227: 'Are We Horses or Are We Coal', with Rachel Riopel
A conversation with Rachel Riopel about why digital transformation initiatives in AEC firms often fail, the importance of organizational clarity and capability, and how to bridge the gap between technology pilots and meaningful change across the entire organization.
Rachel Riopel joins the podcast to talk about why enterprise transformation keeps failing in AEC and what it actually takes to make it stick. We explore the gap between running pilots and operationalizing technology across an organization, why the industry's obsession with productivity as the primary metric is a race to the bottom, and how cybersecurity is quietly becoming one of the biggest friction points in AEC collaboration.
This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders, digital practice directors, and technology strategists who are tired of watching transformation initiatives stall out after the initial push. If you're wrestling with how to move technology from a siloed initiative to something embedded in your firm's business strategy, or if you're trying to figure out what to actually measure beyond speed, Rachel's framework for organizational readiness will give you a sharper lens for the work ahead.
Original episode page: https://trxl.co/227
Connect with the Guest
- Rachel Riopel, AIA
Organizations and Standards
- National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Digital Technology Council
- NIBS Digital Technology Council
- Why it's relevant: Rachel chairs the DTC, which evolved from the BIM Council to address the broader scope of digital technology in the built environment. She references the council's work convening owners, designers, and contractors around shared standards.
- FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program)
- FedRAMP
- Why it's relevant: Rachel identifies the FedRAMP authorization journey as a key friction point for AEC vendors trying to enable secure collaboration on federal projects. The tension between cybersecurity requirements and collaboration speed is one of the episode's central themes.
- ISO 19650 — BIM Information Management Standard
- ISO 19650 Overview
- Why it's relevant: Rachel references ISO 19650 in the context of the cybersecurity gathering she organized, where practitioners who helped write parts of the standard joined the conversation about aligning security and collaboration expectations.
Research and Reports
- McKinsey — "Perspectives on Transformation"
- McKinsey Transformation Insights
- Why it's relevant: Rachel cites the McKinsey finding that roughly 70% of digital transformations fail, a statistic she and Evan push even higher in conversation. Her argument is that this failure rate is tied to organizational health, not technology shortcomings.
- Anthropic Economic Index — AI Labor Market Impact Study
- Anthropic Labor Market Research
- Why it's relevant: Rachel and Evan reference Anthropic's spider/radar graph showing the gap between AI's theoretical capability and actual deployment across industries, with construction and architecture showing a particularly wide gap.
- Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic — "Are You Coal or Are You a Horse?"
- Summary and Analysis
- Why it's relevant: This is the article Rachel opens the episode with. The coal/horse framework asks whether AI will increase demand for human work (like coal in the steam engine era) or replace it entirely (like horses replaced by tractors). Rachel lands on the coal side but emphasizes the need to be intentional about it.
- Jevons Paradox
- Wikipedia
- Why it's relevant: The underlying economic principle behind the coal analogy. When efficiency improvements lower the cost of using a resource, total demand for that resource often increases rather than decreases. Rachel's argument is that architects should be coal, not horses, if the profession invests freed-up time in quality rather than just speed.
Previous TRXL Episodes
- 210: 'Computational Design to Business Value in AEC', with Matt Goldsberry
- Episode 210
- Why it's relevant: Matt Goldsberry, whom Rachel names in this episode as leading computational design at HDR, discusses bridging the gap between computational design work and measurable business outcomes.
- 200: 'A Framework for Digital Transformation', with Nathan Miller
- Episode 200
- Why it's relevant: Nathan Miller's framework for why digital transformations fail in AEC, directly related to the 80%+ failure rate statistic Evan cites in this conversation with Rachel.
- 135: 'Realizing the Potential', with Nathan Miller
- Episode 135
- Why it's relevant: An earlier conversation with Nathan Miller on the gap between technology's potential and its actual adoption in AEC practice, a theme that runs through this entire episode with Rachel.
About Rachel Riopel:
Rachel Riopel is an enterprise transformation executive working across the AECO industry to help organizations modernize how they deliver work at scale. With a background spanning architectural practice, operational leadership, and enterprise technology strategy, she focuses on aligning business incentives, organizational design, and digital adoption to drive measurable performance outcomes. Her work explores the structural conditions that enable meaningful transformation in complex, multi-firm environments.
