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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
AI in AEC: Series Intro
The future of AEC isn't just about AI replacing jobs—it's about AI enhancing the way we design, build, and operate. In this new series on KP Unpacked, Jeff Echols and Frank Lazaro break down the real impact of AI in the built environment—beyond just ChatGPT.
How are industry leaders actually using AI? What tools are solving real-world problems? And how can firms cut through the noise to find the right tech for them? This series is all about unpacking the trends, strategies, and innovations that are reshaping the industry—one practical tip at a time.
🔹 What’s beyond ChatGPT? AI-powered note-taking, sales automation, workflow optimization, and more
🔹 How AEC firms can reclaim time and boost efficiency—finding 12 minutes a day to save 10,000 hours a year
🔹 Breaking down silos: Why AI isn’t a magic fix, but a strategic tool for smarter work
Each episode delivers a quick, actionable insight—so drop a comment with the AI tools you’re curious about, and we’ll unpack them next.
📌 Want to explore AI solutions for your firm? Take our free innovation assessment at kpreadyco.com/dial.
🎉 Special Offer for KP Unpacked Listeners: Get 55% off your ticket to the 9th Annual AEC Summit on October 29th at the Diverge Innovation Center in Phoenix! Click the link below and use promo code UNPACKED55 at checkout.
Don't miss this opportunity to connect with top minds in AEC and beyond. Tickets are limited—act fast!
Hey, welcome back to KP Unpacked. This show started as my opportunity to sit down with KP Reddy, who's the CEO and the founder of KP ReddyCo, and say hey, kp, I was reading what you posted on LinkedIn there and I was wondering what were you thinking when you posted that? As you're looking at the screen now, if you're, if you're, I'm making some assumptions. Right, if you're looking, if you're watching the video version of this, you're looking at the screen, going, yeah, jeff, that's not, that's not KP. No, it's not KP. We have been evolving this show over the over the months and adding more and more features, more and more different versions of the show, and I'm excited about this new iteration that we're kicking off today. So, if we've never met before, my name is Jeff Eccles, I'm Senior Advisor at KP ReadyCo and today I am joined by Frank Lazzaro, who is also part of the KP ReadyCo team.
Speaker 1:So, frank, welcome. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 3:It's great to be here, it's exciting, you know trying to kick off this new series and continue to expand our opportunities to provide great content to our listeners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and so this started out as KP Unpacked obviously unpacking KP's LinkedIn post but where we're going with this is it's really a general unpacking of the trends, the technologies, the discussions, the strategies that are shaping the built environment and beyond. I like to look at it in terms of how we design, how we build the materials that go into the buildings, how we develop, how owners see things and how buildings are operated. We encompass everything in the built environment and I'm excited to do this show with you to talk specifically about the technology that I think and you correct me if I'm wrong right, because the impetus comes from the experiences that you and KP have had out there talking to some of the AEC leaders, but I think mainly we're going to talk about the technologies that leaders across the AEC side of the equation are interested in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I mean, you're absolutely right. So, being on the speaking circuit and you know, kind of ran into KP about two years ago. We kept crossing paths and it was around, mostly around innovation, and then AI kind of intertwined itself into that. People are less wanting to know about the underlying AI technologies and now they want more of the what's the hat Like, who's using what and how do I solve this problem? And so now they've gotten into it's this pivot, you see around I understand the technology now and I understand its importance, but now I'm trying to figure out how do I integrate that into my firm, how do I fix this particular problem? And I'm hoping that that this particular show here where we address, you know, certain topics each, each week around how, how other firms and how, even internally, how we're solving some of those problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so so we're moving beyond using chat to respond to a, to an RFP request, to you know, I suppose the sky's the limit, but you know how do I who's using, what who's using, or what are the tools that are available, how are those being implemented, things like that right, yeah, so it's interesting.
Speaker 3:So if I look at my content that I was presenting, say, 12 months ago right, it was all around ChatGPT. It was all around like we could use chat GPT to do this and chat GPT to do that Mostly proposals, a lot of marketing, some analysis, data analysis and report building. And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with chat. I use chat GPT every day. It's a vital tool that I use. But there's so many other tools out there, some purpose-built, some that are new, and it's interesting.
Speaker 3:The last presentation that I gave recently at a client workshop that KP and I presented up in Greenville, south Carolina you know it was funny. I started my whole talk around. I'm going to talk about AI that has nothing to do with chat GPT and everyone gets excited about that. They're like, oh great, what else is out there? And I think what you'll find is the biggest problem is is that there are so many tools and so many features and so many things that are coming out so fast. It's hard for anyone to kind of keep up with what's the latest tool, what's the thing that I need to pay attention to? So what we're hoping to do and this is the conversation that KP and I had when we were sitting in the car for two hours driving back to Atlanta was how do we come up with something where we can just tell people like, hey, you know, let's get through the noise, let's focus on just telling these firms like the things that they should be paying attention to and help filter out some of that for them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, as you say, that it strikes me, you know I can. I can say that a little bit tongue in cheek, right? This isn't about using chat to respond to RFP request, but it's also not to take away from that, right? It's additive. You know what? What are the things? What are the other things that are out there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's interesting as, again, like it's not diminishing chat, cause it does have its role. But you, you know, I think in future episodes you're going to hear us kind of talk about AI note takers. Right, the simplifying note taking is is taking is a key, key thing. Creating presentations, using AI to help with interview prep there are so many different things that you can do with it that are beyond, say, like the chat GPTs of the world that I think really kind of get the firms kind of focused on how they can improve efficiencies within there, because and you know this, you've been in the industry for a while what's that one metric that most firms think about? Everyday leaders, right Utilization, right?
Speaker 3:You can't manufacture new hours out of the blue right. We're always focused on utilization utilization that's where this generative AI tools really start coming in Like you start. I have this concept. I wrote a book around finding 12 minutes using generative AI. Tools really start coming in Like you start. I have this concept.
Speaker 3:I wrote a book around finding 12 minutes using generative AI and the whole concept of the book is is that if you can find 12 minutes of efficiencies per day, that means you can find one hour efficiency per week or over 40 hours of efficiencies in a year.
Speaker 3:Now think about that across a firm right. If you were a 200 person AE firm, if everyone in your firm saved 12 minutes per day, you know you would basically generate the equivalent of five full-time employees worth of hours per year, or 10,000 hours. Now multiply that times your average billable rate and then you realize that there's some significant ROI by doing some basic things and I'm hoping that through this series here that we can just kind of help you guys think about. Maybe there's a better tool to help me kind of solve to find those 12 minutes, to get that extra hour per week. So I think there's a lot of opportunity and again, we just want to help firms cut through the noise and say, hey, this is what we see and we're going with it, and just make sure that that people are aware of it, so that maybe they can find those efficiencies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point, and you know the thing that you didn't jump to. You know when I keep my ear to the ground to figure out what people are thinking in terms of innovation and technology in the AEC world. There's often, you know, one of the topics that will pop up is oh, ai is going to replace architects, or AI is?
Speaker 1:going to replace engineers or whatever. And you know people will will jump to some generative design oh, it's going to do my structural calculations, or it's going to lay out this parking lot or this, uh, this healthcare facility or whatever.
Speaker 3:And there are certainly tools that address some of those types of issues, but you didn't jump to those tools, right, and what you were just describing you talked about and not that you won't, but you talked about all the way through sales and marketing and project managers. You know I like to use this analogy of laundry Right, Everyone has to do laundry, but no one really wants to do it, Right? It just kind of sits there and it piles up. Well, the laundry in the AEC space.
Speaker 3:Thank you for the reminder, by the way, yeah, I know, right, great, but the laundry within the AEC space is administrative work. We all have to do all this administrative work and we know that we have to do it, but no one really wants to do it right. No one wants to have to write you know an email that captures you know all of the twos out of a meeting. Nobody really wants to kind of sit into a proposal kickoff meeting and, like I'm being pulled from billable work, to kind of talk about a proposal. Nobody really wants to do that.
Speaker 3:So what I think about this is like using those tools to help you do the laundry versus taking away from your creativity, your technical expertise. I see it more as these tools on the front end are kind of like the main course, the main dinner, and then all those specialty tools that are going to help you design buildings faster and be more efficient in terms of creating those technical reports. That's kind of more of the dessert, right? So when you add those two components together, we should be, as an industry, becoming way more efficient to be able to do higher quality outputs and work but also take care of that laundry that we don't really want to focus on.
Speaker 1:You know, as you're saying that, it strikes me right. It doesn't matter what your role is. You could have the most narrowly defined role right In the we. We know we're better for worse and if you listen to this podcast, you've heard KP and I talk about the dangers of silos, of the siloed approach, and the need to break down silos in order to innovate. But we know that there's lots of siloing in the AEC industry and beyond.
Speaker 1:But no matter how narrowly your role is defined, I know that you're still wearing a lot of hat and there's no way that you are going to convince me that you are really, really good at all of those hats, right? There's no way you're going to convince me that everything that you have to do as a project manager or even as a design architect or the head of HR or whatever your role is. So why not listen and join us every week as Frank presents a new tip, a new technology tip that will help you take one of those things off your plate, that will help you do that laundry? That, yeah, can you do it? Yes, do you do it every week or every day? Or you know whatever's going on in your house?
Speaker 1:yeah, yes, yes sometimes the whites turn pink because you're just not that great at separating laundry or whatever whatever the proper analogy is.
Speaker 3:But but I think.
Speaker 1:I think that's the point here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and again, I you know what's a good example that pops out out of all of this for me is the concept of a seller doer, right? So you have these technical people that are being put into sales roles that and that's not a natural inclination for them. Tools like this can take someone and really upskill them, to help them be a better seller doer, so to speak. And you know this is just as well as I do. You know the vast majority of the AAC firms out there tend to be on the smaller side, sub 200 employees, so you are going to wear multiple hats anyway. So those small and mid-sized firms are really going to benefit from these types of tools because it helps them amplify the amount of work that they can output.
Speaker 3:Not everybody has a 1600 person firm where they have a 20 person marketing department and a 15 person HR department. Those things you know, those they do exist, but those tend to be a little bit more rare, right, you have one or two people in human in in, in human resources. You have two or three people in marketing. So how do you amplify those, those, those, those skill sets and allow people to do those things? And I think that's where tools like this really, the things that we're going to cover are going to help identify some of those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also think you know one of the knocks that I hear sometimes as well is uh, yeah, but the the output you know, the output from chat or whatever is is not not that great. It's not that high level. Well, maybe not. One question is how effectively are you actually using these tools? Maybe we can up the training on those tools and get a better output. But I think to your point too is can we upskill those people and can we take them in those?
Speaker 1:I love the seller doer analogy because you're exactly right. Right, you take a design engineer or whoever and say, okay, you're going to go out and you're going to sell these services. What are you talking about? I have trained teams on that in the past. I know the resistance to that Like, okay, I'm not good at this, I don't like to do this. Well, here's some tools that can make you better at that. Here's some tools that, if utilized properly and take some of that load, can make you better at it. You know there's different ways of looking at it, there's different use cases, obviously, but at the end of the day, it's tools. Right, we're talking about tools.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and if it saves you time, right. So if you're wasting time having to chase some of these things down or figure things out, that's wasted time that could be spent on something else, that's billable, right. So if you can think about, you know, can I craft a salesy type email very quickly using some type of generative AI tool, so I don't have to overly think about it. And I think the you know there's the I think people are starting to overcome the fear that it creates bad outputs. I think people are starting to overcome the fear that it creates bad outputs.
Speaker 3:I think people are starting to learn that they need to kind of learn how to use those tools and I think that's a paradigm shift that I think you're seeing in the industry is that marketing had very little training dollars leading up to this, and most of the training dollars at most firms really kind of went to the technical roles, right, the PM boot camp type training and those kinds of things. Now what you're starting to see is firms are like well, now, now we have all these tools, we have to train people on how to use them, because that's when you're going to, that's when you're going to avoid getting the tool to make mistakes, not getting the outputs that you want. Right, Just giving someone an AI tool. They could waste more time trying to figure it out. So firms are going to have to think about their investment. You know, across the board when it comes to training, sure, sure.
Speaker 1:You know, another analogy might be. You know, if we think about simple tools, if you've ever seen anybody learn to drive a nail with a hammer right, sounds simple. How many did they? Did they bend over? How many dimples do they have in the, in the stud? You know?
Speaker 3:how many, how many? How many shot across the room?
Speaker 1:How many fingers did they smash? There's, there's lots of. It's just a hammer and a nail, but there's, there's something more to it.
Speaker 3:But you but. But underneath that analogy too, the way AI is, is that that's the odd. That's the pneumatic nail gun right, so it's, you're getting more precision on it. Still requires a competent human being to run it right.
Speaker 1:So when you?
Speaker 3:start thinking about where AI fits into it. It's not replacing that contractor or that that foreperson that's working with the hammer. It's just giving him a better tool to do his job faster, more efficiently. But it still requires skill and training to use the tool effectively.
Speaker 1:Right right, that's actually a good tie-in to the conversation KP and I just recorded. Sometimes you can't swing a hammer in that space, but you can fit the nailer in there and you can drive a nail with the nailer.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the add-on to that one, too, is that you also got to remember too, is that you know, not every, not every nail needs a hammer or what's the whatever, what's the analogy to where?
Speaker 3:uh, to a, to a hammer, everything's a nail right, so and and I say that is is that ai is not the, the, this magical tool to solve all problems. Right, it doesn't do replacement, it doesn't do these things. What it does do is that, if you look at your complete workflow, it has its role and its purpose in certain areas of that, and that means that humans still need to be involved and your processes still need to be kind of designed the way they are. So, again, ai is not a hammer looking for a nail or thinking everything's a nail. It's purpose-built. I could put it in here. It doesn't make sense here, so you've got to be selective and, again, start with the problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'm hoping, like with this series here you know, we can identify a problem, then kind of talk about the tools and kind of hopefully get people oriented in a way to kind of think about how it can be integrated in their workflows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to this series. I mean, this is like I said at the beginning, this is our time where we can unpack trends and technologies that are affecting the way that we're designing, we're building and we're operating in the built environment.
Speaker 1:So one thing I would do is encourage everybody as you listen to these episodes or watch these episodes. These are going to be short, as we're recording right now. We're at about the 18-minute mark. We're shooting for around 15 minutes and we're going to bring to you one tip every week.
Speaker 1:What I encourage you to do as you listen to this, wherever it is that you're consuming this, in the comments, producer Ethan is going to have show notes. He's going to have references to the things that we talk about In the comments. Tell us what you think and then also tell us what you'd like to hear us talk about. If there's something, some tool that you've heard of that you don't know about, that you want to know more about, drop that in a comment wherever it is that you're consuming this, and we'll keep an eye out for that and maybe we add it as one of the future shows. So we're going to bring you one tip every week. It's going to be unpacking the tools, the technologies, the trends that are driving the AEC industry forward, and I'm really looking forward to this. I don't know that we really have any other resources like this in the industry. So, Frank, I'm looking forward to going on this journey with you. Same here, Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:All right, Thanks everybody. Thank you for listening to the inaugural episode with Frank and I here in this latest version of KP Unpacked. Kp's not here. I don't. I was looking for him. I don't see him anywhere.
Speaker 3:It's just going to be Frank and I. He has a better beard than I have. That's all right.
Speaker 1:Sometimes yeah, sometimes that's a fair point. All right, Thanks everybody. We'll be back again next week with episode number two, as it were, and we'll bring you the first tip on tools and technology and trends in AEC. Frank Lazzaro, Jeff Eccles, we'll see you next week, Thanks everybody.
Speaker 2:Want to explore the AI tools we covered today or need help integrating AI at your firm? Reach out at kpreadyco slash contact. Not sure where to start? Take our free innovation assessment at kpreadyco slash dial that's kpreadyco slash d-i-a-l to find the best AI opportunities for your firm.