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Arc 3: The AEC Data Play | The Next AEC Tech Stack

Arc 3 of The Next AEC Tech Stack: The AEC Data Play. What's worth capturing from your project history, who should own it, and what you're signing up for when a platform sits between you and your data.

This series brought to you by
Graitec

Graitec provides AEC software, training, and expert support to help architects, engineers, and construction teams design, build, and manage projects more effectively.

Arc 3: The AEC Data Play

Every project you finish generates data your firm mostly throws away. The firms treating it as an asset are pulling ahead of the firms treating it as exhaust, and the same move creates a lock-in risk: a platform sitting between you and your own project history is very hard to remove once it's embedded. So this arc asks where the data actually lives, who owns it, and what "AI-ready" means once the marketing is stripped away.

Three episodes, working through it with the people building these tools and the people using them every day. Releasing Thursdays, October 15 through October 29.

Arc 3 presented by
Speckle

Speckle makes design data actually usable across projects, so your team can trust it, own it, act on it, and make better decisions faster.

With support from
AVAIL

AVAIL's content management system (CMS) helps architecture and engineering teams find, manage, and reuse their Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and other technical content in one place.

Episodes in this Arc

7: Someone Already Figured This Out
7: Someone Already Figured This Out
8: It's on the Server Somewhere
8: It's on the Server Somewhere
9: Whose Data Is It, Anyway?
9: Whose Data Is It, Anyway?

Theodoros Galanos
Theodoros Galanos
Generative AI Leader
Aurecon
Sasha Crotty
Sasha Crotty
VP, AEC Data
Autodesk
Randall Stevens
Randall Stevens
CEO & Founder
AVAIL
Andy Rahden
Andy Rahden
Chief Revenue Officer
Bentley Systems
Ariel Cooke-Zamora
Ariel Cooke-Zamora
Product Operations Lead
Bimbeats
Matt Wash
Matt Wash
CEO
Bimbeats
Campbell Yule
Campbell Yule
AEC Tech Enthusiast
campbellyule.com
Roderick Bates
Roderick Bates
Senior Director, Product Operations
Chaos
Chris Razzell
Chris Razzell
Chief Revenue Officer
dRofus
Aaron Vorwerk
Aaron Vorwerk
AEC Practice Leader, Architects + Owners
Egnyte
Mike Soldan
Mike Soldan
SVP, Global Technology Solutions
Egnyte
Jesper Wallgren
Jesper Wallgren
CPO & Co-Founder
Finch
Ross Wagner
Ross Wagner
Head of Industry & Product Strategy
Pirros
Marty Rozmanith
Marty Rozmanith
CTO & Co-Founder
Skema
Dimitrie Stefanescu
Dimitrie Stefanescu
CEO & Co-Founder
Speckle
Scott Reynolds
Scott Reynolds
CEO & Co-Founder
UpCodes

In their words

Moments worth reading twice, pulled straight from the tape.

“Only 20% of all the stuff that I've ever learned in the technology side of this is still relevant. … Lawyers, their case backlog almost never goes invalid.”
Marty Rozmanith
Skema
“A lawyer that's been practicing for 50 years is that much more valuable than a lawyer that's been practicing for two years. And I'm thinking, well, it should be that way for architects, but with architects, there was no real way of capturing things and reusing them like lawyers could.”
Marty Rozmanith
Skema
“There's definitely value that hasn't been captured post-delivery of those projects … what you really want is a capital resource. It's an economic and financial term.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“We get the cart in front of the horse and we think we're just going to put this tool into place and it can leverage all of our historic knowledge when we really don't have historic knowledge. We have a pile of stuff that's not well understood.”
Aaron Vorwerk
Egnyte
“For 15 years, ever since we've had digital capture of most of this stuff, everyone's been saying, that's your goldmine. That's your IP. … The issue has been being able to turn it into usable structured content and be able to do something with it.”
Mike Soldan
Egnyte
“The firms not doing anything with the data are just missing out on a valuable learning resource. It's sitting on a mountain of books that you're not reading.”
Ariel Cooke-Zamora
Bimbeats
“So you no longer need to find Joe, who's been on top of all the hospital projects, but now he's one year away from retirement.”
Dimitrie Stefanescu
Speckle
“If someone's retired at this point, you can still tap into their work and allow the team to learn from that work to understand how that work came together.”
Ross Wagner
Pirros
“We have plenty of information about what got done. What we don't have very good information about is why the decisions were made.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“How do you know what bad is if you don't ever capture bad? … Or if you're training a brand-new person, how do you show them what bad looks like?”
Sasha Crotty
Autodesk
“The thing that always comes up is, you have to get your data right. That's the mantra. … What does it even mean, get your data right? It's impossible. They are literally fighting a war they cannot win.”
Theodoros Galanos
“Essentially, you're saying, oh, I will just sit here by the exhaust and try to very quickly manufacture the right data out of what comes out. Instead, you should be saying, I need to change that engine.”
Theodoros Galanos
“You could take all 27,000 of those details, and I could give them to you, and I just throw them out on the floor. You'd go, they're worthless. The same details with now an organizational interface and metadata around them allows you to get to the one out of the 27,000 that you need is where most of the value is.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“The weekly time sheet. … There's the fictitious one that you do on a Friday afternoon when you're trying to remember what you've done versus, well, what did I actually do?”
Matt Wash
Bimbeats
“Almost like the old school library you'd have had within a corner of the architectural studio. A more modern phrase might be the democratized organizational intelligence layer.”
Chris Razzell
dRofus
“What does a small firm do? I've done six bathroom renovations or something like that. That's not a training set.”
Roderick Bates
Chaos
“It's all public information, but what most people don't realize about Google Maps is the complexity behind that very easy interface. … It's the same for us. It's spending years and years and years building the infrastructure that can digest all this code.”
Scott Reynolds
UpCodes
“Don't put 15 years of files into a cloud-based repository just for the sake of doing that. Understand what is it that you're trying to decide.”
Sasha Crotty
Autodesk
“How are you going to convince a client that you're going to build their 21st hospital better than the previous 20 hospitals that you've built if you don't have access to the data of those previous 20 hospitals?”
Dimitrie Stefanescu
Speckle
“These systems, they're going to hallucinate, and it's up to firms to, one, structure their data, and then two, define the skills that they're going to give the agents to interpret that data.”
Ariel Cooke-Zamora
Bimbeats
“I would caution any firm who is procrastinating or not starting until they know exactly how to structure it. I would say just go ahead and start structuring it because the answer is going to reveal itself as you're working and asking questions to your own data.”
Ariel Cooke-Zamora
Bimbeats
“Up to 80% of the data on that project, not data outside of that project, but data on that project, doesn't sit in those tools or systems. And so there's so much communication happening, so much other stuff that doesn't live in a project delivery platform, and that's where the decisions are made. That's where the why sits.”
Aaron Vorwerk
Egnyte
“Comparisons are easy. Why that was changed is a very different animal and is not represented in the contract deliverables at all. It's in the emails, it's in the Slack threads, the Teams chats, the digital whiteboards, beautiful places where things go to die.”
Aaron Vorwerk
Egnyte
“There's always one person at a firm that knows everything. They know where all the skeletons are in the closet. … But how do you capture that? That's tricky.”
Ross Wagner
Pirros
“There's such a lack of mentorship sometimes at a firm that's moving so fast that you just have to slow down and teach people and show what good looks like.”
Ross Wagner
Pirros
“You don't need everyone speaking the exact same language, but you need enough shared meaning for your data to move across different disciplines and life cycles.”
Andy Rahden
Bentley Systems
“Where it breaks is when you try to force a monolithic standard across every single discipline. That's when you get resistance, and that's when you start getting workarounds.”
Andy Rahden
Bentley Systems
“Garbage in, garbage out. You need to be careful around this. And to a certain extent, that stands true. But there's added nuance today. An AI agent can whiz through your inconsistencies in naming or in misclassification of parameters, and can fix those things in an instant.”
Dimitrie Stefanescu
Speckle
“There's a lot of people out there who say, "Well, our BIM's not good enough, and we really need to clean up our data so that we're ready for AI." The AI doesn't care. Your data is whatever your data is. It's a cluttered garage.”
Marty Rozmanith
Skema
“The space is king in Finch, while in almost all other software, the wall is the main element.”
Jesper Wallgren
Finch
“There is this false bill of goods maybe that was sold to everyone when it comes to BIM, and I think everyone visualized everyone in the project's going to be working in this collaborative space. One big file that's got absolutely everything in it.”
Chris Razzell
dRofus
“The best information's at the edges of the network. It's the people doing the work that actually know.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“Windows file folders were never designed to hold and capture anything except storing the file and then putting a name on a folder that gave you some small amount of contextual information to be able to know what's in that folder, and then it stops.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“A lot of the time people do things because it's fast, so we have to make using the correct standard faster.”
Sasha Crotty
Autodesk
“The benefit of me doing this slightly differently is just so much bigger than the pain of doing it slightly differently.”
Matt Wash
Bimbeats
“So you can go from the very simple, "Hey, you've just helped me do my timesheet," to now organizationally, how do we deliver our projects based on actual time rather than the fictitious timesheet?”
Matt Wash
Bimbeats
“It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be written down. We just need to document the decision, have the discussion, do the back and forths so we can come back in the future, we can reference it, or we can learn from it.”
Scott Reynolds
UpCodes
“Governance has to come first. In our space, there's some folks that are pretty laissez-faire about this, that I think there will be bites. I would bet my house there's going to be some major breaches in the next 12 to 18 months because of this stuff.”
Mike Soldan
Egnyte
“Security through obfuscation. … It felt safe, but once that content's indexed and AI can find it contextually, it's going to surface it up really fast. So this issue of messy data just becomes an even bigger problem.”
Mike Soldan
Egnyte
“Whenever you pair an agent and a simple old-fashioned database, a SQL database, it will always work.”
Theodoros Galanos
“The question is, are you being extorted? Things cost money. The question is, is there a fair exchange? And as long as the value's there, we look at it as whatever dollar you're paying us, I want you to be getting 10X that in value. That should be the ratio of the relationship.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“I have no long-term rights to your data. If you're going to put it into my platform, you ought to be able to get it back. This is why APIs start to become important.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“What is challenging to pull out of the system is the relationships, because that's the system. The system is this bigger piece, and it establishes connections between the data.”
Sasha Crotty
Autodesk
“The difficult part of software is not creation, it's maintenance.”
Sasha Crotty
Autodesk
“You can change formats on a regular basis. AI can change formats for you in a couple of days. What is really important is that you know where your data is and how it's connected between different pieces.”
Sasha Crotty
Autodesk
“I don't think people are quite aware of the future scenario that they're being lined up for. … The time to think about it is right now.”
Marty Rozmanith
Skema
“Your data is your data, full stop. … We're a partner, not the data owner, and that distinction matters.”
Andy Rahden
Bentley Systems
“You can rent or you can buy intelligence and tools, but what those systems like UpCodes doesn't have is your knowledge, and that stays unique to you. So your data, your knowledge, your decisions, all of that is private. Models don't get trained on that, which is critical.”
Scott Reynolds
UpCodes
“In this industry, data's incredibly confidential. And so we need to make sure that we have the right systems in place and the governance is in place to scale that effectively.”
Ross Wagner
Pirros
“The argument about vendor lock-in, it's taken a different turn now where your files are in the cloud. … Certain vendors are taking the view that if you want to take them out, then there's transfer costs involved. And that's holding people to ransom a little bit. … That's got nothing to do with the file format.”
Campbell Yule
“The number of hours spent on folder structures is insane. We could've changed the world instead of every firm chasing that. … Folder structure is starting to matter less because the classification and understanding of the piece of content individually is what actually matters.”
Mike Soldan
Egnyte
“You could argue that the data is more important than the physical asset at the point of handover, because over its life, that will be very expensive information to not have.”
Aaron Vorwerk
Egnyte
“If a technology partner tells you that they're AI-ready, but can't show you a complete historical record of every model version, every change, every human approval, that really becomes more of a marketing communication versus being actually AI-ready.”
Andy Rahden
Bentley Systems
“It's not about just deploying generative AI. … It's about trust, permissions, well-classified understanding of data. It's about taking this mess and making it something that's safely usable with trustworthy results.”
Aaron Vorwerk
Egnyte
“AI's programmed to answer you. It's not programmed to be truthful about it. It's programmed to give you an answer, to make you happy by giving you an answer.”
Aaron Vorwerk
Egnyte
“The most acceleration and the most ROI that we can provide with AI is on the day-to-day menial tasks. … In order to be AI-ready, you don't need much.”
Dimitrie Stefanescu
Speckle
“As long as we have the data structured correctly, we don't need to worry about developing the technology of the database. We don't need to worry about developing the technology of the LLMs because they're just going to get better and better and better.”
Matt Wash
Bimbeats
“Tool fatigue is absolutely real. … So you're not going for the next shiny thing. You're going for the thing that can deliberately target a workflow that is costing you time.”
Ariel Cooke-Zamora
Bimbeats
“There's some manual work to structure your data well, but I also think that probably in the future, the AI will structure the data very well itself.”
Jesper Wallgren
Finch
“There has to be agents that either automatically enrich the data or check it and give it to you, and you make the decisions what kind of data should be added.”
Holger Kreienbrink
Graphisoft
“You don't need to wait for that data to become a PDF and then reverse engineer data out of a PDF. … If you can get to the source, get to the source. Don't wait for the decision to be taken. Don't wait for the PDF to be exported out. Go straight to where the data and the design lives.”
Dimitrie Stefanescu
Speckle
“The BIM model is the final result of the intent, but there's no capture of what the intent was.”
Campbell Yule
“What is needed is the right way to create AEC context information at the point of attack so that a human can be successful. We never did that, so now we will do it for agents to be successful.”
Clifton Harness
TestFit
“We need to start documenting institutional knowledge. … The standards, precedents, judgment calls on your team, they rely on this every single day. So AI can't amplify what's still locked in people's file cabinets or heads.”
Andy Rahden
Bentley Systems
“This is a train that has left the building. It's not disappearing. Even if you've been in the space for 30 years, you're not going to avoid it unless you retire first.”
Mike Soldan
Egnyte
“I like to use the word play, because you should be playing with all of these new capabilities as much as you can stomach. I don't think you should have your head in the sand about what change might be afoot.”
Randall Stevens
AVAIL
“The firms that don't change their workflows as new tools evolve are the ones that are going to be overtaken by the nimble new firms that are starting today and embracing these new tools.”
Ariel Cooke-Zamora
Bimbeats
“Arm yourself with knowledge. AI is here. It's disrupting things already. You don't necessarily have to be an AI expert, but you do have to be AI savvy.”
Chris Razzell
dRofus
“This is a ship that's moving. There are other firms that are jumping on it. If we don't do this because of our own internal potential egos, then you will fall behind.”
Ross Wagner
Pirros

Arc 3 partners

A series like this doesn't happen without companies willing to sit down and answer hard questions on the record, without approval over how the answers get used. Special thanks to the partners below for backing Arc 3 and for showing up to a conversation they didn't control. Please visit and support them.

Autodesk

Autodesk makes software that helps people design, build, and operate the buildings, infrastructure, products, and experiences that shape our world.
Bentley

Bentley Systems develops infrastructure engineering software that infrastructure professionals use to design, build, and operate better, more resilient infrastructure.
Bimbeats

Bimbeats is the tool that shows you how the rest of your tech stack is working.
dRofus

For building projects worldwide, dRofus simplifies data-driven space planning and requirements management, making it the leading planning and data management solution for the global building industry.
Egnyte

Egnyte's AI-powered platform helps organizations unlock the full potential of their content, efficiently, securely, and responsibly.
Pirros

Pirros is the AI project hub that helps architecture and engineering firms find, reuse, and standardize Revit details and families across every project.
Skema

Skema turns your hard-won design knowledge into a reusable asset, so every new project builds on what you've already proven.
Speckle

Speckle makes design data actually usable across projects, so your team can trust it, own it, act on it, and make better decisions faster.
UpCodes

UpCodes is the AI-native QA/QC platform that helps architects, engineers, and contractors research, coordinate, and verify building code requirements, reducing risk and keeping projects on track.
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