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KP Unpacked
KP Unpacked explores the biggest ideas in AEC, AI, and innovation, unpacking the trends, technology, discussions, and strategies shaping the built environment and beyond.
KP Unpacked
White Out Smelled Great, But Our Contracts Need to Evolve
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The future of AEC isn’t just about adapting to AI—it’s about dominating the industry with AI-driven innovation. In this episode of KP Unpacked, KP Reddy and Jeff Echols dive into the heart of AEC transformation, unpacking how AI is fundamentally reshaping the way we design, build, and manage projects, and why old-school methods are quickly becoming obsolete.
How are industry leaders leveraging AI to their advantage? What’s holding back widespread adoption? And how can firms evolve beyond legacy processes to embrace smarter, faster ways of working? This episode delivers the hard truths about AI’s impact and why action is needed now.
They Discuss:
- Why AEC has been slow to change—and how AI is breaking the mold
- How AI enhances, not replaces, traditional construction practices
- How disruptors are stepping up and leaving legacy players behind
- The real deal on "managing risk"—and why it’s more complex than it seems
Every episode offers a dose of actionable insights and sharp perspectives to help you rethink what’s possible in AEC. Drop a comment with your thoughts, and let’s continue the conversation on how AI is flipping the script on the industry.
All right, welcome back to KP Unpacked. My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor at KP Ready Company and this is my opportunity to ask KP Ready, our CEO and founder hey, when you posted that on LinkedIn, what were you thinking? I'm joined, as always, by KP Ready. He is our CEO and founder and there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek in. And there's a lot of tongue in cheek in there because we have a lot of fun in these conversations.
Welcome to KP Unpacked
Speaker 1If you're not following KP on LinkedIn, you should be. He posts two, maybe three times a day about what he's seeing, what he's hearing, as he goes around and consults with different AEC firm leaders, as he's out on the speaking circuit, as he's writing books, as he's out on the speaking circuit, as he's writing books, as he's investing in startups that are focused on the built environment. That's what he's posting about. He's posting about the things that he sees, the things that peak his interest, the things that confuse him. Hey, why don't we do this? And all of these posts are sometimes they're meant to stir the pot, certainly, but they have a lot of insights in them. So you should be following KP. You won't be able to connect with him, probably, because he's usually maxed out on this number of connections there on LinkedIn, but KP Ready R-E-D-D-Y is who you should be following there on LinkedIn. So, hi KP, how are you?
Speaker 2Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 1It's going well. There's no one here at my house replacing all of my appliances, so, other than the dogs, it's pretty quiet around here.
Speaker 2Yeah, had to get them to pipe down. California is going all electric, so they came in and replaced my gas water heater, my gas heater, with electrical, electric based heating elements. So we'll see.
Speaker 1Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 2Learning how to use my induction stove. I'm used to a gas stove. I'm used to like kind of commercial kitchen grade appliances because I like to cook, and now I'm dealing with this cooking on a piece of glass.
Speaker 1New adventures.
AIA Contract Documents as Industry Tethers
Speaker 1In a podcast coming soon we're going to have KP demonstrating how to cook on a piece of glass. Well, it could be fun. I don't know what we're going to call that. We'll have to get with our producers to come up with a new name for that series, but KP cooking on a piece of glass sounds like an entertaining podcast. As usual.
Speaker 1You have posted on LinkedIn and garnered a good bit of reaction over AIA contract documents, so we'll start this out the way that we always do. I'll read this is a very short post. I'll read it and then you and I can unpack it together. It goes something like this Industry standards like AIA contract documents could be the single industry artifact that tethers the industry to. This is the way we've always done it. All right, so in there you have included the phrase that I think is the most dangerous phrase in our society today. This is the way we've always done it, or because this is the way we've always done it. But tell me more AIA contract documents. I've got some thoughts on this. We've talked about this before we went live, but AIA contract documents could be the single industry artifact that tethers the industry to. This is the way we've always done it.
Speaker 2Yeah, so. So if we think about you know, I like to pick on the architects, mostly because I know this will come up in our conversation and you're an architect, so we get to spar a little bit, but unfortunately you generally agree with me on all these topics, so it's not this.
Speaker 1This is true and you were holding today you were holding up the student book.
Speaker 2What's the the? Where's that book at?
Speaker 1so this is the architectural students handbook of professional practice. So I teach pro practice at the undergrad and the grad level and this is generally the industry standard textbook, if you will, for pro practice in architecture school and it's published yeah by the american institute of architects and when was it published, like when was the original published uh, the version that I have and you know I've had this for a while, but the version that I have is copyright 2016. As we're talking on Google, let's see what the most recent version is.
Speaker 2So you know, in a world of where the minute you hit print it's already old, Right, a lot of these standards, the contract they may be, served a purpose, like I remember when they were like pre printed, you like bought, like your free, and then you typed in them with the typewriter through select ivm selector typewriter um and google it. Boys and girls so many things in there. Paper ivm selector so many uh old typewriter.
Speaker 1What's that?
Speaker 2paper. Um, so when you look at that and you say, well, why did we create all these standards, right? Whether it's the AI, contract, docs or any other standard, the basic premise of everything is this is a very old industry, so a lot of old people before us before we were born, probably before those people were born came up with some standards. Probably before those people were born came up with some standards, and those best practices and ideas came from working on lots of projects and understanding hey, here's a better way to do it. And they started to go down this road of standardization. So all this kind of institutional knowledge got curated on stone tablets to be put into a book, right. And so then we took all this-.
Speaker 1This book is in fact stone for those of you who are wondering?
Speaker 2yes, so then we took these books and then we said, oh, let's make them electronic, right. So they turned into fillable PDFs. Some of it turned into software, right. In my world of civil engineering we have the green book and the blue book and this book. We have all these tables. Some of those formulas got thrown into spreadsheets early on and those spreadsheets turned into software right. So the basis of almost all software in our industry is driven by this institutional knowledge that was codified in books. Sure, Right, Some of those are great, Like some of them are physics based, right.
Speaker 1Yeah, they're physics.
Speaker 2I don't think the laws of physics have changed yet. Elon Musk is working on that, but as of right now, the laws of physics have not changed. So those tend to be very relevant. But some of the things that we did to optimize for workflows and this and that, and standardization, are probably holding us back. And I think what happens is when you look at some of these standardized docs that are not relevant anymore, people just kind of go through the motion and it doesn't change anything. They're not thinking about improving. You know, in the government world for like RFPs, right, we went from SF-254, 255. Now I think it's the SF-330. So I have to submit to the government. Here's my experience in the forms by which they've been provided right.
Speaker 2And what does it tell you? It tells you nothing tells you absolutely nothing. It's not a decision point, it's a standard, you know, um? So I think these are the type of things that kind of hold us back, because we've created forms for everything, which which made a lot of sense when you had to use a typewriter and white out to make your corrections I think you're right I mean white white house smelled great, but beyond that it wasn't really that there's a blast from the past.
Speaker 1white out smelled great to our producers out there. Let's make sure that that makes it into a quote for social media smelled great, I think you're. You know, when you're talking about those forms, the RFP, that's very poignant for me because in a past life I did a lot of brand consulting, government or maybe dot type work, which is government work. We talk about this, this constant pushback against those forms for the rfps, because those, those forms don't allow the engineering firm, right from from their point of view, to stand out, right, to differentiate themselves, nor are they a good mechanism for making good decisions right in terms of hiring the appropriate firm for this project or that project or the other project. They're great for creating checklists. So you know that maybe that's the end all and be all for standardization of these forms. One thing I think is different about the AIA contract documents is, you know we've got years and years of learning and this cuts both ways Right why there are plenty of architects out there that are not using a contract documents who suffer because they're of documents.
Forms, Standardization, and Commoditization
Speaker 1That represents, well, all parties in the agreement, as the architect. So, says the architect? Sure, um, well, it's, it's when the owners wanted to put in indemnification clauses and things like that. But, um, but you know, these, these things are iterated. They're updated every seven years or so, which means that a committee goes over these things and tweaks them Right. And what happens? Things like COVID happen, things, you know, all kinds of things happen. Covid would be a big game changer in terms of of things that might influence acts of God and whatever clauses in AIA contract documents. But what they don't catch up with and we know who's not on that committee the people that are not on those committees are people that are looking at innovation. They're thinking about different ways that things could be designed, built, delivered, operated, et cetera. All the different sections, all the different agreement types that are in the contract documents. So are they relevant? Maybe they're relevant. Are they irrelevant? No, they're not irrelevant, but they're definitely not pushing us forward in terms of evolving the business of the built environment.
Speaker 2So let me play back what I heard right a little bit, which, by the way, I don't think they're going to be able to get your AIA ticket this year. Keep talking this way. You're blacklisted ticket this year. To keep talking this way Get blacklisted.
Speaker 1I would love to get a letter from the.
Speaker 2AIA, saying I'm blacklisted from attending any AIA events.
Speaker 1That'd be great, I'd frame it, I'll sneak in the back door.
Speaker 2It'd be all over LinkedIn. So there's a couple of things from there. Right, this industry says we're tired of being treated like a commodity. Fill out this form, the number one signal you're going to get treated like a commodity.
Speaker 2Fill out this form the number one signal you're going to get treated as a commodity is if it's a form. So I hate that clients are commoditizing us, but here's the form that we filled out. So there's pattern thinking there around, like I don't want to be a commodity, but I want everything to fit into a form. The second piece that is fascinating fit into a form. The second piece that is fascinating. The owner is our client. We are going to tell them how they can buy from us. So go into an AT&T store and when they show you like, hey, here's how we sell self-service to you, no, no, no, that's not what. I don't want to do it that way, I want to do it this way. I want you to charge me based on the quality of my call, not the quantity of my calls. See how that conversation goes.
Speaker 2I think that's this weird thing. It's this very similar pattern around the differences at AT&T. They can dictate these things. It's their business, you can choose it or you can go down the street. But when the industry writ large says here's how we're going to do business, and the owner is now being told like this is how I want to do business, this is the only way you can do business. You know it's borderline collusion in a way, right Like here's how we're going to tell people how they can do business with us, which I think is just fascinating. You know the blame, the client that you know we've talked about, blame, the client, scenarios, but I don't think that there's an incentive to do something different that aligns with the owner's difference. And if we say every project is different, we can say those things, but if we're going to default to some forms and contracts that apply to all projects, then every project isn't that different per se, and I'm not just picking on.
Speaker 2AIA contract documents. There's just plenty of standardized documents which made a lot of sense at a point in time pre-technology, pre-ai, pre-everything that maybe it's time to re-look at some of those things.
Speaker 1Yeah, now to be clear, a lot of those selection forms like your civil engineering brethren that have to fill out forms to be selected for a department transportation project or even to be on the preferred list, right? That's, I guess, where it starts. Those forms are coming from the owner, right? They're coming from the client. They're not coming from the AEC side, the architecture or the engineering side, nor are they part of the AIA contract documents. So if anybody out there is listening and you're unfamiliar, it's like there's we are blurring the lines a little bit between some of the documents that we're talking about.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think it is interesting. Architects will, or engineers or whoever will, say this is the way that we want to work with owners, and I was actually having this conversation. I met a friend for breakfast this morning and we were talking about the difference between. Maybe that's not the right way to explain it, but we were talking about hey, we've got subject matter experts, we've got subject matter experts in our firm. That's fantastic. How does that expertise mesh with what clients want and what clients see as value, right? So in our incubator so for those of you that are not familiar we have a startup incubator and I guess it's two Mondays a month KP and I sit down with our startup founders and we work through their issues and we focus heavily on customer discovery.
Speaker 1How many firms in the AEC world are doing customer discovery right Now? That's that's not specifically related to contract documents. But if we were to take that idea and go, what about customer discovery as it relates to AI? Contract documents, which you know are much to to a celebration, are essentially the industry standard documents. A lot of those departments of transportation that, um, that have their forms would likely uh, push, push the AIA contract documents. Um, a lot of colleges, universities, health, health, uh uh networks will insist on AIA contract documents as their, their agreement basis. But but when those committees get together to discuss the next version whatever the next version of AI contract documents is, it seems like it ought to be coming out in a couple of years from now they're not going through a customer discovery process before doing that. They're looking at, you know, theoretical protections, but they're not looking at how how can professionals serve clients better? That's, that's nowhere in the equation.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Which I think is partially to your point.
Speaker 2Yeah, how often do architects get sued? Fairly often Do they.
Speaker 1Yeah, like do they get judgments against themly often.
Speaker 2Do they, yeah? Do they get judgments against them, or do they just fix their work?
Speaker 1Most of it is settled outside. That's why you have your professional insurance and in my experience, most of the this is kind of a strange little tangent to this discussion, but most of the time when professionals get into litigation or mediation, it's when they abandon the documents.
Liability Myths vs. Reality
Speaker 1There's so many people that use AI contract documents that don't actually know what the documents say, they don't actually follow the documents, and I think that that's an oddity of this as well. Right, hey, we've got these documents. They've been the standard, like you said, since typewriters or before, since stone tablets. But but many aren't actually educated, don't actually know what those, those documents say. Now you may be at a firm that has a specialist in your firm, or maybe even in-house counsel that that deals with with these documents, but my, my guess is that most architects, engineers, contractors, back in a past life, when I was doing design, build, development, and you know, I'm working with a subcontractor one day and so here's the agreement, and he looks at it and it's one of the standard AIA contract documents. There were more.
Speaker 1I had this figure in my head at one point there were more pages in that thing that he had to sign than he was going to get paid, like if you were to sign $100 to each one of those pages. He wasn't getting paid that much to do his work, but he had to sign this, you know, like this 32-page document. And he looks at it and he goes this is absurd. He lays it on the hood of his pickup truck, flips to the back and signs it Doesn't read any of it, right, right. So there's that reality of it, right, right, right. So there's, there's that reality of it, but there's, there's a good bit of of of. I don't think there are that many cases that go to court, but there's a good bit of dispute that's handled.
Speaker 2It gets resolved Right. I just think, you know, I hear about all these liabilities and liabilities and it feels like a lot of the small liabilities right, like oh, we didn't you know, we we missed something on a set of drawings somehow kind of gets figured out between the architect and the contractor, it's like incorporated in a change order or what like you know, like that, somebody pays for it I mean, no one pays for everything, but you know, generally speaking, but it doesn't feel like, you know, when people say, oh, contractors, take on so much liability.
Speaker 2I haven't seen a lot of contractors go out of business.
Speaker 2I'm sure they're, I'm sure they exist, you know, and of course I deal with a different line of contractors and I'm sure there's some smaller contractors that mess up, but any contractor of size, right that that you know name brands.
Speaker 2I've never heard of like one of these big company, big firms, big construction companies going out of business. They all seem to be doing okay, they're, you know, I mean sure Then maybe they have to like settle some stuff here and there or whatever. Sure, they have their levels of insurance and and and all that, but it doesn't feel like as much as people, I would say as much as people talk about liability in our industry. I don't feel like I see much evidence of detrimental liability in terms of how many architects lost their license last year, how many, like, how many architecture firms got in, construction companies and engineering firms like went out of business last year. And I was talking to some private equity people that are, you know, buying these firms and, um, you know, like, because they're buying liability too, and I was like how often do you not do a deal because there's too much liability on the books?
Speaker 2now, never, we still do the deal. The only liability we care about is receivables liability. A lot of the professional liability is kind of maybe over, maybe a little bit exaggerated no, maybe it is.
Speaker 1I mean, maybe it's driven by you know, we're not going to make any friends today maybe it's driven by by the insurance industry. I mean, I would agree, I, most of it. Yes, in a way, the owner always the owner always pays. But you know, I I've seen instances over the course of my career in firms where, you know, the architect ends up ponying up, maybe it's, maybe it's the deductible for their insurance, or maybe it's $20,000 or something to to pay for moving a wall, or you know whatever. You know, whatever those things are, but you know that that liability, that that that legendary liability, is generally catastrophic things right, we actually we, we had a uh an example here in Indianapolis.
Speaker 1It was just a catastrophic thing. It was a parking garage collapse. That's real right. But that's pretty rare.
Speaker 2I've always heard most of this stuff has to do with leaky buildings. It's mostly water-related.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, If I had to guess it right.
Speaker 2The majority of stuff tends to be water-related right Like oh, it leaks.
Speaker 1Yeah, if I had to guess. The majority of stuff tends to be water related, right, like, oh, at least yeah. Yeah, if I had to guess that would be a huge percentage.
Speaker 2And then when you look, at those it's like was it designed poorly, was it installed incorrectly, or is it the product? Was it the curtain wall manufacturer's fault? It was manufactured. There's so many people that they just kind of does this right. And, of course, yeah, a jury of your peers doesn't understand physics, right? If only they were our peers and you end up with a bunch of people on it.
Speaker 2So it's like, okay, we're not going to jury because, like nobody will understand this at all right right, uh, and if, if anything, they, you know they might blame the architect because they're too fancy, they're the fanciest people in the room they'll probably blame the architect. I mean that poor contractor, he's just one of us, like he couldn't have done it wrong, like it's always trying to go after the little guy you know, like who knows what happens in a jury trial?
Speaker 1yeah, I don't, I don't know how many of them. So I was involved years ago. I was involved um. For those that are not aware, if you have like a um, accessibility Americans, american Disability Act, ada um, if you have an ADA violation you're sued by the United States of America. So got into a situation um like that years ago and, as it turns out, the um how much can I say? It was a. It was a multi-family project and many of the multi-family developers have their own in-house construction managers etc. That that are. You know, they're kind of charged with with constructability and things like that and somebody in-house yeah, was learning in house was learning you know, was learning Revit, I guess it was.
Speaker 1And they, they actually changed one of our drawings. They changed a certain detail that produced an ADA violation and we were eventually dismissed from the case. It was, it was originally. It was brought against us, we were dismissed from it. Of course they name everybody.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Everybody in the county gets named, yeah, but the developer, the multifamily developer, did pay a hefty fine. Developer did pay a hefty um, hefty fine, um. And then what's interesting in those types of cases is once, once they find one, they go back and look at all of your, all of your, by the way, there are lawyers that just specialize in this have some friends in multi-family development.
Speaker 2There are lawyers that all they do is like look at. I mean, because they know multi-family is a huge violator, because even if it's designed, even if it's designed correctly, it's all stick built stuff. It's not like the most talented contractors in the world, but it's just for them to like violate, it's not you know. Oh, let's just move it this way a little bit like they do with all this on the fly stuff like let's just move it this way um, so that was like a whole growth industry for the legal profession, but the good news is like.
Speaker 2There's nobody at the ADA right now because they've all been dozed out. Not to worry about that anymore.
Speaker 1So for all of you that have wanted to develop multifamily projects, now is the time.
Speaker 1Go now Go quickly. You can ignore all the threshold details out there, but the idea of liability, I mean, is it? They want to do something with a business model and often architect is developer business model. So I get tapped and I've got a student this year and he's doing a fantastic job. I love, I love what he's doing, I love the way he's demonstrating what he's learning and everything else.
Speaker 1And one of the things that's things that has struck me this semester is as we have all these like mid-semester reviews is he has other advisors that are focused on the design side and those advisors have said out loud that they do not understand. They do not understand the architect as developer business model, so they're not going to comment on that. And my point is this is one of the problems when you don't understand your client, when you don't understand the owner and what matters to the owner and how the owner's pro forma, or even what a pro forma is, there's a problem right, how do you serve clients that you don't have any idea how they operate or how they derive value or anything like that?
Architect as Developer Model
Speaker 1And so in working with this particular student on this project, we go through these things and one of the biggest things that is misunderstood or not understood or not even realized about that business model is that the reason people shy away from it is that they don't understand risk. They don't understand and we're talking financial risk at this point Maybe not the same necessarily as AIA contract documents, but the documents cover that. They don't understand the mitigation of risk.
Speaker 2But I do think that when people talk about AI is going to disrupt architecture and yeah, maybe, but I think what AI is really going to do is move a lot of architects going into the architect developer business, because when you're an architect for a fee, then it's about production of drawings and time and all that. Now, if I'm an architect, as a developer, nobody's got timesheets. There's no timesheets. It's like get it done Right, get it done. Here's the economics of it and we need to make X right. You know, risk is Y, we need to make X and let's run. So I think that is a. If you think about AI on its own, like, well, we were going to build less hours, or what like that efficiency. Efficiency to what benefit? Efficiency to the current business model? That doesn't. That's really not that helpful. Efficiency to be in the architect as developer business a hundred percent yeah, efficiency to the current business model is commoditization, right, right, that's.
Speaker 1You know, I have this conversation a lot with with different, different architects. Again, that, that being my background, you know there's a, there's an architect that for years, he and I have been talking about this and I'm like you, you have to get away from the hourly business model. He, he's one that he charges everything hourly and you've got to get away from that. Well, I, you know, I, I can't get away from that and and it's like, well, here's the thing, if you're charging hourly, then you're penalized for efficiency, you're penalized for doing your job better, because if it, you know, if you charge $150 an hour, $200 an hour, $400 an hour, and it used to take you 10 hours, and now suddenly you can do it in eight hours, you got better and you lost, so that that efficiency to the current business model is actually a detriment to the business model so what you know, I know you like teach some stuff, but is there a defined model, like I'm an architecture firm and I want to be a developer architect as a developer.
Speaker 2Like, is there a playbook? Is there a model? Is it more like people are just kind of figuring it out?
Speaker 1There are a couple of people out there that are sort of the thought leaders in the space. One, famously, is Jonathan Siegel, out in San Diego, but my dad worked for John Portman, so that was one of those.
Speaker 1Right right, john Portman is one, Siegel is one. James Petty is in New York. Siegel and James Petty both have books. One is architect and developer, the other is architect as developer and I can never remember which one is which, but they have kind of created the playbooks. Jonathan is two decades down the road. Further than James Petty is just experience and age and everything he is currently. I haven't talked to him in a in about a year now, but last we talked he was getting ready to self-finance.
Speaker 1Okay, this is an architect right he's getting ready to self-finance a 100 and some odd million dollar project yeah and he's done that. Yeah, I think it's an interesting topic you should have him on.
Speaker 2You should have one. If you can get him on the pod, you should have him no, we can definitely get him on the pod yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's it.
Speaker 2I mean, I, I think in a world like we've gone to a whole nother, I think we could probably edit this pod into three pods, um, but I do think in the world of like, what does AI mean for the profession? I think this is what AI means for the profession. Right, like it means. Like, what is the net new business model? Everybody's like oh, should we do lump sum now? It's like you're still in the same construct right.
Speaker 2But if you can tell me I can use AI to design a building in the 10th of the time, then you should be a developer, right? Because one of the biggest areas and oh, by the way, oh, I can use AI to adapt and change as the project needs change faster, right, I'm not having to redraw everything or whatever. I mean, I think like AI could be the number one catalyst for moving into that model.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's interesting. What AI has to mean is net new right and those examples that you use. Those are interesting because, still thinking about the developer model, one of, if not the biggest line item, cost liability items. For the developers, interest carry Right, and so speed is everything Architect wants to know why. Why is this developer keep pushing the schedule so much? Well, because every day is costing them money. So if you do it faster, it's, it's more margin, or maybe it's the difference between between profitability and not.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. So that's a really good point. If you can, then maybe you do move into that model. And I think the big point is what's the new value proposition? It's not the documents. You've got the AIA contract documents. You know, that's one type of document that we've been talking about, um, though those are protecting things that that are evolving faster than they ever have, and the documents are already there, are only being updated about every seven years or so. I'd have to fact check that. If you're listening to this, I think that's accurate, but it may not be. So they're certainly not keeping up with changes in emerging technology.
Speaker 2I don't know.
Speaker 1But then you also have value propositions, which are back to what? One of the things that you originally said right, what? What is it for your owner? What is it for your client? And this is this is something I try to teach all the time is the thing that you design for your client is not really the important thing. That's, that's not the value proposition. The value proposition is what does this thing that you're designing for your client allow them to do? Sell pizzas, showcase art, run data centers, whatever the project is.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's kind of funny. I had a conversation this morning with somebody and they're like, because pickleball is very popular with old people and apparently young. Now it's kind of funny. I had a conversation this morning with somebody and they're like, you know, because pickleball is very popular with old people and apparently young now. It's not actually a sport, it's an activity.
Speaker 1However, they were talking about.
Speaker 2I have yet to see a pickle on the court, by the way not that I'm an athlete, I'm just saying in general, um, but I do think, like we're having this conversation like, oh yeah, this drainage problem and redesign a pickle court, I was like they're not buying a pickleball court, right. They're buying the availability to play as much pickleball as possible, right? And if every time it rains you can't use the pickleball court, yeah that's a great example right that.
Speaker 2It's not about the court. It's about the life I want to have. I want to play as much pickleball as possible. Not me, don't quote me, don't take that quote out of context, um, but it's one of those things you put that into a social media post.
Speaker 2Right, kate loves pickleball um it's, but it's really more about that, right, it's really more about the quality of life, and you just need to put that into a social media post. Kate P loves pickleball it's, but it's really more about that, right? It's really more about the quality of life and availability, and if you want us to raise the pickleball court a foot and a half, it increases your quality of life, if that's what you want to do. It's not about the court. It's not about the court. You know it's about the, about play time. So I do think it's it's.
The True Value Proposition
Speaker 1It's a lot about that. Yeah, I, I like that example because the value proposition transcends the thing that you're designing pickleball court museum data center, whatever it is. The value proposition is what does this allow to happen? And sometimes it's a quality of life thing, and sometimes it's a. It's a purely economic. Hey, we can charge you know x for whatever. Or we have more, more uptime, or, or we can be open longer, or we have more seats, or whatever it is. The value proposition transcends the thing that you're designing 100%. Yeah, all right, so we have two quotes We've solved everything.
Speaker 1We solved everything and we have two great social media quotes White out smelled really good and KP loves pickleball. Those are your takeaways from our conversation today, but let me go back. Let me reset your post for those of you that are listening to this in the future. It's from about March 19th, I guess 2025. It goes like this Industry standards like AIA contract documents could be the single industry artifact that tethers the industry to. This is the way we've always done it. I actually agree with that. I think KP was wanting an argument, but he's not really going to get an argument from me on that.
Speaker 2By the way, jeff had a great idea for our next mastermind group. You should have. You should have t-shirts t-shirts to say that's the way you've always done it, with like a slash through it.
Speaker 1Okay, we could do that. Coming soon, our next one day mastermind event, our next in-person quarterly in-person mastermind event, is in Atlanta on May 20th.
Speaker 2Yep.
Speaker 1That's something. If you're listening to this and you would like to know more about what we're talking about, you'd like to dig deeper into things that we talk about here on the podcast? You'd like to connect with innovation leaders? We have two. Currently, as we're speaking, we have two innovation leaders mastermind groups, and so the folks in those groups are generally director of innovation, chief innovation officer, other folks with those types of roles. We have a construction technology leader leaders mastermind group. We have a early and mid-career mastermind group soon to come, our owners group and our sustainability group and our ai on the keyboards group. All those are rolling out soon. If you'd like to connect with the type of people that participate in those discussions in those groups, you should come to atlanta. The link, the registration link, will be in the comments here, wherever you're seeing this YouTube, or in the show notes.
Speaker 2I'll tell you like our marketing team does a great job. Sometimes I feel like they beat around the bush right. They're not as direct as I can. They keep trying to get my ethos. But here's my belief on our mastermind groups. I mean we've been doing it for almost a year and a half now it's evolved. For almost a year and a half now it's evolved. I think if you are in the AAC industry and you are ambitious, not joining our group is career limiting behavior. I mean that is where it's going to. I mean, when I have a call later with CEO of an ENR 50 company and he's like asking like hey, where are all the talented people hanging out? Like what should I be doing? I mean it's becoming like one of those things. It's starting to become one of those things I really do think. I mean if you're not ambitious, then you can unfollow me on LinkedIn, but if you are ambitious and want to drive change in this industry, I think it's literally like I mean I'm just seeing the fruits of our labor.
Mastermind Groups and Driving Industry Change
Speaker 2I mean, because getting these things going, as you know, and I'll tell you, it's very, very hard, you know, and I think the way I'm seeing the collaboration and how people are working together and how they're, you know, adopting things faster and mitigating risk together, and it's become a very interesting group. And I think, you know, unless you lack ambition, then uh, I don't know, I don't know how else to stress it, can't stress it enough. And now that we have, now that we have owners in the mix, and the owners are telling me, like I only want, I mean I only want to meet with the most innovative firms, like you know, uh, and I think we're we haven't formally announced that people can, they'll listen. It's's a little Easter egg here, like I think we're doing an industry demo day, because all these owners, these 50 owners, have come to me and said we never get yeah, we never get to talk to AE firms outside of the procurement process.
Speaker 2And once we're in the procurement process, we don't get to. We have to follow our process. We don't get to have certain conversations and all that. So it's going to be a really interesting opportunity for some of these AEC firms that are doing highly innovative things to pitch some of the biggest owners in the world.
Speaker 1And I don't think that's ever been done.
Speaker 2And so, once again, I think we're doing the right stuff. It just doesn't seem like we're getting through to people necessarily. No, they'd rather go to some dumb event where there's a bunch of people on stage schlepping whatever thing that they're stopping, you know, or go be a power user at a user conference. This is not a user conference, by the way it is not.
Speaker 1It is not. I mean, you know I'm bullish for tips or tricks get on youtube.
Speaker 2I don't know why you go to a conference. Yeah, um, you know I'm bullish, looking for tips or tricks get on YouTube.
Speaker 1I don't even know why you go to a conference. Yeah, you know I'm bullish on mastermind groups. I mean, when I first presented the idea probably two years ago now, since we've been running this for a year and a half I mean this is a mastermind group. What is a mastermind group? It's a group of people that, to the person, all have growth mindset, all show up to give and take away and, like you said, they're learning together, they're developing together, they're figuring out how to be more innovative together and they, they, the group, think, amplifies and accelerates the growth. And I don't I don't know that, I know a better way to describe it. You know, you think about whatever it is that you're struggling with. There's somebody else probably multiple somebody else's in that mastermind group. They're struggling with the same thing and you all get together and you have that aha moment together and you all overcome and accelerate your growth together. And I mean that's that's what happens in these groups.
Speaker 2And I think it's different too. If you want to become a better architect, this is not the place you're from Plenty of places to go. If you're an architect, you want to be a better architect. If you want to be a better business person, if you want to, like, understand the complexities of technology, if you want to be a better business person, if you want to understand the complexities of technology, if you want to kind of use that part of your brain that you're maybe not get, that's not getting developed at your firm or through the alphabet soup of organizations, I really think it's. I mean, it's really that. I mean I get the feedback from. Folks are like man, I don't know where I would have even learned this Right, do they learn this at Harvard and MBA school? Or like no, I don't think they do there either. Like you, you just learn things that just are kind of not written down anywhere.
Speaker 1Yeah yeah. If you want to be learn how to become a better architect, reach out to me. Connect with me on LinkedIn and I'll point you to any number of leadership development programs that are out there. I've started some, so I can definitely help you with that.
Speaker 1That's not what this is.
Speaker 1It's funny you say that because you and I I don't know three, four, five months ago something like that we were talking about we launched the early and mid-career mastermind group, and part of the impetus for that was my background is architecture and I don't do architecture. Your background is civil engineering and you don't do civil engineering, and we're not really interested in teaching people to be a better architect or a better civil engineer. We're interested in supporting the people that want to do something else, that look up to the innovation leaders or the construction tech leaders, or or want to be on the front edge of innovation for the built environment, and that's what that group is for. And and I love that group because we've got you know, on any, any given week, you know we'll have 20 or more people showing up and they ask fantastic questions of our, our guest mentors, and, and you know we'll have 20 or more people showing up and they ask fantastic questions of our, our guest mentors, and and you know they're.
Speaker 1Well, my background is is structural engineering, but what I do is this and I love it. I love that introduction because it's it's your introduction and it's my introduction, and it's the introduction that really um. If we look at the change makers, it's the same introduction that all the change makers have yeah I love it.
Speaker 1All right, fun conversation today. Again, everything that we've talked about that deserves a link will be in the, in the show notes, wherever it is that you're consuming this video or audio as you listen to this. Post your comments, post your questions, post your recommendations for other things for us to talk about, other resources, and and our production team will make sure that we, our production team, will make sure that we gather up all of those comments and incorporate them in the future. So, kp, thanks for joining me today. All right, thanks, jeff, and for all of you out there that are listening or watching, wherever you are, thanks for joining us. We'll be back again. Can you hear that?
Speaker 2Yeah, you can hear your dog, yeah, no-transcript.