's like, it's like, oh, well here's what's happening with this stuff. So here are some things that we should be doing that address those issues so that we don't, they don't become issues during CA or whatever.

Yeah.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah.

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Craig Barbieri: Yeah. And, and I actually, one of that, one of the thirst first things that I did at, um, at UN Cole was institute a, um, or, or bring on a, a, a full-time, um, project coordinator. Basically a, um, virtual design construction person to review models, um, help teams coordinate before it gets to the contractor.

And everything has gotta change.

Uh,

Evan Troxel: Well, it's, it's interesting to think about that from an incentives or a, you know, just a project goals perspective. Like, the goal of an architectural model is to get a permit and to create a set of drawings, right? And, and the contractor is like, Hey, give us the BIM model. I, I mean, a lot of times it's in the contract too.

Like, yep, it's going to go on. And then they are like, wow, this is not. Useful for, for our purposes, for quantity takeoffs, for whatever those things are, right? For bidding things out to their subcontractors and trades and things like that. And so then they end up rebuilding a lot of stuff. And in the meantime, it's like you, you hear a lot of the horror stories and, and you know, it's like, oh man, architects aren't giving us what we need.

And it's like, well, that's not what the architect's actually getting paid for, right? The architect's getting, it's a different set of incentives and it's a different purpose. And there's many different models for many different reasons. It could be energy modeling, it could be visualization, it could be permits, it could be pricing, it could be all these different things, but man, there's like this focus of, well, we've gotta do our job and that's what it should be for.

And that is just simply not the case. And I think that's one of the difficulties around model-based delivery, right? It's like, well. Cramming all the purposes into one model, makes it a really unruly model. Most, most of the time, especially on these huge projects.

Craig Barbieri: Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Um, the, the coordination, um, aspect of, I I, that was actually the first time I'd done it in an architecture firm, like brought on a, a coordinator in, in, into my team whose specific job was just to coordinate projects and pull the team together and make sure that everyone was, was, was attentive to clashes and, and, and so forth. Um, and super valid everyone, like after the, after the first, you know, first session with um, uh, Lauren Vin, who's, who's still there, um, the, uh, you know, discipline leader of engineering came to me and he said, oh, this is fantastic. We wanna be able to do this on every project, uh, because. Um, because there's, I, I think there's like a, a level of quality and you, you, you know, you sort of have a, you have some respect for the team that can put together a really high quality model, um, and, and have the confidence in delivering that model to a client or contractor. And knowing that there, there aren't, there aren't many mistakes in this, if any. Right? There are always mistakes, but

there, there there aren't that many mistakes.

We've, you know, we've run through it.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Craig Barbieri: The value of that. On the flip side, you know, you get fewer RFIs and fewer change orders of course. And there's, you know, you can put value on that. Um, but I wish, I wish there was a way to track all of those things that, that. You know, that all of those change orders that didn't happen and all of those RFIs that didn't happen.

Um, but that's never the case. And so

when it comes to the value of these technologies, it's so hard to, to justify to

someone like, yeah, you, you're reducing the number of change orders, you're reducing number of RFIs, you're reducing a whole bunch of different things. And there is, you know, there's a, there's a number that's tied to that that nobody ever sees

and is like next impossible to, to communicate

Evan Troxel: Right.

Craig Barbieri: But I, I.

Yes.

Evan Troxel: Well, well, I, I like this digression because I think this is a reality in firms, which is, you know, a lot of times you're gonna have non-practice people asking those kinds of questions, right? Because it, it's gonna go to them. Maybe they're on the, you know, the budget approval side of things, and it's like, well, we'll prove that this investment is worth it, right?

And so what's the ROI on implementing this software, this training, whatever those, you know, the steps to getting there are for adoption and implementation and all those things. It's a big investment. Bigger the firm, bigger the investment, right? And so what's the ROI and, and like you just said, it's extremely difficult to actually put numbers on those things because we're not tracking the things that didn't happen because they didn't happen, right.

And so a lot of times that's what the software is doing. It's. Keeping those things from happening because of a better way of doing something. And so, I mean, what, what kinds of arguments did you make in firms when it came to, you know, to supportive arguments of implementation for things when it came to, to having those kinds of conversations so that you could really implement the value that you saw in what some of these solutions were offering?

Craig Barbieri: Um, well, so without like picking, picking one out, um, it, it, it's hard to.

Evan Troxel: Because that I, I, I know it's like I'm, yeah. And specific examples I could see would be difficult, maybe not the most useful, but it's like, these are the kinds of struggles that a lot of people have in firms. And I'm curious like how you. Handled that. And because like, part of it is like painting the vision of, of who we can become and, and what we can accomplish.

And it, but again, it's, it's still even difficult to measure that because that takes a long time to actually happen. It requires adoption, it requires standards and people sticking to those standards and not going back to their old ways of doing things and using their secret stash of content on their own hard drive.

And like, there's so many ver versions or, you know, there's, there's a lot of different things you could look at there that. Really need to happen for that bigger value to, to come to fruition. And I'm, I'm just curious if you have any kind of big, high level examples of how you accomplish anything like that in a firm.

Because again, I think this is the kind of thing that a lot of people struggle with. It's like, make me make the case. And the case is usually a vision and it's like, well, here's where we could be. And, and so I'm just curious if you have any pointers in that direction because I think it's so valuable.

Craig Barbieri: So whenever I go down that road of sort of justifying or, or painting a picture of the value of a, of a new technology, I always try and align it with the, with the firm's overall mission or goal or, or, um, the, the the strategy, uh, that, that the firm's, um, trying, trying to align with the, with their goals. So, um, the, the best way to communicate value is through examples and like. One, one that comes to mind has to do with laser scanning. So purchasing a laser scanner is, is not an inexpensive, you know, endeavor. Right? It's a, it's a pricey little piece of hardware. Um, but the value there is is incredible. So, one example I have is, um, actually while I was at the, at the, uh, construction firm was we had, uh, we had one project start out.

We'd gotten the, the Revit model from the architecture firm and, uh, that the superintendent was aligning, you know, lining everything up, doing some sort of spot checks, uh, or of dimensions. And he found that the, um, the elevator core was 18 inches off. Yeah,

Evan Troxel: a little bit off.

Craig Barbieri: just a little bit. And this is a, this is a lab.

This is a, this is a lab building.

So the core was 18 inches off. It's like, you know, how does this happen in, in this day and age? Perfect, perfect justification for a, for a laser scanner. Right. So we rented a laser scanner, got out there, scanned it. Yeah, sure enough. The, the core was off. There were some, there was some structure off as well. Send that back to the architect to redesign. Months later they've got everything, you know, corrected and, and, and, and the project can start up. But, you know, we're talking, you know, a significant amount of time in

relaying out this, this lab project, uh, that could have been entirely avoided if they had just done a cheap laser scan at the, at the outset it was

like, you know, two, 3000 bucks to scan an empty shell with

the, with a scan. It, it totally worth it. Why? You know, why that's, uh, not done? Just as a, as a standard for, for every project, every renovation project, or fit out project. I'm, I'm not sure. I think it, it should be. Um, but, uh, the value there is huge. And, and

that's just a very visible way of, of

saying that.

Evan Troxel: So you can actually take a, a, a, a monetary figure and apply it to that and say like, we, we could potentially avoid this on every single project by doing this. Right? And, and I think a lot of it comes down to that too, where it's like, oh, okay, that makes sense because it's something architect love, right?

Risk avoidance. And so it's like this, oh, if that risk is a reality, especially on complex projects like a lab building where every inch counts, right? I mean, literally every inch counts. And it does take months to redesign around an 18 inch bust. That is where, okay, you totally made the case. It totally makes sense.

And what's so interesting to me when you're having those conversations with somebody is if you can create an example where it totally makes sense to that person, they will never question it again. It's like, done, because I, I've, you know, talking to A CFO who's gonna make that decision be if it's a big spend, it's like, oh, okay, I totally get it now, and now that decision has been made and we can move on.

And I, I like that there's not this constant re questioning about things like that when, when you get the right CFO in place, at least.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Yeah. So it's always important to have a good, good relationship with your CFO.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I, I often find that CFOs are just as excited about innovation and technology in firms as the technology people are. They're just coming at it from a different perspective. Of course, they want the firm to be profitable, they want the firm to be pushing. They want the firm to be, you know, differentiated from the other firms that they're competing against.

And so, I mean, just to kind of double down on what you just said there about having good relationship with them, I think they can be a, a fantastic partner a lot of times. Um, I've presented

Craig Barbieri: yeah, I was just gonna say, they're kind of an, an essential partner, you know,

especially for, for big ticket items.

Evan Troxel: yeah. I've presented, uh, I did a presentation to this, the large firm Roundtable CFO group a few years ago. And. They were more excited. I mean, and you, you go to an LFR team meeting for the CIO group and the CTOs and, and everybody's like, you know, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, me too. Like the CFOs were like, all the hands went up.

There were so many questions. How, how do, what are you, what are you seeing? What do we do? What? And, and it was really, really refreshing. I was not expecting that from that group, but just to kind of reinforce what I was saying, that they're great partners and you're saying essential partners, right? Like that to me is, it's an amazing group of people who really care.

And so again, a tip for the audience, like that's a great relationship to build, for sure.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Yeah, I, I totally agree.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

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So where did you go from there? Let, let's talk about kind of, you know, you, you're seeing the, the value of technology playing out in different, um, ways, right? You, you're seeing it from different angles. You're seeing it from architecture, engineering, and construction. And this is becoming, I'm assuming, a valuable feedback loop for you because.

Not only are you deploying technology across large teams that have, you know, different behaviors and, um, through mergers and acquisitions, which even takes that to a different level, right. Of, of people who do things their own way, but then also kind of seeing where the models are going beyond that, and I'm, I'm assuming that's creating a really good reinforcement loop for you to build a really solid foundation for technology in, in a EC firms.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, plus it, it, um, having, having those experiences just. Answers a lot of questions. You know, if, if, if you're, if you're strictly stuck in, in one discipline dealing with the technology of, of one discipline, uh, for the most part, you know, you, you, you don't get that sort of more robust understanding of, well, you know, electrical has, uh, that does, does circuit panels and, you know, their, their auto, there's a degree of automation there and, and a, a number of different activities and, and requirements around what, what they do that, um, you know, architect or, um, architectural technologists, strictly speaking may not realize. And so, and, and that goes for, for like civil engineering too and, and civil 3D and how that integrates and plays back and forth. Um, it's having that sort of broader understanding of the different technologies I think has, has, has served me well. Um, you know, if, I guess I would, I have yet to see or drive forward a, um, uh, an entirely sort of fluid workflow from discipline to discipline, from, you know, concepts to, to, uh, occupancy, uh, which I would love to see that.

I would love to see a really fluid workflow where everything ties together and, you know, there's a lot automated, but there's a lot of design work in there, and there's, um, uh, a, a lot of use of the data down downstream. Um, but I, yeah, I. Okay. I haven't gotten there yet. And I think that's, I think that's where I think we're all sort of striving to, to get to that, get to that point.

I would've hoped to have seen that by now. Um, if

Evan Troxel: What? What do you mean when you say a fluid workflow? Do you mean like less? Uh, starting over mid-process, like when you switch phases, do you mean like, just explain, explain what you mean by fluid workflow and kind of this, because that, that to me is one of the things that you keep saying is like, that's the promise of technology, right.

Is like,

Craig Barbieri: right.

Evan Troxel: so, so explain what you mean by

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we can see, we can see parts of that, right. So we, of the greatest things I think for our industry, uh, for, at least for Autodesk users, has been a CC where you can have multiple firms, you know, syncing and, and linking models and being able to see each other's work live. Uh, and, and most, most of the projects that at UN Cole, at least, everything was linked. Um, and that kind of back and forth where let's say a consultant engineer makes a change. You know, you reload that model there, there's that change. That's fantastic. There's no, you know, let's transfer the models at the, the, end of the week kind of thing.

Evan Troxel: I was just thinking. I was just thinking, man, what we have gone through to get to this point. Right. I was just thinking back of FTP sites and P, you know. Okay, everybody. Publish a new mo, like send your new models over every week and it's like, oh yeah, maybe Monday. Like, we're not, we're not ready yet. Um, there was just so many pieces to that puzzle back then.

And, and a lot of that has shifted for sure.

Craig Barbieri: yeah. But, but so, so that, that piece has been, I think has been really so solved. Right. But it's getting to that point. Uh, a lot of firms still, you know, go from Rhino or some other 3D modeling tool.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Craig Barbieri: To, uh, in early concepts and sometimes through schematics before they, before they get into the Revit and the documentation.

Evan Troxel: models, right? Like you've got the Rhino model and the, you got the Revit one for the floor plans and you've got the Rhino model for the massing, for

Craig Barbieri: Yeah.

yeah, yeah.

And, and ideally that you'd stop, stop work on the, on the, on the Rhino model at, at some point and carry on with, with Revit. But I've seen too many large projects where the Rhino model is still in, in, you know, in late CDs is still being worked on,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Craig Barbieri: which is, which is too bad because, you know, that's a duplication of effort, right.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, it is. But then, I mean, you can totally see why it happens too, right? It's like the, the different modeling applications have different strengths and speed and it, you know, right? Like tools are built for different reasons and so you can see it, right? Especially with like, visualization, right? Oh, man.

Like, we just want to make it look right so that we can get that rendering. And it's like, well, the, the construction document tool is not the right tool for that because it's focusing on something else. So I, I get it and I, and I agree like, oh, it would be great. This is where we're really seeing the tides starting to turn.

I think though, with, and the maturity is, is where it's, this is gonna be like, if it's all worth it or not, like it's, it's gonna come to fruition. You can, you can see that the. You can see the intent with these BIM 2.0 tools with Arco and Snap True and giraffe and these kinds of tools where it's like, okay, they're early stage planning, they're tied to numbers, they're tied to budgets, they're tied to massing, and they can do some floor plans and they can send stuff to Revit for documentation.

Still let even form's doing this, right? With still relying on Revit for that documentation side of things, but it's helping us make better decisions earlier with these other tools. And at the same time, like that maturity isn't there. And so we, we still can't do it all, um, in, in the one tool because it takes years and maybe decades to get to that point.

Craig Barbieri: Right. Yeah. The, um, I, I do like, I haven't played around with, uh, Snapchat in a while, but, um, form I have, and I, I like what they're doing. Uh, I, um, uh, I've been an advocate of, of that for or for early design. Um, and, uh, I so it, it's, it's actually been so, so of odd. 'cause it seems like from, from my appearances, it looks like it's like the perfect tool.

Right? But, but a number of architects have been like initially resistant to using it. Um, in, in, you know, at Ewing Cole's, which isn't everybody. Um,

which

Evan Troxel: as we, we talked about earlier, when you go to the meetings, it's like, yeah, everybody, so it, it might be indicative of what's going on everywhere.

Craig Barbieri: yeah. But, uh, but what they're, what they're, what they are doing is, is pretty fantastic. Being able to like quick, especially with the other, with the integrations. That's one of the things that I think they're really nailing well is the integration of Rhino into form. I mean, if, if, if Snap Drew or, or any of the other tools, right?

They're doing the same thing. Those integrations are so key to making that tool the neck, that, that stepping stone to

getting to that perfect fluid, um, workflow. Um, because yeah, not every designer is gonna be like, some people use SketchUp. Um, I'm not a fan, but, um, some people use ketchup and. So what, that's, that's the tool that, that they want to use, that you gotta integrate with it, like have

a, have an integration with that and you'll get that audience.

Right. Um, but yeah, at the end of the day that, that perfect sort of fluid workflow is, is, is still a bit of a, still a bit of a dream I think.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. What do you think about this from a, from a practitioner side of things regarding just the number of tool? Like I pre-show before we hit record, we were kind of, I, I mentioned this idea of like a wood shop. You go into a wood shop, there's a lot of different tools for a lot of different reasons, right?

You're gonna use the table saw for this, you're gonna use the band saw for that, you're gonna use the planer for the, the thing, you know, it's not like you're trying to, the one tool to rule rule them all. You know, that tool may not do everything extremely well in any case. If, if that's what they're going, like, we've seen that with Revit for a long time, right?

It's like this, oh, it has to do single family residents and high rises and everything in between, right? So does it do any one of those things? It's not purpose built for any one of those in particular. And so therefore there's workarounds required, there's. There's all kinds of things that people have to deal with, uh, to, to make it work for them.

And, and yet there's still kind of this utopian vision of one tool that can do everything. And I'm, I'm just curious. Okay. That's not the reality. There isn't one tool that can do it all. And, and there are a lot of tools that are, because of all the startups that we've seen in this space in the last 10 years, doing a few things really well for, in a lot of cases, they're staying in their own lane.

They're not trying to, you know, cross over too much. And therefore, I think firms are really dealing with kind of this tool fatigue, right? It's like there's this utopian vision of one tool to do it all. Oh, that's not the reality. We, we need 30 tools or for like, how many tools are in your stack. Craig, if you were just to take a guess at you and Cole when you were there, like how many tools do you think are in the architectural workflow pipeline?

It's probably north of a hundred is my guess.

Craig Barbieri: yeah, I,

Evan Troxel: not big ones. There's, there's a few big ones, but there's a lot of things, you know, you include graphics and presentation and there's so many pieces to that puzzle,

Craig Barbieri: yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, that, that, that makes, that's the, that's the headache part of, part of the job dealing with all those,

Evan Troxel: and it's the reality. Yeah.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And in on top of that, it's like the, it really has the past 10 years, I mean, past five years, just the exponential growth in the number of tools

and the number of software vendors reaching out has been, um. It, it's created a, um, a kind of that, well that, so the exponential sort of growth of the number tools and then the exponential sort of development of the tools that we already have

and the changes all along right, has created this sort of state of, of, um, continuous like learning required for staff.

So, um, where at any given time you need, you know, have some percentage of your, of your staff to be trained in this latest tool.

Either that, or have them have, you know, more specialization, um, for, uh, for architects and engineers and, and designers, uh, to, to sort of solve that issue so they can pick up those, those smaller, um, bumps and, and technologies and those newer tools. But, uh, with the, it was sort of onslaught of. Onslaught of, uh, of AI and the tools, you know, around there, which, look, there are some that are look really promising.

The ones that sort of review your, your, your specs

using AI and do, and do your, sort of review your shop drawings and your specs. That that's, that's a cool workflow because, um, I, I don't know many people who, who enjoy that process of going through a,

you know, thousands of submittals

Evan Troxel: right. Absolutely.

Craig Barbieri: sure everything aligns with the specs and the shop drawings are right and

Evan Troxel: Oh man. And because it's such a low desirability index on those kinds of jobs, it's like people don't put their mo their best attention on those either. And that's where a lot of things slip through the cracks. Uh, it's, it's, that's a tough job for sure. Yeah. I'm, I'm thinking about kind of the number of tools, and I'm glad you brought up training because that's a real aspect.

Did, did you take that upon yourself? Did you rely on other companies? How did you implement kind of a training layer in, in your firm?

Craig Barbieri: So, um, yeah, so I, I had a number of staff at, at UN Cole. Um, actually most of, most of the companies I work with had a, had a good number of staff so I could rely on some of 'em to do the training. Um, but I also have been a proponent of using the, um, the self-paced learning tools like Eagle Point, um, and, uh, and get globally training,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Craig Barbieri: uh, because, you know, it's the value of having me train, you know, uh, some number of, of staff people in using any one tool is, is not. It's not really, that's not the best use of my time. Um, the, uh, the self-paced learning works for a good number of people that, that use it. Uh, and then there, there's always some other group of people that need the hands-on, you know, in-person training. So I've always made it, um, made training. Training's really important because, you know, you don't train people on the tools.

They, they make, they make mistakes. They do things the wrong way and they need to be redone.

So unless you like paying twice for, for the work, um, yeah. Train your.

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Yeah, absolutely. This is one of those things though, that I think a lot of firms, they, it's not in their line of sight because it's like, well, we just have to get the work done. We have to get the projects done. And to your point, I mean, how many times have you seen somebody doing something and you're like, oh, there's a better way to do that if you just do this.

And they're like, I had no idea. It's not like they were avoiding, they just didn't know what they didn't know. And it's like, oh, thank you for telling me. And so in, in the case of training, then it's like putting this in front of people. And a lot of people don't even want to take the time to do it. They see training as a burden because it's taking away from their job.

And so this is one of those struggles in firms and, and I wanted to bring it up because I think a lot of, you know, these startups are coming at us with great new tools, but the burden of implementation is huge. I mean, even if it's a super easy tool, like a chat box, you still need to know how to use it to get the best results and to get correct results, for example, right?

So it's like all of these things are additional burdens on firms, and I don't think these companies necessarily realize what they're asking. Oh, it's just one more tool. Well, like I said, there's a hundred tools, right? So how do we even keep our staff up to date on what's, and everything is a moving target when it comes to this.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah, that, that, that's actually one of, so one of the challenges with the, um, with the self-paced learning providers, uh, legal Point get and, and, and the others, um, is that, uh, the, the content isn't, isn't always as current as you, as you'd like. It, it is, it is pretty current, but not, not as current as you'd like it. Um, so keeping up with the latest, the latest changes to the tools and, and having those sort of, you know, quarterly updates to the, the, uh, uh. Whatever improvements that kind of thing is, uh, is, is kind of necessary. Um, and, and that's, you know, the design technology staff per perfectly able to, uh, and I think they actually enjoy it perfectly able to, to teach those aspects, um, in lunch and learns and, and, and that kind of thing.

Um, but, uh, the new, like, one of the challenges around training, um, for in-house developed automations, so Dynamo tool. So at, at, uh, you and Cole, we developed 130 or more than 130 different Dynamo, you know, scripts to help with the workflow, different workflows and different disciplines. That was, I mean, I just, the team that knew how. who who had developed those tools, knew about those tools, and it

was made it really difficult for, um, for anyone to sort of like find what you know, well, well, I'm gonna, I need to renumber all these, all these rooms, right? Well, I know we've got a tool somewhere that does this. Where do I find that tool?

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Right.

Craig Barbieri: Right? Huge, huge challenge If you've got 130 tools that, that

nitpick all the different little, little tasks that, uh, that always take, take longer than you think they do. Um, so great idea. Use a chat bot. So we created a custom chat bot, filled it full of all the, the automations and the descriptions of each of the automations, what it did, and put it in the Revit toolbar. And now the, the, um, staff can like, oh, I have to do this sort of mass change across the document set. What, what's the best method of doing that?

And it'll spit back, oh, we've got this, this script will do that, and this script will do that. Go here and click on it and run it.

Evan Troxel: Makes it more discoverable, right? Yeah. A lot of times there are tools just forgotten. You know, it's, it's somewhere on the server. I don't know, I don't even know what it's called. Right. So,

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Right.

Evan Troxel: right.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. Hopefully it's, it's called something, something that makes sense,

Evan Troxel: Something descriptive. Yeah. Right.

Craig Barbieri: that's not always the case. Right,

Evan Troxel: No, it is not right. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and that's the difference between like a user and a, an author, right? Is gonna be, oh, well this is the use case. Here's my challenge. But the keywords don't match up with the name of the tool, for example. Right. So,

Craig Barbieri: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: yeah, absolutely.

When, when you were doing training in your firm, you, you mentioned lunch and learns, was there actual time set aside for training, or was it only like in, you know, time like that where it would be like at a lunch and learn, for example?

Craig Barbieri: So, so I had,

uh, I'd asked that everyone spend an hour or two every week, you know, doing training, learning something new.

Evan Troxel: Did their project managers still allow that to happen? That, that, that's where things get a,

Craig Barbieri: that's where, yeah, so that's where, that's where the friction is, right?

Project managers need people to work, not, not to learn well,

Evan Troxel: Look, it kind of doesn't make sense if you actually think about that, but

Craig Barbieri: yeah. Um, but it is, it's super important for people to learn how to use the tools,

uh, in order for them to get their work done faster. So it makes a whole lot of sense when you think of, think about that,

Evan Troxel: Think bigger.

Craig Barbieri: in those terms. But when there's a, you know, project deliverable five o'clock on Friday

and we've got a cram to get it done,

nobody has an extra, you know, minute to

spend learning a new tool. So, totally, I mean, totally understandable when you've got those, those crunch time, right? That, that folks aren't always gonna get to the training. But, um, part of the review process that I was pushing forward, you know, annual review in the quarterly or biannual review was to bring up the staff person's training. See what did they, you know, how much time did they spend and, and what did they learn? And, you know, is it making an impact?

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Craig Barbieri: And for some who, who brought it up in their review meetings with their, um, with their employees works great and others didn't do it. It's hard to, it's hard to maintain that. Um. You know, unless you're sitting in every single review meeting.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Craig Barbieri: it, it, it

Evan Troxel: is a real struggle for sure. And I think about like a KPI like that in a, in a kind of a annual or biannual goal setting session and then, you know, a review of that session at the end, it's like a lot of employees are not in the position to get, to make the decision of how they spend their time.

Right. And so did you do, did you accomplish your goal of doing, you know, 20 hours of training this year, whatever it is? Well, no, because I wasn't allowed to. So I mean, these are the things that actually happen in firms and, and so to me, like it actually makes a lot of sense to set aside. A specific number of hours per month per whatever quarter that you just get for training because we need it.

Like our firm only gets better if our staff gets better at using these tools.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah. And that's where the lunch and learns come in to sort of help with, help with that, because everybody's gotta eat lunch, right? You've got a captive audience and you can, you can

provide them some, some training on important things at that time. And then another thing that we, um, implemented were these sort of 15 minute training sessions, which, um, people really liked. Uh, so basically, um, once every couple weeks, I think we were doing a 15 minute training session on a, on a specific topic in the company lounge, really sort of casual and, you know, whoever shows up, shows up. You could, you could basically be being in the lounge. It was, it was open to everybody. Even the people just getting a cup of coffee might accidentally learn something new. Um, those were, those were surprisingly well received and, um, and, and effective. If I,

and you know, 15 minutes is, is nothing.

Evan Troxel: it's digestible. Yeah. It's like a, it's, it's not a lunch and learn. It's a snack, so, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I agree. Like the, the attention span. Has also gotten shorter, so that is more digestible. Oh, okay. It's easier to get approval for probably two 15 minutes versus an hour, or what, even if it is your lunch hour, which, you know, you don't, you need to get approval for that one.

But I know a lot of people just want to go decompress from work at their lunch hour too, and, and not do more work. So that's still a, a tough decision, I think, for a lot of people to make, to even attend a training thing over lunch because you actually feel like you're working for another hour. Right. So, um, I, there's all kinds of nuance to this kind of conversation topic, but it's, these are the, the things that firms are actually struggling with all over the place.

Especially the bigger they are, the more offices they have. Like you said, you do this thing in the lounge. In one office. Well, what's going on in the other offices? They're, they're probably piped in over teams or Zoom, and then they're sitting at their desk with headphones on while they're eating their lunch, trying to take this thing in.

And it's complicated. Like, these are the realities of, of running a large architecture practice today.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. One of, one of the things that I, that I attempted to do, um, is, uh, is 32nd training, um, like basically trying to. Get the, the effect of a doom scrolling, uh, you know, Instagram type,

Evan Troxel: Uhhuh?

Craig Barbieri: you know, TikTok, whatever,

um, get that, um, result out of, uh, into sort of a training format that people are like, here's how you do this.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. And, and and release that. The, the challenge there is, well, what I found the challenge was actually just making those videos were,

was time consuming.

Evan Troxel: It's an enormous amount of time. I was gonna say that is the biggest hurdle to get over is it's amazing to actually witness or do, like how much time it takes to condense information into that short of a period and make it effective.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, for sure.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah, yeah.

Evan Troxel: We, we implemented a thing at HMC called Skill Cards, and so we had this, uh, in, on the internet.

It was like a whole database and everything was filterable by category or software or keywords or whatever. And then the idea was. It was a series of PowerPoint slides and, and, and it was like, there was a, a max, it was like five slides, if I'm not recalling this correctly, but, but maybe that's what it was.

It was like, okay, you get five slides to teach somebody how to do something in some piece of software, and that goes on the internet and you know you can, because it's PowerPoint, you can update it. It's a dynamic document. It's not like a dead, you know, it's not like a printed piece of paper in that regard.

So if the software changes, it could get updated and Yep. You maybe move the bubble, the bubbles around or whatever. It wasn't video we weren't at, this was, this was years ago. But, but again, the hurdle of creating a, a, a polished kind of how to presentation in five slides. It's a, it's a tall ask, right? It's like, who, who's gonna give somebody the time to make one of those things?

And you make it as easy as you can. You give them the templates with all the annotations are already in the, all you gotta do is move them into place a Okay. It's still not gonna happen, right? It's like one of those things where, nope, I have a job to do and this isn't it. And so you actually, like, what we did is we ended up implementing a dedicated training team and that was part of their job, right?

They were teaching classes and they were sending emails and they were doing desk to desk and they're doing support tickets and teaching people through support tickets and they're looking at the dashboards, looking for places where, okay, people need training on this. People need training on that because this is taking too long.

The models are getting outta control, whatever those things are, and they're producing these things because then like their job is training and, and I felt like that was the best chance we had at actually training our own employees so that our firm got better together.

Craig Barbieri: Yeah, well, I mean that, that's, it's fantastic that you, that you were able to basically sell, sell that idea of having dedicated training team. 'cause that's, I mean, selling the idea of training is, is difficult. And having a, just like someone on staff that was doing that fantastic. I always try to, you know, have my design technology team, you know, take on different responsibilities there.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Craig Barbieri: Um,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Craig Barbieri: so,

Evan Troxel: Well it is one of those, one of those difficult parts of, of actually running a practice is yeah, keeping everybody up to date on the latest tools. And like you said, there's more and more tools there. Uh, we're inundated, ma, somebody said recently, like, it's like a multitude of fire hoses.

They're all, it's not just one fire hose, it's a multitude of fire hoses that we're, we're dealing with. Well, I'm, I'm curious kind of where, where, like I mentioned in the beginning you've had a, a recent change in your career, so let's talk about that as we kind of finish out the episode here. What are, what are you up to now and, and what are you offering?

Craig Barbieri: Yeah, so I, so I left, uh, you and Cole a few months ago, and, um, was looking through my, looking through my career of being a, a director of design technology and, and, and basically essentially CTO level technology leader at, at a EC firms. And I was like, wow, you know what? I look a heck of a lot like a consultant,

Evan Troxel: Mm hmm.

Craig Barbieri: like a technology strategist. Um, why don't I just, why don't I try and do that for a while? And so, so, you know, I put my, put my shingle on the door and, and created a website, barbie.biz. And, um, helping firms, mid-size firms because, um, large firms have have the resources to have someone on staff for sure. But, uh, mid-size firms, uh, to help them keep up with and get the most out of the different technologies that they, uh, that they have access to and help them sort of, I guess, wade through the, uh, the artificial intelligence, you know, ocean

of, of, of tools and, and efficiencies.

I'm a huge proponent of artificial intelligence and, and what it can do for us. I'm an, I'm an optimist. I don't know what you call that. A, a a bloomer or a, you know, there, there are different, there's a bloomer, a doer, a bloomer, and a something else. Anyway, Zoomer. Zoomer, um, that, that's a. Uh, Reid, Reid Hoffman's super agency book,

if you talks about that.

Anyway,

um, so, uh, so yeah, so I'm, I'm helping firms sort of wade through, through all of that and hopefully, um,

get, uh, yeah,

get

Evan Troxel: It, it's nice that you can take this kind of wide experience that you've had in all of the categories of a EC that you were applying and take it to a broader audience. I mean, that to me is there, there's a huge value in that because a lot of firms, especially the mid-size firms like you're talking about, don't have the resources, the dedicated resources to do this kind of thing, but the competition is fierce, right?

And so anything that they can do to kind of raise their digital iq, their technology IQ is gonna be huge. So the values there, uh, I, I would encourage them to reach out to you because you have the experience of doing it.

Craig Barbieri: Thank you. Yeah.

Actually, one of the, one of the other reasons why I sort of headed down this road was because, uh, a friend, a long time friend of mine, who's, who's now a partner at a firm, asked me to come in and, and talk about ai, um, to, to their firm and the, you know, about the, about the size that I'm sort of targeting. And, uh, I was like, yeah, this makes a, makes a lot of sense for, for someone like me. So,

Evan Troxel: When people are asking you to do something, Craig, that's, that's a good sign for sure. It's a good sign. Awesome. Well, thanks for having this conversation. I think it. It puts a light on the real challenges of implementing technology in a firm and staying up to date and training staff. I know we spent a lot of time talking about training staff, but like that, where the rubber meets the road.

I mean, you can implement tools all day long, but if nobody uses 'em, who cares, right? It's just a big waste of money, uh, and time and effort. So I appreciate you doing that. So we'll put links where people can get in contact with you in the show notes for this episode. And, uh, I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today.

Craig Barbieri: Great. Thanks Evan. It's been, uh, yeah, it's been nice.

It's been good to talk.