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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: Note-Taking & Meeting Efficiency
Meetings are a necessary part of AEC firms, but they often lead to wasted time, forgotten action items, and inefficient follow-ups. This week on AI in AEC, Jeff Echols and Frank Lazaro unpack AI-powered note-taking tools that can transform how firms capture, summarize, and act on meeting insights.
From built-in AI companions in Zoom and Teams to third-party tools like Otter.ai, Fireflies, and Fathom, we explore how these platforms help firms streamline workflows, save time, and boost productivity. Whether you’re looking to improve internal collaboration, enhance client communications, or speed up reporting from site visits, AI note-takers can help you find those valuable 12 minutes a day that add up to real impact.
Key Takeaways:
- How AI note-takers work and why they matter for AEC firms
- Best tools available, from built-in options to third-party platforms
- Real-world use cases: from project meetings to field reports
- The 12-minute rule: How small time savings add up over the year
Tune in to learn how AI can help you work smarter, not harder!
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Hey, welcome back to KP Unpacked. If you're watching the video version of this, you may be going hey, that is not KP Ready, no it's not.
Speaker 1:My name is Jeff Eccles, I'm a senior advisor at KP Ready Co and today I am once again joined by Frank Lazzaro, who is one of my teammates here at KP ReadyCo, and, as we explained in episode one of this version of KP Unpacked, we're spinning off a different series here. We're starting to do this more and more and more guests to add more content that's focused on how the built environment is designed, built, developed, operated, all of the things and we're really looking at this in terms of unpacking all the trends, the technologies, all the discussions and strategies that are shaping the built environment and beyond. So what Frank and I are doing now, once a week, is we're coming to you to unpack the tools and the technologies, the trends, that are driving AEC firms. So one tip every week about some technology that AEC firms are using, might want to use. Maybe it's something that Frank sees on the horizon. We'll find out every week. One tip, frank. Thanks for joining me today. We'll find out every week. One tip, frank. Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good to be here again, excited for episode two. I think this is actually some low-hanging fruit topic. I think a lot of firms will be interested in kind of figuring out and hearing about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I agree, and you know we said in episode one, where we were introducing the idea of this podcast, that it's going to go beyond. You know, it's going to be additive, maybe, to the idea of using chat, gpt, to respond to RFP requests. This is about note-taking. You've given me a whole list here of AI note-takers. I guess maybe I'm going to call it that. If you've got a different term, it'll be good to hear that. I'm going to call it that. If you've got a different term, it'll be good to hear that. But note-taking is something that's essential in our world. So what about these AI note-takers? What are they for and why do we need them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know. It's interesting, though, is that you take a step back. I guess a few years ago, right, all of these like video conferencing tools started, people started recording, right, let's, let's record the meeting, let's record the meeting. And so the AI note taker is really just an extension of that, but to the point to where they become extremely more useful to us. You know how often do you actually go back and watch the video of the of the meeting, right, like people? Just, you know, I've I've personally never done that, but I've recorded plenty of meetings, you know, trainings and client meetings, yeah, useful kind of sort of, but not so much.
Speaker 3:These AI note takers take it to a whole nother level, because what they do is not only do they record the audio or record the video, but they also transcribe everything that's being said. Now, the important part to all of that is that once you have the written word or the typed word, the AI tool can then actually analyze the text, pull out action items, pull out summaries. It can create emails based off of those conversations. So what you end up having is that you go from just being able to record a conversation, where we were a few years ago, to actually getting a written transcript of what's being said, to where the AI tool now can have actionable things created from that copy.
Speaker 3:So to me I think it's a super useful tool. You can go from capturing your meeting notes to writing a summary, to sending that summary out in an email within five minutes of getting off a call. So it's one of those things to where it ends up being that time saver, to where you know we've all been there, right To the point, to where it's like, hey, I just got off this meeting with Jeff, let me send him a recap of what we talked about in those action steps. Phone rings, I jump on another call, I go back to back calls and next thing you know the conversation I had with Jeff on Monday. It's now Thursday and I haven't sent you that summary. Ai helps me kind of streamline that process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that's a really good point. We all know that. You know you look at your calendar and so my, my calendar is basically I've got it open over on that screen. Over there is it's basically reds and greens, that's, that's what's. I don't know why, actually, why the code. It's color coded in that way. It was just the defaults, I suppose but it's full of red and green blocks and I see that I've got a a one o'clock and a two o'clock and a three o'clock and so on and so forth, which means, like man, that's a lot of meetings back to back. You know kind of fills up my day and also there's a lot more to a meeting than just the time in the meeting, right?
Speaker 3:There's all this stuff you have to do afterwards, it's all the follow-ups, you know. I know that we talked in the first episode about that concept of you know, saving 12 minutes per day, right.
Speaker 1:So you get that? Yeah, so the concept of saving 12 minutes per day, right? Yeah, explain that again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, go through that again. So the concept of saving 12 minutes or finding 12 minutes using generative AI is that if you can find 12 minutes of saving time savings per day, you can gain an hour of efficiency per week and up to or over 40 hours per year. So when you're thinking about finding or manufacturing time, this is one of those things to where, if you used an AI note taker, you could save those times. So let's take a great example, live example of your calendar. Right, you have four or five meetings on there. If you could save five minutes for each of those meetings by capturing the meeting notes, writing a summary and sending out an email, your five meetings times five minutes, you've already saved 25 minutes of time this week. So you start thinking about how that could be very additive very quickly.
Speaker 3:So if you're constantly in these meetings now this could apply to anything. Use it during your internal proposal kickoff meeting, so you're capturing notes and you know who's responsible for what and you can send out those summaries a lot quicker. Use it for your client meetings to where they're talking to you about a change order or something along those things where you can capture the action steps, write the email and send it out. So it's all about finding those efficiencies. So, if you're looking to find those 12 minutes per day, about finding those efficiencies. So if you're looking to find those 12 minutes per day, the AI note taker is probably the easiest and fastest place to find unlimited amount of time because we seem to always be in a bunch of meetings.
Speaker 1:This is true, yeah, and I think about it too is you know, if I'm the, if I'm the leader of an engineering firm? Let's just say, and I'm sending one of my engineers to a job site meeting a construction meeting they're going to, they've got time to travel to the meeting, they've got time in the meeting, they've got time to travel back from the meeting. They've got to put together their meeting minutes. You know, respond to to any RFIs or or things, things that pop up, that popped up in that meeting. And you know, on one hand it might get a little bit debatable. It's like, okay, well, what if that's billable? And what if that is not billable? You might say, well, it's all billable, it's all applied to that, apply to that project.
Speaker 1:All right fair enough, yeah, so if you, if you're saving 12 minutes, four hours or whatever, whatever the time saving is, did you, did you save that number of of billable hours? Sure, um, does it mean that you're not billing for those hours? No, we know that's not the case, because you're going to fill the hours no matter what, right. But maybe what it did was it opened up more time for to do more impactful work in those billable hours. I think that's a way that we may not always look at it.
Speaker 3:Right, and you know, I think we talked about last time that whole concept of laundry, right, the, the. We all have laundry that we have to do, but we don't necessarily want to do it. Right, but we know that we still going to end up doing it. You know it's it's again. The laundry in the AEC space really kind of focuses on those administrative things, right, the things that aren't really billable anyway to begin with, but we just know how to. We know that we have to do those things right Writing a follow-up email, attending a proposal kickoff meeting. You know there's so many different things that you can think about, like year-end performance reviews and being able to summarize that meeting and then draft responses to performance. Those are all the things that we know that we have to do. We're being asked to do that. It's interesting, right? What's the average utilization rate in our industry? Somewhere between what?
Speaker 3:60% and 65% on average for the firm, some a little higher, some a little bit lower, but that just means that there's 35% to 40% of our time is being treated towards non-billable and a lot of it has to. Honestly, I think a lot of it falls in the meetings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you know it's in the spaces in between. And again, whether the time is billable or not billable and that's always been the case, right, there's always been an utilization rate, you know, long before AI or any sort of technology I think the question still comes back around to what are we doing with the time? How impactful is our use of that time? Billable or not? Fantastic, right, if we can make, if we can drive our utilization rate up, or if we can make our billable time or non-billable, I guess more impactful.
Speaker 3:Right? No, I agree with you 100% right. It's again going like I think the key word of what you said and I think that's an important thing is focusing on those things that are more impactful to our business, right? Fundamentally, when you think about that, you know, am I, am I focusing on the right things? Right? Because I think the expectation is is that we have to focus on everything, and what we do find is is that there's not enough time in the day sometimes to be able to do everything. So these tools can kind of help facilitate some of that. And I think that's where you know, again, it's not replacing a person or a workflow, it's just adding that tool to an existing workflow so that you just become more efficient at doing it that time on the calendar, of course.
Speaker 1:So the topic of the day is the AI note takers. What are some of the options that are out there? What are tools that firms, AEC or not, are using for note taking?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's some known ones that you know we've been around for a good bit, that have added some AI features, and there's some new ones. I think let's start with the known ones that you know we've been around for a good bit, that have added some AI features, and there's some new ones. I think let's start with the known ones. Right, if your company uses Zoom, you've probably noticed that there's a little AI thing that pops up on your Zoom calls now, right when this kind of sits in the corner, I think it looks like a star or something and it kind of blinks. It's giving you an AI summary. It's doing the things that you know, taking those notes for you. So you know, zoom's a pretty good, established tool. That's one that is incorporated in it.
Speaker 3:Teams gets a little weird. I think Teams is weird in the sense that in the base version of Teams there's not an AI function. You can record a conversation, you could do some things, but in order to get the transcription and the summary and all of those things, you need to upgrade to a Teams premium license, which includes then their version of Intelligent Recap. So, basically, it does the same thing that Teams that Zoom will do It'll transcribe the conversation. It will create a summary. It will do all of those things for you. There's an additional licensing think people need to be thinking about is some of these third-party tools.
Speaker 3:I personally use Otter, otterai, and the reason I do that because as you, jeff, you know that as an advisory company I'm dealing with clients that sometimes I'm on a Teams call, sometimes I'm on a Zoom call, sometimes I'm on a Google Meet. Otter is that third-party tool that's pretty flexible to where it kind of works with any video conferencing tool that I'm on. More importantly, there's an app for my phone and if I'm in an in-person meeting I could use it. So there's a variety of different ways to do this. Now, one use case that's very interesting and I've been talking to a firm actually in Alaska that is looking at for their field techs, where they're walking around taking notes via Otter or some other tool while they're doing an inspection of, you know, a waterway or the road or building, whatever it is.
Speaker 3:But what's really cool about Otter is there's a camera function. So while I'm talking I can hit the camera function, take a picture of a column or the riverbed or whatever it is, and then I'm basically taking those notes and I'm basically just building a report. So that client report that I get to build on the backend, that AI note taker is transcribing me visually saying what's happening around me. I could take physical photos and then export that into a report. So you think about it from a meeting perspective yeah, meetings are important, but you start thinking about it more broadly.
Speaker 3:You know that's a really fascinating feature that I can verbally talk to the AI. It writes my report as I'm talking. I could take pictures of what I'm looking at. Get talk to the AI. It writes my report as I'm talking. I could take pictures of what I'm looking at. Get back to the office I already have everything that I want to talk about some formatting, put it in a template, do whatever I need to do. It streamlines my day. So Otter's another one. But then there's, like Fireflies, fathom I think there's another one out there readai. There's a bunch of them out there. I think you just need to kind of look at the ones that are there and not only think about your AI note-taking your meetings in particular, but think about, like other use cases, like taking field notes and photos and those things. A lot of these tools can do that for you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really great point and it, you know, we talked in in the last episode about the fact that these are tools. You know how to use a hammer. Right, you have to use, you have to learn to use a hammer, believe it or not. The way that I think about this and you know, listening to you and understanding what you're saying here is how do I work, right, how do I work and how do I use? Or how do I do what I do and what tools? What's the best tool to insert here in the fill in the blank? In this case, obviously we're talking about note-taking, but but how? How do I go about that with? With a pen and a pad of paper, maybe right now? And what's the best replacement for that particular tool? The formatting and all the things I love. The I didn't know about that the camera feature on Otter.
Speaker 3:I use Otter, but I don't use it on my phone, so that's If you do it on your phone, you'll notice there's a little camera button at the bottom of the screen and if you hit it, it opens up your camera. When you take a picture, it actually inserts that photo exactly where you're talking, so it's a great feature. So when you start thinking about that right, those are pretty fascinating use cases, right. And I think to your point where you were just kind of going with is that the thing that I encourage our clients to kind of focus on when we're having these conversations is stop thinking about the tool and think about the problem you're trying to solve.
Speaker 3:Yes, once you can kind of figure out the problem, okay, this I'm, I'm I want to be able to streamline my field note-taking and be able to capture photos. Now, that may be an AI tool. It may not be an AI tool, but if you start with the problem and then kind of figure out the tools that help solve that problem, then you realize it's just fitting into your workflow and you're not reinventing the wheel, right? I think a lot of people don't like that kind of change, to where it's like I don't want you to change my process, I just want you to make my job easier, smoother, faster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really. I think that's a really great point. I know we're up.
Speaker 1:We've promised that these are short episodes, so we may have to continue this in a future episode, but I think that is a really important point. It's not necessarily about changing your process. You know what. What fits in here that assists me. You know the way and, and you know you and I have talked about this and I'm sure we'll talk about it on a future episode as well. The way that I approach any of these ai tools is how do I use this as my assistant? If this were my intern, if this were my assistant, if this were whatever, how would I interface with that that person? Um, as an extension of the way that I I already do this, so I love that, or I think about it as how do I make it an extension of me, right?
Speaker 3:Right, like, don't even think about it as a as a as a third party. It's like, how do I make it? Make it just an extension of me? And I think one other, you know key point that I want to kind of point out before we kind of wrap up this episode is that you know there are pros and cons with a lot of these tools. Some do some things, some do others. You know things you need to be aware of. Some of these things require another subscription. It's just another piece of software, right?
Speaker 3:And I think there's an underlying concern within the industry that everyone's being subscription to death. You know, I have my Revit license and I have AutoCAD license and I have an Adobe license and I have this license and this the next thing. You know they have all these licenses. You know I encourage you to kind of, you know, use the tools that your firm has. But if you can build that business case or that use case on how you can save time and money like an otter, because it's streamlining your reports, don't hesitate to try to build that case. So just know that the tools all do something slightly different and some of them do require additional expense each month, but that shouldn't be a deterrent in the sense that if it's solving a bigger problem and it's streamlining something, it may be well worth the investment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a great point and also a reminder about your 12 minute rule, right? If it saves you 12 minutes, that adds up very quickly and then if you put that up against your billable rate or something like that, then you start to get some tangible numbers on ROI versus the cost of the tool and maybe it's not worth having that subscription. Who knows, right, that's for you to decide. But we're here to give you the tips. We're here to talk about the tools. We're here to help you make more informed decisions as we start to unpack the tools, the technologies, the trends that affect the way that we do business here in the AEC world. Frank, thanks for telling us all about AI note takers. This has been fun, it's been enlightening. I know something new. I learned something new about Otter and I'm looking forward to next week and learning more tips.
Speaker 3:No, absolutely. I think next week we're going to cover off presentations. I think the next episode will focus there. So you know, be on the lookout and hope you can join us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and as I, I'm going to try to remember to remind you this every single time you listen to one of these episodes. But, first of all, thank you for listening to this. Wherever you're consuming this, let us know what you think. If you know, frank talked about Otter, he talked about Teams, he talked about Zoom's, ai Companions and Fireflies and Fathom and some others. If you have other tools that fall under the category of AI note takers, drop it in the comments wherever it is that you're consuming this. If you have something that you're wondering about, hey, would you cover this? Would you talk about this? Put that in the notes or in the comments wherever you're consuming this.
Speaker 1:This is going to be an ongoing series where we're bringing you one type of tool, one tip every week and, um, we want to bring to you the things that you want to know about. So make sure you let us know that. And, um, big thanks, big shout out to producer Ethan, because he's the one behind the scenes. That one makes us sound good, makes us sound intelligent, but also packages all of this up and gives you the links in the show notes and everything else that you need to make use of this particular episode. So for all of you out there listening, thank you Frank. Thanks again, look forward to our next episode and we'll see you all 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.