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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
Innovation or Pay-to-Play? The AEC Awards Debate
In this episode of KP Unpacked—the number one podcast in AEC—Jeff Echols and KP Reddy go deep on awards, ethics, and why it’s time to rethink how innovation gets recognized in the built environment.
KP unpacks the launch of the 2025 AEC Innovators Award in collaboration with Zweig Group, and doesn’t hold back on the industry's pay-to-play culture. From shady award models to what makes innovation actually count, this episode lays out why the best ideas don’t always get the spotlight—and how that’s about to change.
Inside this episode:
- Why most industry awards don’t mean anything—and what KP’s doing about it
- How to actually evaluate innovation in AEC (hint: it’s not about buying Revit)
- The real reason RFP processes fail to recognize new thinking
- What the AEC Innovators Award will reward—and what won’t make the cut
- A call for submissions that actually matter to owners, teams, and impact
This isn’t just another award. It’s a challenge to the industry to do better—and a chance to show what real progress looks like.
Ignite what's next
We're launching something new... It’s called Catalyst.
It’s a space for AEC forward-thinkers are reimagining what’s next. This is where the top minds in the industry are sharing ideas, leading change, and pushing the future of AEC forward.
Sounds like you? Join the waitlist at https://kpreddy.co/
Check out one of our Catalyst conversation starters, AEC Needs More High-Agency Thinkers
Hope to see you there!
Welcome back to KP Unpacked. This is where the biggest ideas in AEC, ai and innovation all collide in one podcast. It's powered by KP ReadyCo and this is where we break down the trends, the technology, the discussions and the strategies that are shaping the built environment and beyond. My name is Jeff Echols, I'm the Executive Director of Catalyst here at KP ReadyCo and, as the name might imply, I am joined today by our CEO and founder, kp Ready. Hi KP, hey Jeff. How's it going? It's going good. We're going to have a good conversation today about awards, so that'll be fun. We'll dig into several different angles here, I know, and there's a lot going on. We're in.
Speaker 2:Just what a couple of days, I guess we're headed to.
Speaker 1:As we record this, at least, we're headed to Atlanta for our next one-day mastermind event.
Speaker 2:Yeah, also our first integrated owners forum. Great, so that'll owners forum. Correct, so that'll be fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's a combined event where we'll have owners, we'll have mastermind members, we'll have people that want to be mastermind members building product manufacturers, architecture, engineering, construction obviously all across the built environment, as we like to say around here. So it's going to be a great event Tuesday May 20th, which, by the time you hear this, it'll already be passed.
Speaker 2:It's kind of funny. I was at the ENR Future Tech Conference and ran into a bunch of new people. I never actually went into any sessions, I just like got stuck at the front door talking to people and then the whole day went by. Um, which is always how events are right. It's it's rarely the listening to the people on stage, it's really more the conversations in the, in the corridors and in the open areas. Someone that was trying to do some of our podcast listeners so many, by the way very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:KP.
Speaker 2:I love your podcast and I just get shy. I'm okay, like this, catch me one-on-one and give me compliments and I'm just going to shrink up to about yay, high, I love your LinkedIn posts.
Speaker 1:I'm like, okay, bye, please don't make eye contact so here here's my, my shout out to all of our listeners please seek out kp, go up to him one-on-one and compliment him and see what happens it's, you know, 54 years of trauma.
Speaker 2:I don't take compliments.
Speaker 1:You can add to KP's trauma.
Speaker 2:But someone said like hey, what is it you do? And it's I'm like describing it to like they keep up with you know the link, like all the stuff that we do. And um, they were. They said I need to change my know. I think on my website it says you know something about changing the future or something. And he said that the my tagline should be unionizing change for the aec environment unionizing and like.
Speaker 2:I think his point was like you know the stuff, you talk about the stuff you. You know your, your thing, your your thoughts, like they're progressive and now people are starting to like listen to them and they want to buy into it, but they also feel alone. So it's like you're saying the things that we're all thinking, that once you say them, we're allowed to agree with you and like be part of it, but we can't be the first people to say it. So I think his description of like that I'm unionizing change, I think was a bit of an homage to our industry, right?
Speaker 2:But we should call you know, like our, our mastermind, it's really like union meetings.
Speaker 1:KP ready union organizer.
Speaker 2:My father-in-law would be so proud.
Speaker 1:Can we get him on as a guest next week?
Speaker 2:Maybe I mean he's fantastic, but you know he grew up in Detroit.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In the automotive industry. So, in his mind like unions are good and I'm like are they good all the time, like in some cases?
Speaker 2:yes, In other cases, like you know, it's just these blanket statements of you know they're good, oh yeah, like anything else, has it? Has it uh, has the cycle completed? Yeah, but it was interesting uh, and this. This will probably segue into kind of some of what we want to talk about today. But I posted on linkedin and I said, look, you know the unr, unr, future tech conference, that, um, they do a good job. I mean, we know how hard it is to do events. We quote, unquote aren't in the events business, but we try really hard.
Speaker 1:We try really hard to be in, but not in.
Speaker 2:You might get a box of Dunkin' Donuts munchkins as a snack and you have to unbox it yourself. But like, yeah, we're not, we're not great're not great at events, but we're trying to get better. Like it's just not our core competency. We don't do it for a living per se, but so you know, so I know in our they do a fantastic job. Right, it's great venue. Um. I will say most of their speakers, from what I could tell, were not pay play.
Speaker 2:I like their a lot of their um panels and all it was sponsored by someone, but nobody from that someone was on the panel yeah which I think is maybe okay, like I don't know, maybe I'll, maybe I'd buy that, like so, um, you know, versus maybe a built worlds, where it's sponsored by, and the panel and the speaker is this, you know so, which is much more pay for play. But you know, when you're in the events business, you know that's just how it is Right. Like how do you pay for all the coffee, all the food and these venues, hotel, venue, hotel, av, which is like a racket, right? So after all that, like it takes money to run these things, right? So you have, you know, so it makes sense. Like enr is like in a business they're not a charitable organization, but I think they did a pretty good job of like you can pay to be part of it, but that doesn't mean you get to say whatever you want to yeah so I posted on linkedin.
Speaker 2:I said my only thing, you know. I said like I've seen the attendees become a little bit more junior At that particular event. At a lot of events, but specifically that event, I've seen it at Built Worlds, I've seen it at you know a lot of these events, right? Even you know Autodesk University, which has always been more of a junior event because it's about training. Right Back in the day it was CAD training.
Speaker 1:Now it's.
Speaker 2:BIM training so you know CEOs aren't getting trained up on but that's dead now. Yeah, that's dead. Now no one cares about that.
Speaker 2:It is dead. So I think you know know my point in the in the comment on the post around these events and everything was just that. Um, I think part of it is the. The bad news was I didn't I don't feel like I met any people that I would have wanted to meet, so to speak. I met the people I already know, kind of didn't meet any ceos type of thing which is important to me from where I met in my life. But it's also that's the bad news. The good news is the reason we have so many junior people at these conferences is the maturity of the business, right. So you know, this year will be nine years for summit. My first two years of summit, of my summit, were all CEOs right.
Speaker 2:So you have Thorne Tomasetti, walter P I mean, it was all who's who of CEOs and it was because we were going to talk about innovation and how innovation was going to shape our industry. Then, a few years later, they all hired innovation people, chief innovation officers. So the next following years, instead of Tom Scarrangelo from Thornton Tomasetti coming, he sent Rob Otani, which Rob's the CTO Fantastic guy, super smart, love to have him. Nothing against Rob, but it was like, okay, well, I have people now that are focused on this Right. So it was the maturity Like now I have someone dedicated towards doing innovation. Then the following years, these people that are the innovation leaders now have teams.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So they're kind of saying, like you know and once again, egos, not not trashing anyone exactly but hey, if you want me to come speak, I'm happy to come or I can send my team. So that's the good news, right? The good news is it used to be only CEOs cared about innovation. Then they hired people to full-time care about innovation and those people have built teams. So it's not necessarily a bad thing that there were a lot of more junior people there.
Speaker 1:It might just be the maturity of the industry, which is which is a good thing yeah, yeah and and that makes a lot of sense, I mean, it tracks with everything that we know. Yesterday I recorded a podcast episode which you know, as you're listening to, this maybe has already come out. I don't. I don't have my uh the publication, uh document open in front of me to see when everything is going to be posted.
Speaker 2:We have no idea. They're running Monte Carlo simulations on when our content gets posted. I'm spinning a wheel.
Speaker 1:Yesterday I recorded an episode with Alan Montpierre at PAE, who's the chief innovation officer there. He's one of our mastermind members. He's in the innovation leaders mastermind group. He's actually one of our OGs. He's he actually I still right here on my desk. I have his card. He might be.
Speaker 1:When I announced 2023 at Summit in Atlanta, he may have been the very first person that came up and said, hey, I want in. And so he and I had a fantastic conversation yesterday as we're recording this podcast episode, and we you know a lot of that time that we spent talking. We talked about developing cultures of innovation and we talked about innovation teams right, and the fact that you know, if you look at our different mastermind groups the innovation leaders, the construction tech leaders and beyond I think I often shy away from speaking in absolutes, but I think everybody that is in those mastermind groups who's focused on innovation now has a team. Now, some of those are very small teams and some of those are larger teams. Some of those are new teams, some of those are more mature teams.
Speaker 1:But to what you're saying, if you look at the membership of our mastermind groups, we have the leaders of innovation across the AEC. You look at the firms that are there, that are representative. This is it right. These are the people that are innovating. And so to the organization I believe I might be wrong, but to the organization, every one of them is building out, or has built out, or continues to build out, an innovation team, and that really, that really makes a lot of a lot of sense. And it makes sense to what you're saying too, because it's um, and a lot of them are sending their teams to our early and mid-career mastermind group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which which is also I'll tell you, like dude, like next Tuesday, if a bomb goes off in Atlanta, it'll set the AC industry's innovation path back like 20 years.
Speaker 1:Because they're all there. Yeah, you know, I'm just going to say to our production team.
Speaker 2:Please edit KB.
Speaker 1:Just so you know, because Brown guys aren't allowed to talk about bombs. I am fully aware that we're being listened to now, not just in this recording. But you know, big brother Just want to make it clear that was not a threat, that was a joke. Yeah that when I see the black helicopters outside your window, there I'm going to know.
Speaker 2:I have a whole nother story about that, different podcast.
Speaker 1:All right, Well, part two. Stay tuned for part two.
Speaker 2:But you know, so it's interesting right, like I think it's good news, right, that the industry is evolving, that you actually have teams and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:And you know I'll take half the credit Because I do. You know my challenging behavior like oh, you're serious about innovation. That's weird, you're doing a part time, five hours a week, building to a job code in your system. Yes, you're very committed to innovation, and so then you know they put that person on full time. I go. So you're the chief innovation officer, managing a team of zero. That's commitment. So you know, yeah, hopefully a team of zero.
Speaker 1:That's commitment. So you know, yeah, hopefully, hopefully, I'm a catalyst, you're a catalyst. Speaking of catalyst, right before we came here and hit record, I was in catalyst, which is our online community, um, ap, readyco, um to uh to register. I was in in Catalyst doing If you're listening to this, you may already know this but every week I go live in Catalyst and do my KP content recap. I try to pack in everything that we have published over the week in 10 minutes or less. I think I was pretty successful this time. It's 8 to 10 minutes and it covers the podcast. It covers our YouTube shorts and our YouTube longs. Is that what they're actually called? I don't even know. Like YouTube videos Regular.
Speaker 2:YouTube regular.
Speaker 1:You know me I need longs.
Speaker 1:Otherwise the sleeves are too short. Um, the um and our sub stack and LinkedIn and, uh, the newsletter every week. So, um, over there in in Catalyst, and that that's where Catalyst is becoming the hub of everything. Everything that we do our, our mastermind groups, our um integrated owners forum, our advisory, our, our discussions about this, that and the other. Right, our research team is publishing articles there and then, of course, I recap that every Friday around the middle of the day.
Speaker 1:You know there's a lot going on around here, so we haven't really hit sort of a regular schedule to that yet, but you can find that over there on Catalyst around here. So, uh, we haven't really hit sort of a regular schedule to that yet, but, um, um, but you can find that over there on catalyst and you know what's. What's going to happen in in next week's recap is we'll talk about AEC awards because we'll unpack, um, we'll unpack that post and this, this program that we're rolling out, the partnership that we're rolling out as well. If you've just joined us and you've made it this far, if you've made it 15 minutes in, you have everyone screaming from the room because of people making threats or anything like that. Please don't call anybody. It's a joke.
Speaker 2:Yes, please do not bag and tag me please don't call anybody we just joke ready.
Speaker 1:Next week he'll be in.
Speaker 1:Atlanta. If you're new to this KP and I come here every week to unpack one of his linkedin posts and there's always some back and forth I'll I'll, uh, send him a slack message thursday afternoon or friday morning. Say, okay, what are we going to talk about this week? And we, we look at all of the things that he posts. So if you're not following him on linkedin, you should be. You can't connect with him because he's just like that. So if you're not following him on LinkedIn, you should be. You can't connect with him because he's just like that. But if you're not following him on LinkedIn, you should Just go to KP letter, kp and then ready R-E-D-D-Y.
Speaker 1:And KP posts several times a day about going to ENR 500 and all of the different places, all of his different travels, all of the work that he's doing. The team is doing his insights from all these conversations and all these travels and we pick one to discuss every week, we pick one to unpack every week, and so this week we're going to talk about the AEC Innovators Awards and awards in general. You've already teed this up with the idea of pay to play. We'll go there. For those of you sitting on the edge of your seat. That may have heard opinions shared before we're going to go there, yeah.
Speaker 2:You might want to put it from one and a half X back down to one.
Speaker 1:Does anybody I wondered yeah, you might want to put it from one and a half X down back down to one, or does anybody? I wondered. I listened to a lot of things on one and a half or 1.75.
Speaker 2:I'm just specifically for Roe. I know he listens. He listens to things on like three X I think. Well so this is for him to see if he's paying attention to the pod.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we should talk really slowly. Hey, ro, you should slow it down. Um, so, I, I consume everything via audio. I listen to books on audio, podcasts, et cetera. Um, I, I don't like to sit and read anything and I listen to one and a half x a lot and I was wondering the other day. So I was listening to something. I was having trouble keeping up to it. It's like whoa, this is, this is a little deeper than I can handle at one five or one seven five or something like that. So I'm gonna slow it down. And I looked and it the the settings will go below one. Yeah, and I thought my gosh, who's talking so fast that somebody slows it down to slower than their normal speed? That that boggles my mind.
Speaker 2:I didn't even I didn't even think about, didn't realize that that we need to get row on like 0.5 not to call anyone out, but on um slack today, one of the looms on air table training? Yeah, on the air train the air table. Like best practices from our data team?
Speaker 1:yeah, um, I could have slowed that down it was very fast, yeah, well, okay, that's a good example.
Speaker 2:It's a very good example, so um just as you need to um, so there's a couple things right. So awards are it's not just for our industry, it's for every industry, right? Right, and different awards have different systems, right. So the jd power award very famous award right, everybody knows about that. My understanding of their when I looked into it years ago it might have changed is they provide the award in a very pure way. Right, the team assesses the cars, the midsize SUVs, whatever the category is right, they have lots of categories, but whatever the category is right, they assess it and then they give people an award. They don't charge for that. There's no application fee. There's none of that. It's done in a very purist, ethical way.
Speaker 2:Now, their business model is if you're a car manufacturer and you want to say you received the JD Power Award, they charge for that. So every time it flashes on tv, they're getting paid. Every time you use it in a brochure, they get paid. I mean, it's like, for instance, it's not like here's your logo, give us a million dollars and you can use it all you want. It's like, every time you print something with winner of the 2025 jd power award, you pay. Every time it shows up on tv, you pay them and that's their business up on TV, you pay them and that's their business model, which is fine. So their view is like I mean, if you don't want to tell anyone that you won, that's cool right, that's sneaky no, which is actually kind of fine, you know, as a consumer.
Speaker 2:that's great. They're paying to say that they won it, but they didn't pay to receive it, right. So I think there is some ethics in there. In their business model, the Gartner folks have their cool Gartner quadrant and a cool startup. I think they operate under a similar model, but I think you're more likely to get in the mix. Shortlisted for evaluation. I think're more likely to get in the mix, right, shortlisted for evaluation, I think, if you have them on retainer, probably. So it's a little less like straightforward. So one of the coolest things about being vocal and being a complainer I complain about everything, right Is that sometimes people call you and say hey, you know what I agree with you. That's BS. Like I agree with you, right. So sometimes people do that. So Chad over at Zweig Group, I was talking about awards. They do a lot of awards.
Speaker 1:They do hot clients, CEOs of Zweig.
Speaker 2:They do a lot of awards. And I was complaining and he was like, yeah, like, I hear you Like, that's not a good business model to pay for play. So you know, when I look at you know startups saying, hey, I'm in the top 50 list of whoever we know who like, why, like, how did you get there? Like, oh, we sponsored. Okay, well, that's not exactly ethics, you know, like, fine. Or you win some other Mavericks award or whatever, right, like this it's, if you're not writing a check, you're not winning the award, right. So there's a lot of those I'm not picking. I mean, you guys have probably figured out who I'm talking about, but there's plenty of those pay for play awards, right. And so I was. And so Chad was like look, you know, we don't do that. We and part of it is, I think they've been around for a while. Their whole thing is like hey, we do this as they have been.
Speaker 2:They've been around for a while and so I was kind of complaining. It was like, hey, why don't we do an innovation award? And I'm like, as long as it's not pay to play, as long as it's, and as long as we're clear about how we evaluate people. So part of it is if you can't share to me transparently what the process is, you know how things are shortlisted and what the voting mechanism and what are the the rubric of criteria, right, then I think you're full of it. Then it's just a bunch of guys sitting around having having a bourbon saying, hey, I like that guy, let's you know. It becomes. It becomes a popularity contest, right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And that's not the goal. Right, the goal is to manage things with the level of integrity. So I was complaining about it and Chad was like, let's do this together. We have the infrastructure to keep it above board. People know we're above board and so yeah, so we decided to do that together. Frank Lozaro is actually running it kind of day to day, but I think it's going to be super interesting.
Speaker 2:But the reason I wanted to do it right In other words, like, does everyone need another award? Do we need more awards it really came from the work we're doing at IOF. So IOF is our integrated owners forum, and so I was talking to these owners about how do AEC firms incorporate innovation into their pitch, into their selection process, and they kind of admitted. They said here's the problem, once we get into RFP mode, if there is not a scoring mechanism in our evaluation. Back to ethics. Right, here are the 15 areas that we're going to score people on as a committee, as a selection committee Maybe.
Speaker 2:Sometimes there's a box called innovation and it's like high, medium and low. We don't actually know anything. But once we're in the procurement cycle, we really have to stick to our procurement methodology and kind of the ethics around that, you know. So our goal is to get to compare apples to apples, not apples to grapefruits, to oranges, to kiwi fruit, like that's. That's not the business right. The business model is I need to get everybody to apples to apples.
Speaker 2:So in fact, sometimes they might add addendum information and we say no, no, no, you can't give us that. We didn't ask for that. So the submittals have to be very generic in many ways, and so I was like well, how do you know what firms are doing? How do you know Maybe they're approaching things differently and they're like we have no way of knowing, we really don't. And so then I go walk over to my ac friends, like, yeah, it's a problem. Like everybody throws bim and a picture of a bim and a picture of lidar and a couple drones and it's our one innovation slide in our entire presentation, but we never get to talk about how we're doing it differently, like how we're doing it differently, like how we're actually maybe making an impact, and so that's problematic because everybody has that slide, and if you don't have that slide, call Frank Lazzari, he'll show you how AI can make that slide for you.
Speaker 1:I think that's what he and I are recording an episode about today.
Speaker 2:So I think that's part of what we're trying to achieve. I think that's what I got excited about is creating a forum for AAC firms to kind of peacock a little bit. Show off, right, show off. Tell us all the stuff you're working on, me and my team will evaluate it. For you know, if you tell me like hey, we were very innovative, we bought Revit, you're probably not going to make it right. There's a bar here.
Speaker 2:I'm also not opposed to giving no one an award. If everybody sucks, I'm just not giving out an award. Just what's going to happen, right? So I'm not attached to someone. This isn't a five-year-old tee ball. Everyone does not get an award. There are winners and there are losers. That is how that works.
Speaker 2:I some people just that's mean, that's harsh, it's like no, that's life. However, so that's how we're approaching and I'm really excited about it because I do want to see, I think, giving you know, because we deal with all of the our innovation folks in our mastermind groups and what's one of the number one things we talk about at least once a month is storytelling, brand communication, and they never have a chance. We tell them they need to do it, but then they never have the opportunity to show us. So I'm pretty excited about that part. I think for our a lot of the people we know that we know will be submitting it's a really good opportunity to like strut your stuff and really be able to go deep on what you're working on yeah, we actually talked about that.
Speaker 1:You and I recorded on that um a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago maybe, um, communication being everything right. Um, yeah, the, the, the selection process, that is that is curious to me. You know the with with the checklist that they have, right, and the desire to compare apples to apples and we understand that Right, and not everybody is saddled by that, but many, especially as you get into larger organizations.
Speaker 1:They are, but I would also question whether or not and that's not really the topic that we're on question whether or not they're actually getting you know if their processes is leading to success or not. Right, Right, so, and, and, as you know, like my PR firm, they've been with me for a while.
Speaker 2:They pay me all the time. Now they so um and and, as you know, like my PR firm, they've been with me for a while. They pay me all the time. Now they finally know like, hey, kp, these guys want to give you an award. And I'm like, how much, right? That's my first question. It's like when people like, oh, they want, they want you to be on their podcast, I'm like how much do we charge for people to be on our podcast?
Speaker 2:Um no, we don't yeah, we should like run an auction for slots. I mean, we're the number one podcast in ac, so there's that. However, like we should, we should run do a charity auction. How about that?
Speaker 1:for a seat.
Speaker 2:We'll do a charity auction if you want to be on our podcast? Uh, we'll auction it off. Maybe we'll do that at our q3 mastermind meeting. We could do that in half moon bay um we'll do that at our Q3 mastermind meeting. We could do that. Half moon Bay, we can do that. We'll auction it off for some like uh, and they're like AC cares. There's a bunch of like AC nonprofits. Sure Bit it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you can come on for one episode. That's your tryout. It's your tryout, and if you're good we'll keep you, but you gotta pay for every episode you gotta pay.
Speaker 2:Pay a charity. I think you'll skip behind that, but you know it's pervasive. I used to be on the board of the American Diabetes Association and they told me like hey, we want to give you an award, it's father of the year award.
Speaker 1:I was like did you have kids at the time?
Speaker 2:yeah, that would have been awkward. Maybe they knew something I didn't know, um so, but it was really. It's really weird. And then they tell you that they're like well, you know, I'm like really, so what's that about? They're like oh, so what you do is we give you the award and you have to buy a table, and a table is ten thousand dollars yeah I was like that doesn't mean anything to me, so it shouldn't mean anything else.
Speaker 2:So I think not that there's anything wrong with awards and recognition. Recognizing people is fantastic, right. We all know other than compensation is number two to recognition in terms of employee satisfaction. So I think there's. I'm not saying that recognition is a bad thing. I just think the ethics like it has to mean something. If it doesn't mean anything, then nobody wants it, Nobody wants the award.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, let me ask you this a little bit of a twist, maybe. What do you hope that? So? This is 2025. There'll be a 2025 AEC Innovators Award. They'll celebrate excellence in architecture, engineering, construction, innovation. What do you hope after the 2025, the 2026, 2027, 2028, whatever, as this award goes on into the future? What do you hope to accomplish by by giving this award, by creating this program and giving this award?
Speaker 2:I wanted to drive recognition to the best of the best and it also be a rubric for you know, if a CEO of XYZ company says, hey, head of innovation, tell you what, there's a $50,000 bonus if you and your team win kp's award next year. Right, because you know we're not just going to promote it within. You know, I want to promote the winners, right. You know, um, so we're going to promote it to all our owner community. Like, hey, these are the winners, right, so you know, your customers, as an aec firm, you're going to get recognized by us, right, and they're going to. And our owners know us well enough, we're not messing around, we're not going to like, you know, I'm not easily bought off, you know. I mean, I mean, maybe if you give me a 400 million dollar jet or a million dollar plane, I might what would you call it?
Speaker 1:what would you call it if someone gave you a 400 million dollar plane? What would you name it? Hmm, what would you?
Speaker 2:call it. If someone gave you a $400 million plane, what would you name it? Hmm, air Force One. No, sorry.
Speaker 1:Air Force, none Air Force, none Space Force.
Speaker 2:AP Gosh. So much editing is going into this podcast. It's not.
Speaker 1:It's not. It's going out like this, it's going out hot. It's going out like this, it's going out hot.
Speaker 2:But I mean, I think over time, if we build credibility and efficacy around the award and it means something I would love for the CEO of a firm say like hey, we need to get it this year. Guys.
Speaker 2:No-transcript, that maybe had something better right it will be I really think I just wanted to be this bar that the industry recognizes, to really recognize people that are that are doing amazing stuff, because there are people doing amazing things and it's at small firms and large firms and it's you know, it's not every. You know it's not just the big firms that are doing innovative things. In fact, they're probably they might be doing less innovative things because they don't have to. So I really, you know, and you know I've talked to some people that planning on, or planning on submitting, I think it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be tough on us in terms of, like scoring these and all that, but I think, ultimately, like, that's what I'd like it to be. Like, you know, musicians work very hard, you know, and they say like, oh, oh, I don't want to be recognized, which is a lie. They all want a grammy, everybody wants a grammy. I mean, if you're a musician and you don't, want to grab you're just lying.
Speaker 2:You're just lying m&m doesn't want a grammy you remember when metallica lost to jetro toll yes, under heavy metal, and it's like a guy a band whose core instrument is a flute won the heavy metal category and I remember when that happened I was like jets are tall, like are they still around? Like what is going on?
Speaker 1:for those of you that don't know this and this this picture is still around. Actually it's on your linkedin profile, if anybody wants to see it. But kp with his metallica t-shirt that's become famous, infamous as his headshot. After metallica lost to jethro tull, kp burned all of his metallica t-shirts and he had to get new ones you know the best for those of you listening.
Speaker 2:If you really want to like get my attention, send me a Jethro Tull shirt. I'd probably. If you send me a Jethro Tull shirt, I will wear it on the next podcast.
Speaker 1:If you send KP. There are three ways to get on this podcast. One is if you win the AEC Innovators Award, then you will certainly be a guest on this podcast. One is if you win the ace aec innovators award, then you will. You will certainly be a guest on this podcast. Like kp said, we want to promote you if, if you win if you win this award, as kp mentioned a few minutes ago, you can pay. We'll auction it off at our q3 one day mastermind event. So that's a way that you could get onto this podcast.
Speaker 2:Proceeds will go to charity.
Speaker 1:Proceeds will go to charity. That's fine, but that'll get you here. The third way that you can do it is if you send KP a Jethro Tull t-shirt, I will bump KP from the episode and you can take his place. That would be so. That would be so awesome.
Speaker 2:And I will for one month. I will change my profile pic on LinkedIn to me wearing my Jethro Tull shirt.
Speaker 1:Someone. Please, for the love of God, find, find, make it, because I'm not sure they exist. Make a jethro tall t-shirt and send it to kp and document that put it on linkedin. Hey, I sent kp because I I have my doubts. I think kp is going to get like 20 or 30 jethro tall t-shirts in the mail and he's going to deny that he got all of them because he's not going to want to let people on the podcast, just email.
Speaker 2:Jeff and ask for a mailing address. I don't send them to my house because I don't want people knowing my home address, but I think Matt has our virtual physical box that they can send them to. So ping. Jeff, get the address and you can ship it to him, and then we'll know, we'll know for sure.
Speaker 1:We will. We're going to find out how many people actually listen to this podcast.
Speaker 2:I think we lost them after the first 15 minutes.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe this is going to be trending NKP a Jethro Tull t-shirt. Also, if you can get that to trend, you can be on this podcast.
Speaker 2:I will say, like the YouTube algorithm is very confused at this point.
Speaker 1:YouTube never has known what to do with this. It's okay.
Speaker 2:But you know that's my hope, right? My hope is that this becomes a real recognition. And you know what I like also is I love the ways why the finalists will get to come to the in-person event, their Elevate conference. And you know, I love Chad. I just had a call with him. I just love Chad. We've gotten to be really close friends. And you know know, he's like, hey, it's like a gala, like it's black tie, and I'm like, yeah, no, I don't have collared shirts. The funny thing is I do actually have a suit. I have one suit for weddings and funerals and I have one tux. That's all I have in terms of dressy stuff. So I do do have my own tux. Oh, that's the other thing. You're going to see me in a tux at the gala.
Speaker 1:You won't recognize him.
Speaker 2:You won't even recognize me.
Speaker 1:And the assignment just changed. You need to send KP a Jethro Tull collared shirt. We're upping the ante at this point.
Speaker 2:All these collars do is mess with my beard.
Speaker 1:It's very annoying, yeah and if you send them a flute, that's next level yeah, especially if it's a pan flute.
Speaker 2:Yes, what's his name?
Speaker 1:zamfir yes, google it. That was our first google it moment.
Speaker 2:So it was kind of funny, like talking about us being old, I was wondering if the web team was going to publish your bio. So inside baseball we're redoing our website. You know it's it's been a little bit too much kp over the years. So we're actually adding team bios because our team has gotten pretty big and so jeff posts his updated bio uh on slack and I go in and like edit it and it's like as the oldest team member of kp, like I just totally messed and I was like I I didn't say anything, I was like I wonder if the web team is just gonna like just pass it through just pass it through cut and paste right on the website we'll find out
Speaker 1:we'll find out as the senior member as the most senior member of the company yeah, putting posting that number, the number of years, it was a little bit shocking, to be honest. It's, you know, time flies.
Speaker 2:It is weird, you know. So we're done talking about it, so anyway, it'll be in show notes or wherever they put the stuff that we talk about. Yeah, um, but definitely apply. And honestly, you know what, if you know something like maybe your phone firm's not that innovative, but you worked on a project with somebody that did something really cool, let them know. Like you know, no better compliment to someone's work is to like say, hey, man, like that project you worked on, you should really submit it right, give them. You know, doesn't mean they're going to win, but at least it shows that you're paying attention as a team member, either at a firm or on a project. But I think, um, you know, so I just think it's kind of an important thing.
Speaker 1:So, like I said, hopefully, like it becomes the thing and, uh, it starts to matter, it starts to mean something to people yeah, well, and I know this is this is early, this isn't completely fleshed out at this point, but you were you're talking about earlier, you're talking about the um. You know part part of the. The ethics of awards ought to be transparency right in in the selection process, the selection criteria. So, as you're thinking about this war award and you and chad have been been putting your heads together about this award early, early on, right now, we'll revisit this certainly later, but what are you thinking in terms of the selection criteria? What? What are you looking for? We developed our own chat bot, or you know what is it.
Speaker 2:What do you think is going to be required to take the day? I think that the driver will be. If you can tie it to an economic impact, to the project Day saved, money saved. I don't think you know, gee whiz, I'll cut it right. That's why I'm saying like I think the challenge, I think putting people putting their submissions together and going through the interview process is you maybe didn't document like the savings and things like that, and I think you know we're going to see we things like that.
Speaker 2:And I think we're going to see, we're going to leave some latitude in that, but I think that's what's going to matter. And because mostly this is for our owners forum, right? Also, how did it impact the owner? How did it impact society? Right, I mean, if you worked on a campus job and it, it, you know your, your innovation helped get more students back in the classroom versus going hybrid. You know what? I don't know, whatever it could be, right? I think I do believe in the higher calling stuff of our industry, right, we're shaping society, not just building, revit families or door details or whatever it is that people think that we do for a living. So I think you know you could. You could probably sell me on some higher order philosophical impacts too that are maybe intangible than metric driven. But I think that's like what's the? What was the outcome? What was the?
Speaker 1:outcome Right. If you, if you're interested in applying or you know someone that's interested in applying, you can go to kpreadyco, aec-innovators-award and anything that KP and I talk about. This is true of all of our podcasts Anything that KP and I talk about, anything that Frank and I talk about when we're talking about AI, anything that I talk about when I interview other people that needs a link will be in the show notes below. Our production team goes through and, probably much to their chagrin, they go through and they search for those things and then they post the links below. But it's kpreadyco slash AEC, dash innovators, dash award and there's there's an apply button.
Speaker 1:What does it actually say? Apply here button and um, and you know you can already apply today. So it asks you for the project or initiative and it asks you why it's um, what it is and why it's innovative and it's innovative and upload the files and the links and the supporting materials and things like that. You can get the process started now. So I'm really curious to see I think it's going to be amazing the spectrum that's represented in the applications that come in for this and I'm looking forward to seeing how far people are pushing things. I mean, we already have a really good idea because of the depth of our involvement across the industry and innovation, but I'm really curious to see, I'm curious to see where are the outliers, where are those ones that surprise us? Um, you know, when somebody submits something, we go Whoa, okay, didn't know about that. Um, or them, or you know whatever that is. Do you, do you have a? Um, any sort of expectation going into this? Do you expect you know X to play out, anything like that?
Speaker 2:Not really. I mean, I, I, I really think, um, I don't really have anything. You know, I think, um, you know, when I think about some of the clients we advise, some of our investors that are from industry, um, I think you know a little bit of the usual suspects. You know there's, there's a bunch of folks that hang around the hoop. Right, we know who those folks are. But I think that was also the cool thing about partner woods wide is just their customer base and reach is so far beyond. You know, we're a little bit more like hey, we have like our a hundred friends and we're not looking for new ones. A little bit, they're not like that. They have a pretty big reach. So I'm not going to be shocked if there's some firm out there that's you know a hundred person firm that I've never heard of. They submit something.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. I expect that. The partnership with with Chad Kleinens, the CEO of Zweig, and his team. I expect that that will drive applications from folks we don't that we're not familiar with, which is exciting.
Speaker 2:Maybe you know honestly, maybe we should have Chad on on an episode. I will you know? His point of view probably is you know. Ask him like why you know? And, by the way, like I asked chad, I was like why don't you just go do an awards, like you'd already do awards, like just add one more right? And he just said, like we've thought about in the past but we don't feel comfortable like we have the technical people to evaluate the applications right, right.
Speaker 1:That's why he.
Speaker 2:That's why he was like, because I was like I don't, like, I don't want more work. I mean, it's not like we get paid for this stuff, I'm not looking for more unpaid work, um. But he was like no, like I'll do it, like I'll put in the effort to promote it and have them at our awards and all that, if you'll do the work of evaluating them. Because he was just like you have such a great team that knows what they're doing, because, like, we just don't have the competency around the technology and all that. This is what you guys do all day. So I think you know he he had and I appreciate that like he could have just said like yeah, I'll do an innovation award, come up with something right well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, they already have a survey, right. That's one of the things. That's why it does really well is they have their surveys, they have their, their events, they have their consulting. That they do and they have a I don't remember the title off the top of my head, but they have an innovation, or at least an AI. I think they combine the two into a survey, but they've not you know, they've not taken it to the level of an awards program. This will be good, chad, I know you're listening. Please send KP a Jethro Tull college shirt.
Speaker 2:He didn't count. That'd be like you sending one that doesn't count.
Speaker 1:Now he's hedging his bets. Ladies and gentlemen, rewind, rewind and listen to the original.
Speaker 2:he's walking it back I just feel like that, like hey, chat, like what are you gonna get ian to send me one?
Speaker 1:like no, it doesn't count, he's already if if you're on the team, then it doesn't count you're disqualified yeah, kp and I have been discussing um the, the announcement of just a couple of days ago, I guess. As we're recording this AEC Innovators Award, let me read the post from LinkedIn really quickly, just to sort of recap it we're touching. The post touches on everything that we've already talked about, but it says, as we continue to work with owners and developers, many AEC firms try to pitch their innovation during the RFP and selection process. We talked about that earlier, the challenge being that, unless it's scoring criteria, it isn't impactful to being selected. With this in mind, we are launching the 2025 AEC Innovators Award. We're collaborating with the Zwei group, which we've talked about, to present the awards at their fall conference, which is Elevate. This is not pay to play. Myself and my team will be critically reviewing the submissions. Learn more and apply below. And that takes you to the kprco slash innovator AEC dash innovators dash award. And again, don't even worry how many times I screwed that up. Just go down to the show notes and click on the link down there.
Speaker 1:As always, this has been KP Unpacked. My name is Jeff Eccles. I'm the executive director of Catalyst. I am joined as often.
Speaker 1:There's so many different versions that we're doing of this now that I can't say as always anymore as often by our CEO and founder, kp Reddy. If you're not following him on LinkedIn, you should be. You would read posts like that Also posts about Rabbit and RABBET and startups, our founders, mastermind building, high performance teams and more. He's posting over there on LinkedIn two or three times a day and it's always insightful, sometimes pot stirring information about innovation for the built environment. So thank you all for joining us. Thanks, kp, for throwing down the gauntlet over Jethro Tull, and we'll talk about that some more. This is KP Unpacked. It's where the biggest ideas in AEC, ai and innovation all collide. It's powered by KP ReadyCo and this is the podcast that breaks down the trends, the technology, the discussions and the strategies shaping the built environment and beyond. That's where you work, where you play, where you sleep, where you worship, where you eat all the things that you do around the built environment. So thanks for joining us, kp, thanks for being here and we'll see everybody next week.
Speaker 2:All right, Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks, bye.