0:01 - Madeline
Okay, so on today's episode we had Peter Nabhan, which means, what was the meaning of that?

0:07 - Andy
Attentive.

0:07 - Madeline
Attentive.

0:08 - Madeline
So Peter the attentive. He is in geotechnical engineering and AECentric.

0:16 - Andy
AECentric. Okay. Yeah.

0:19 - Madeline
Was there anything that you liked about this episode in particular?

0:21 - Andy
Well, I mean, I got to talk to Peter. Well, you have people that you meet and you just have an instant connection. That's how I about Peter. So we had a good time. We talked about a lot of things, including AI, which is rapidly changing every single day. And he's ahead of that technology. And he's helping people with AECentric. One of the things he's doing is helping people get ahead of AI, get understand it, and use it properly. And he also does a lot of innovation and technology with his day job. If you will, with his regular job. And so keeping the geotechnical engineering company that he works for, helping them stay ahead of technology such as AI, but other technologies and innovations as well. So those are some of the things we get into, as well as his why, of course, and helping people understand his why, which was a significant one. And we had some really interesting points on that front. How about yourself?

1:24 - Madeline
I mean, I just thought y'all clicked like after talking to you about it after the podcast and you were like you know I like that enthusiasm like I got to talk to you you're like y'all just seem y'all's personalities seem to run well together and you seem inspired by his why which I won't give that away because more surprises await but yeah it was definitely an interesting one and and so we'll let the podcast speak for itself on that my name is Andy Richardson and this is our producer Madeline and this is the Enhanced AEC podcast where we interview professionals in the AEC industry and find out their what and their why.

2:01 - Andy
Let's get started.

2:07 - Madeline
Welcome to Enhance, an AEC podcast where we learn the why behind AEC professionals so that you can learn your why.

2:17 - Andy
All right, hey Peter. Welcome to the Enhance podcast.

2:22 - Peter
Good to be here, Andy. Thank you.

2:24 - Andy
Yeah, glad to have you on today. And haven't seen you since Atlanta. So we're going to pick up right back up from tapas. We had tapas that night. Remember that?

2:38 - Peter
They were absolutely delicious.

2:40 - Andy
Yeah. So we're going to pick right back up. I've got my coffee.

2:43 - Peter
I don't know if I told you, but I got married since last time you saw me.

2:48 - Andy
Awesome. Congratulations. I did know that. We were going to try to do this live versus virtual today, but we'll get another one in hopefully live. How's married life?

3:02 - Peter
I guess you have more experience than I do. Married life is good. It's a blessing to have someone there for you in the good times and when not everything's going great. You know you have someone.

3:16 - Andy
It's a life partner, right? Somebody you can spend your time with, and yeah, it's awesome. Well, glad that you found somebody to spend those days and nights with, Peter. I can't think of a better person that deserves it, so. Thank you. Yeah, really, today is just a conversation to have about what you're doing in the AEC industry, and really a little bit about your background might be helpful, too. I know, really, I met you at an innovation summit of sorts with KP Ready, but that's really what you do every single day, right? I mean, can you explain a little bit about that? Sure thing.

3:58 - Peter
And I would tell you it's part of what I do. For me, it's the goal to fully do that all the time. So I have yet to get to that point, but that's definitely the goal. As I told you, my background just briefly, is a master's in structural engineering. Surprisingly, look where I am now, totally different. Was in Lebanon, moved to the USA in 2013, and I did a program in geotechnical pavement engineering in Nevada, started working with a national company called Terracon, and that's when, after several years, I realized that we are way behind when it comes to technology as an industry, and this was a big company, this was a top 20 ENR company, and the ENR rankings is, revenue-wise, you've got your biggest engineering companies that were still behind on some processes. And being the person that I am, the optimizer, I always kept looking for ways to do things faster, safer, more suited towards what the customers needed, as well as what worked for an engineering professional. So that's kind of how I started building this, let's call it this innovation or technology muscle, which led me to several years down the road to meeting you at the KPID event.

5:30 - Andy
Right, right. So that was something that you would start at your previous company, or this was something that you just started with your current company? To this role in innovation? Yeah.

5:43 - Peter
It's something I started with the previous company around 2020, COVID times. And how I started it was as a part of a large project. So landed a large project with a logistics company. It was a pavement asset management project, which I was a subject matter expert. And I looked at the budget. It would have allowed us to do everything the way we've always done it, and I chose not to do that. And being the project executive, I essentially could do whatever I wanted. The client said, OK. I said, let's try this out. And part of it was we learned together. But at the end, we got the project done 20% budget, created a whole new platform, GIS platform. Data delivery platform. We got the project done in half the time and that was how we proved the use case of technology integration and that's allowed me to take that next step in the previous company too. The next step was acquiring an AI company back in 2021-2022 so it went through the due diligence of the AI company, learned a lot of lessons doing that and I would say that's set me on this more technology-focused track.

7:05 - Andy
Let's start with the curveball opener to begin with.

7:12 - Peter
It's been nothing but curveballs, my friend. I'm not good at baseball.

7:17 - Andy
Do you play any sports, Peter? I do. What sport do you play?

7:23 - Peter
I played basketball growing up.

7:26 - Andy
You're a pretty tall guy, so that makes sense.

7:29 - Peter
And then I hurt myself, so I no longer play basketball, but I do play tennis now.

7:34 - Andy
Okay, nice, nice. And is it okay to ask where did you grow up?

7:43 - Peter
Yeah, of course. So I grew up in Lebanon, which actually shaped a lot of the things that I do today, just growing up in that space. It almost ties to why I became a civil engineer.

7:54 - Andy
Okay, yeah, can you go into that? And we'll go back to the curb opener here in a moment, but can you just go into that a bit more?

8:00 - Peter
I'm happy to, happy to.

8:01 - Andy
Like why you, how that growing up tied to your space you're in now and everything?

8:07 - Peter
So when I tell the story, sometimes I get the chills, but I will tell it anyway. So when I was, when I was, I grew up in the nineties in Lebanon and for those that, for your listeners, if you don't know about Lebanon, there was a civil war between 1975 1990, totally leveled the country. There was basically no infrastructure and I grew up in the 90s and the memories of me growing up in the 90s where my dad taking us to see my grandparents down in the city, down in the capital and anywhere you look it's just tower cranes everywhere it's tower cranes and you saw destruction the city went from destruction to this beautiful infrastructure well-developed and while you go through that process, you see the looks on people's faces change. Like people went from being desperate post-civil war to actually seeing their city, having hope again. They reshaped the city. That's when I realized I really wanted to build. So ever since I was a kid, I've always wanted to build. And then as I grew up, went to school, turned out that I have a very, let's call it, Mathematical view of the world. So my lens is I explain everything with physics and math because I think those are the two Things that are not really gray. It's just black or white You're an engineer. You're probably my language We created math to explain to rationalize the world physics is the same way So it made sense that I can use that skill into engineering and that's why I went with civil engineering and then one thing led to another and now I'm I guess a practicing geotechnical engineer but I also do technology, technology work, also do business development, also do company strategy. So I've had really been fortunate to use that experience where I grew up and our culture is very very people-focused, people-driven, we exist in communities. And I think I still carry that with me over here.

10:23 - Andy
Yeah, I can tell that. I mean, we instantly connected at the event and, you know, the tapas, I could sense that's like something that's common, you know, going and eating dinner and hanging out. I mean, that's common in a lot of cultures, but I just felt that. And by the way, you mentioned the chills. I mean, when you were explaining that, I just, I felt that same feeling like, wow, that's, I could just imagine you as a child or, you know, young guy or whatever, and you see these buildings and you get this inspiration. That's, that's awesome. So I love to hear about that. So thank you for sharing that.

11:05 - Peter
Absolutely. I was also happy to hear that you're a tango dancer.

11:09 - Andy
Yes. The Argentine and the American. So, but that's one of my goals is to learn the Argentine. I mean, to really learn it better.

11:22 - Peter
I have the answer right there. The San Telmo, that's where tango started.

11:27 - Andy
And where is that? In Argentina?

11:29 - Peter
In San Telmo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. That's the home of tango.

11:35 - Andy
So I see you hopefully going there and yeah it'll be fine so um yeah we're continuing to work on that but so uh curveball opener peter uh we're a bit into it but that being said um if you could snap your fingers and use ai to eliminate one task for everyone this week what would it be I'm telling this to everyone just use co-pilot in your outlook it's so easy It's right there, just press the co-pilot button, ask it to summarize and see if you have any action items.

12:14 - Peter
Don't Read through six pages of email. It's just like that. It's 15 seconds, saves you up to 15 minutes.

12:26 - Andy
Okay, I like it. Use co-pilot. What about people that are not on the Microsoft ecosystem? I mean, what should they do?

12:36 - Peter
you got Gemini for Google. So if you're using Gmail, you've got Gemini. You can always put ChatGPT on your browser and just go drop it in ChatGPT. Again, you might be giving sensitive information. That's why I'm all about Outlook, because if you're an Office user, Microsoft is doing a good job when it comes to compliance and such.

13:01 - Andy
Yeah, but I would say the E in AEC I would say the vast majority is on the Outlook and the Microsoft system. I don't know about the architects and contractors, but I'd say probably a large majority of those as well are on that ecosystem. Would that be fair to you?

13:20 - Peter
I think so. Probably 90% are on that system.

13:25 - Andy
That's a good tip. And I mean, that could save you, I don't know, six minutes, 15 minutes a day, possibly.

13:32 - Peter
Beautiful. Compounds. 15 minutes a day ends up being almost an hour and a half a week. If you have a team big enough, over 30 people, that's a full-time employee.

13:46 - Andy
Yeah. Now, I'm thinking about some of our listeners. I don't know. I mean, some of them may or may not be listening or using some of the AI tools still, including Copilot. So should people be concerned about that? Like, you mentioned privacy. Are there other concerns about AI? I mean, Big Brother and these type things you hear about, you know, even talking to my family sometimes, I still get these type things of, you know, I'm more of a technology guy like yourself, so I'm like, whatever the technology is, I'm on it the very first day. But there are people that have real concerns.

14:25 - Peter
So what do The first thing that I would tell them, Andy, is their concerns are valid. That's number one. Their concerns are valid. And let's peel the layers of the onion. So what are actually your concerns? What are you concerned about? How is this affecting your day-to-day life? Some people are worried about being replaced. It's good to teach them how to re-skill or how to re-tool. Using an AI tool where they can become way more effective at their job or they can get maybe an even better job. Just like when we talked at the KP Ready conference 50 or 30 years ago, the typewriters, when everybody had access to a keyboard, most of them found another job that actually made them more money and that was a better use So we validate their concerns, and then we walk them through what it actually means to have these tools. And this is a tool. This is not someone or something to replace them. It's something that replaces a low output task that they're already doing. It's not going to replace the high, like AI is not going to do surgeries for you. Is not going to stamp a document, at least not yet. It is a human being. We've got regulations behind that. But AI will help you review documents. It will help you expedite your typing process. It will help you put plans together faster. So these are all things, just tools, and making sure that people understand that this is a tool, and their concerns are valid, and this is how we can bridge them.

16:10 - Andy
Yeah. Sure. I mean, that's a good analogy. I mean, just like any other typewriter, or if you're physically working on, you know, construction, I mean, a nail gun. I mean, I'm sure the old school guys were like, man, I'm not using a nail gun. And then, you know, eventually you're like, these guys are doing way faster than I am. So I'm going to use a nail gun.

16:32 - Peter
Absolutely. There's one analogy. Uh, I just remembered this. There's two, two ax men that would shop that would go and chop, uh, trees every single day. And they both worked for the same amount of hours. They both worked, let's say, between the hours of 8 and 5, with the exception of one of them would go out for one hour to go to lunch and then would come back. So they would have lunch one hour, they would come back, and they would both finish at 5 p.m. Surprisingly, the guy that took a break cut more wood. One day, the guy that was not taking no breaks that was taking a break and asked him, he's like, how are you doing this? You take an hour break, you go eat with your family. How are you doing this? He told the guy, he's like, I go home, I eat, but I also sharpen my tool. And because he sharpens his tool, his output, even though he works less, his output is higher. Sharpen your tool. Is a tool. Use it.

17:37 - Andy
Yeah, AI is a tool. There's other tools. I mean, your mental, your acuity, learning new things. There's all types of things we can do with that tip, right? So yeah, I think we hit a couple of these already, just inherently. This next two as far as, but was there, you know, we talked about your getting into the AEC industry, civil engineering, and what sparked that, but also was there a mentor or something that really helped you or maybe a project that really clicked for you? Early on?

18:11 - Peter
That is, in my case, and in our culture per se, we didn't grow up having older mentors from a professional standpoint. But what we did is we had, we had students that were ahead of us a few years. And when I went to school in Lebanon, the first two years were common. So if you're electrical, if you're mechanical, civil. Everybody did the same classes together. There was one class that stood out, that I had a guy that was two years old helping me learn it, which was statics. And I really loved statics. And as you know, statics is explaining how the world works, physics and math. And he's like, if you like this, you'll like civil engineering too. And You get to build just like what you want. I'm like, well, you're helping me buy something I've already purchased. So maybe that's kind of the moment that I remember. So shout out to that friend. Many, many more.

19:21 - Andy
Yeah, awesome.

19:24 - Andy
So yeah, I've never really, you know, I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that that was a class that they really loved.

19:33 - Peter
You want to know the other class I loved so much?

19:37 - Andy
Finite Elements. Oh wow, okay.

19:40 - Peter
My favorite.

19:41 - Andy
Yeah, I actually didn't have that one at my school, so maybe I should take it sometime, but I'm probably, you know, I guess it's never too late to learn, right?

19:55 - Peter
I took it twice. I did it in Lebanon for my master's instructional, then I did it my master's in the USA. So I did it twice, both times. The second time was much better, actually.

20:07 - Andy
Yeah. But I mean, it's such a significant part of what we're designing today, the different structures. And I mean, that's a technology piece in itself, right? I mean, relatively, in the grand scheme, it's still a relatively new, just the concept is new, right? Finite elements. I mean, I think a lot of our listeners don't even know necessarily what that is. So I guess now you're going to have to at least give them a brief Reader's Digest version of what that means.

20:37 - Peter
I guess we can do it the most simple way possible, is the smallest element of any object and how it reacts under outside stressors.

20:50 - Andy
Yeah, OK.

20:51 - Peter
That's a good. How it deforms and how it reacts.

20:54 - Andy
Yeah, so you can take a piece of concrete and you break it a finite element, a small chunk of concrete, and it has stresses in all three axes. And then that chunk is transferring its stresses to the adjacent chunk. So that's the redneck way of saying it.

21:17 - Peter
It's like the biology of engineering.

21:21 - Andy
Yeah. All right, awesome. Now, you have a podcast as well, right?

21:29 - Peter
I did.

21:29 - Peter
I did. We did have a podcast.

21:32 - Andy
Okay. It's no longer going on?

21:34 - Peter
It is no longer active and it was a great experience nonetheless. So it was the organization's podcast and we got to a point where we did not have the resources at our disposal. So we decided to take a pause, it might resume. To give you a quick summary, we call the podcast Groundbreaking. The name comes from geotechnical company, geotechnical podcast, and also groundbreaking stories. Stories that people don't really hear from the AEC industry. That was the name. We did 12 episodes.

22:15 - Andy
I love that name. Yeah, that's really cool. So check out Groundbreaking. It's still out, right? You still have the episodes out? It's still out. It's on all platforms.

22:25 - Andy
Spotify, Amazon.

22:28 - Andy
Yeah, okay, awesome. And also, I mean, you might come back to it at some point, right?

22:34 - Peter
There's always an opportunity.

22:39 - Andy
And that's really similar to what we're doing. We're talking about, you know, effectively groundbreaking stories like the one you just told earlier. You know, the moment that you saw these buildings, you saw the shift from the war-torn community to this beautiful, I mean, that's a groundbreaking concept right there.

23:00 - Peter
You broke through the destruction and you created this beautiful building, church, mosque, whatever, beautiful buildings.

23:10 - Andy
Yeah, and I mean, you know, that's what, going back to that story, because that's what I remember, I mean, it was on the news. There was a few, you know, countries that were on the news quite a bit when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. And I remember reading about, or, you know, seeing that on the news, Lebanon and others. So it's good to hear that, you know, what you're saying about the promise, the hope. There's always hope, right? So, and that's thing that's inspiring you, it sounds like, is to really give people hope through the buildings, through the construction that we're doing. Would you say that still goes along with your thought process today, several years later?

24:03 - Peter
Absolutely. That's the mission. That's the mission. What gets me up in the morning, to go out and do things and have a positive impact. And so that people don't have to lose hope. There is, things are always getting better. Even if you have these blips of, you can, we can always focus on the negatives. You can always focus on the downturn, but if you look at anything in this life and in the world, we are always improving. Always.

24:34 - Andy
Yeah. So you seem like a very driven person. I mean, this is probably one of the things, but you've got your MBA, I guess EMBA, is that engineering master's?

24:47 - Peter
Executive, but engineering is very similar, yeah.

24:53 - Andy
Sorry.

24:53 - Peter
It's just when you get an MBA and you're old, so they call it executive.

24:58 - Andy
Okay, there's that redneck again, so I'm working on it. So the EMBA and then also your LEED certified, So this is going from just a structural engineer, not just a structural engineer, but structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, but also leadership level aspects, management. So that's the next step in your career. I mean, what was it that pushed you into that versus being a design engineer?

25:30 - Peter
I want to clarify that by the fact that you almost never stop being an engineer. And I say that in a very positive way, because our thinking process, our decision-making process, and the rationalization is what makes us good at business and strategy. It has to make sense. The building cannot fall apart, just like the business cannot fall apart. That's why you see engineers be good businessmen. That's why Andy Richardson, is an entrepreneur. It's because you can bring that skill set into your business. For me, it was the reason why I got these, let's say they call them certification. They were just part of the process because I felt like as an individual contributor, I was enjoying what I was doing and I was creating, helping, helping, these buildings and these assets. But I also saw a gap where I could do more and I could influence a broader group of people. And that's why I kind of shifted my career in that direction. So I can help more people, not just at that one particular task that I'm doing. The lead is something I got Because I'm someone who cares a lot about sustainability, I think our planet gives us so much, and it would only be fair if we treated it with that same courtesy. And I kept hearing people say, oh, we should do things sustainably, and we're not, oh, this is not a sustainable process. Even in business, it's not a sustainable business. So I'm like, what are they all talking about? I did my research. And I realized that there's this awesome process that encompasses every trade, every activity we do in the built environment called LEED. Not everybody knew what LEED was, but it was something of a common practice. Not everybody was designing to LEED. People had negative connotations about LEED. Oh, it's going to make the building so expensive and whatnot. Which is actually not the reality. But that's why I went through that process because I really wanted to understand what do some different trades do, like what does the mechanical engineer, how does he impact the building for it to be more sustainable, how is the architect designing the building for more sustainability, how can we contribute as civil, structural, geotechnical engineer into making the building more sustainable. So that was a great learning experience. For the executive MBA, it's a longer story. It's a story that started back in 20, it was between 2021 and 2022 when I told you about that AI acquisition that my previous company was doing. And I was a technical person or call it technical advisor looking at the deal So I kind of understood what the product side of things looked like, and maybe a little bit on go-to-market strategy. I've also spoken with several customers. But then when our CFO started talking about what's the ROI, what's the payback period, what's the P&L going to look like, what is my pro forma target? I was sitting in that room. I was the youngest person. And I also felt like an imposter. And truthfully, I felt like a lot of my peers did not understand how the business made money. I did not, and I had no clue. I was an eight year guy, nine year guy. Honestly, I had no idea how the business made money. I knew we got projects. We managed them to budget, and we delivered reports, or we delivered the word product. The added details, I felt like it was a select few that knew how it's done. Evidently, you're an entrepreneur, so you know everything that goes into your business. But how many of your staff would you say know how the business makes money?

29:56 - Andy
I'd say a minority understand that. It's something that we are we do have, we have an open business, a transparent, we share that data, you know, our profit and loss is shared. It's something that I learned about actually recently, this year, is we started doing that, you know, and I've seen benefits of it already, but because of what you're saying, the team didn't understand how we made money, and I didn't understand it when I was starting out it's kind of like when you're growing up you're just think okay we've got you know my parents have money and they buy us food and they pay for the bills you don't really ever think about where's the money come from and where does it go and it's really the same thing with engineering you know your job you just think that the company has money I mean they it's just they just have it and they just pay the bills and they pay my paycheck but then when you start to a transparent business, you realize, okay, well, all the decisions that you make have implications. You know, you sit on a job for two weeks, well, guess what? That job, now we cannot bill for that job, and we cannot get paid for that job, but the company still has to pay your paycheck every two weeks, no matter what. So, I mean, those are decisions that the owners and the leaders have to look at, you know, but it's definitely There's definitely an aspect of it that a lot of people don't have familiarity with, and I do think it would help to have more. I mean, you don't want to be totally focused on that, but it's part of the business. You have to earn a profit. It's the lifeblood of a business.

31:46 - Peter
Cash would kill your business, and the bigger the companies, people think, well, the company has cash, then the company can pay. If you tell them what the company actually needs, then they can focus their actions toward getting the things done that they need to get done. Let's say collections or getting reports back on time and servicing the customers and getting new projects. And your company, I know you're on a smaller shop, it's so sensitive to almost any project that you manage. So it's good that I'm happy to hear that you're teaching your staff this is what we need to get done for the business to be successful.

32:24 - Andy
Yeah, and we're learning what that means to have a transparent company, so we're not there. It's always a process, like you mentioned earlier. So that's great that you're learning these business principles, and that seemed like a spark in itself, that moment when you realized, you said imposter. I was an imposter in this meeting. Did that drive you to grow and improve in that area?

32:52 - Peter
Absolutely. I realized that unless you understand what the end game is and why you take certain actions, your actions will be all over the place. You will never have focus. This allows me to see the bigger picture. Again, going back to the fact that I got an MBA, I don't think anybody needs an MBA. For me, it was helpful. Closed gaps in my knowledge but you can close those gaps on YouTube and you can do it on on an AI tool you can you can learn about any topic you want you can pick up a book just continue to learn is my advice and ask people for me it's been I learned so much more from talking with people from talking with business owners entrepreneurs startup founders people executives in company you get to learn so much and knowledge compounds. So an MBA was kind of a gateway entry and then you build from that and you continue to build.

33:55 - Andy
Yeah. It gives you that sharpening of the tool, right?

33:58 - Peter
Absolutely.

34:00 - Andy
Absolutely. So now I love what you said about you have the end game in mind and understanding the business principle examples, the profit and loss, etc., can help you with that. Now, is there any examples that since that moment, since you now see the end game, that you've been able to connect those dots more clearly for your company? Are there any projects that you've worked on, for example, that really are a result of that?

34:34 - Peter
Absolutely. I can give you a very recent example. The company I worked for, ECS Group of Companies, we had almost 3,000 people. Revenue, close to half a billion. And the company was considering growing some additional service lines. And I worked on framing the potential return on investment of this added service to the C-suite. Because I was able to see the end of mine, it was something that I've built in the past in my previous company, I was able to frame potential revenue, need for investment, friction point and such, put that in front of the C-suite and that helped a go-no-go decision. So you have to understand where you're going and then basically build your way to it. From the analysis that you have. So very recent example, again, there's in strategy as a basis is prioritizing finite resources against infinite opportunities. There are infinite opportunities. Every business knows that every entrepreneur knows that there's so many shiny objects and focus is what gets you ahead in life. And that's something I focus on a lot is all of these ways that you can make money, just focus on that one with the biggest leverage. That's where you see the biggest, the biggest opportunity in your business and the biggest revenue.

36:17 - Andy
Okay. So they did the trigger pull or no pull? Pulled it.

36:21 - Peter
No.

36:22 - Andy
Yeah.

36:23 - Andy
Went with it. Okay. And it was a multiple array of lines of business?

36:29 - Peter
It was a line expansion that was pulled. Let's call it more shelved. Now is not the time. Again, you look at existing resources and where you want to go, and now is not the time. It was not congruent, which is good. That's strategy 101.

36:45 - Andy
Yeah, I mean, sometimes that is the best decision, is a no-go, right?

36:49 - Peter
The do-nothing. The do-nothing decision is actually of the most powerful ways to do business.

36:58 - Andy
Yeah. Do nothing is an option.

37:00 - Peter
Do nothing new. Keep doing what you're doing.

37:04 - Andy
Awesome. So, yeah, let's go ahead and transition to, I'm interested in this AEC, AEC-centric? AECentric. AECentric. So, this is your thing, right? Your spinoff? Yeah. There's a t-shirt.

37:23 - Peter
I got the shirt. It's my fun project. My fun side project.

37:29 - Andy
OK, yeah. What was it that triggered the AE-centric? And how has your background helped you tackle this?

37:39 - Peter
Happy to talk about this. So problem statement, few companies actually have a technology strategy or an AI strategy. Everybody's scrambling to do things. Maybe you just say, oh, everybody buys ChatGPT. It's not the right way to do it. My background, I told you I had that AI acquisition several years ago. As a subject matter expert, as an engineer, I saw some of the friction points that were part of adopting that technology and onboarding the tool. I also saw some challenges inside the organization as a result of it. That's why I decided to create AEcentric, so I can be a thought leader. I can create some content, share insights from my experience, and add the things that I continue to learn every single day on technology adoption and AI adoption, with a focus on AEC companies, of course. I know that my sphere of influence is not huge, but recently I learned that if you can influence a handful of people, say 10 people, every year and they can go out and they can teach 10 people something new, within five years you would have influenced a million people. That's about 10% of the AEC industry. So you can revolutionize the whole industry if you're able to influence a million people. So I hope the future of AECentric would be a of knowledge and AI adoption for the AEC industry.

39:20 - Andy
Yeah, and hopefully you will have at least 10 people on this episode right here. So it's really AI focused is a big part of it?

39:30 - Peter
Technology, yeah. Focus on AI technology adoption.

39:34 - Andy
And why is that a focus for you? I mean, why do you think that's?

39:41 - Peter
main focus we should be my yeah my thinking process is you probably you probably think the same way I think we're at the cusp of disruption as an industry I mean for the last few years every every article you Read tells you 40% of the jobs 40% of architectural jobs are gonna be automated by 2030 That scares people. That scares professionals. Because all of us, we put in time, we put in blood, sweat, and tears in this industry. And it's terrifying to think that a startup in Silicon Valley could just take away half your staff. Because these are people you grew up with, you shared a life with. And these are the best people to actually usher this industry into the next stages. So I think we must empower one another, and knowledge is power. We must empower one another through this disruption. So we're the ones doing it for ourselves. If we disrupt ourselves, then we have a better chance at maintaining this industry, maintaining the values of this industry, and truly making a as a whole and not having who knows what kind of startup from Silicon Valley is going to come in and one day we'd have to let go of half our staff. That's the last thing we want to happen. And then you have AI agents in God knows where and what servers responding to your customers and such.

41:28 - Andy
Yeah, and I think as you're talking about that, I'm thinking about back to Atlanta, our KP Ready Summit. And he had some hot takes about AI. And it really got me, I mean, I was really, had my wheels spinning after that. One of which is, a few years ago, which I think you mentioned three years ago or so, you were acquiring an AI company, right? And that's what people were doing, attorneys, construction companies. That's what they've been doing over the past three or four years, is acquiring AI. Now, it's switching. And that was the hot take, is now you're going to start seeing AI companies, like you're mentioning, Silicon Valley, AI companies acquiring engineering companies, acquiring construction companies. One of the examples he gave was an AI company could have like a small cat that's run by AI, and I think he's involved in this, right? So now you've got just an AI company that's running a land clearing operation. It's not a land clearing operation with AI. It's the other way around. And so that got my attention. I think it should get everybody's attention. So that's a case for bringing somebody like your on or at least listening to your knowledge and the ideas that you have with respect to AI, with respect to technology. So anything else you want to say about that?

43:10 - Peter
I say you decide where you want to be on what side of the equation and my preference is you determine your own future, you determine your own outcome. Don't put your outcome in the hands of a different industry. That's where the focus should be. We're a big industry. I talk about this often. We're 5% GDP. 5%. That's over a trillion and a half. That's bigger than the economy of Spain, Australia, and Mexico. So nobody tells me that we don't have leverage. We have a lot of leverage.

43:48 - Andy
everything is we're talking about the built environment here right AEC we're talking about anything that you look around that is you know not green we built I mean humans built and and we're continuing to do that so it's a big part of the economy it's a big part of the world we live in right we built the pyramids we built the pyramid of Giza way back in the day and there's is still there.

44:16 - Peter
We built most of the European beautiful cities. That's all the AEC industry. It's one of the oldest industries. And we should not just cede control to a different industry.

44:29 - Andy
Exactly. I love that. And there's so many nuances that, yeah, the work can be done by AI, the work can be done by computers, but the nuances of experience of a human touch cannot be replaced by AI. I mean, yeah, you mentioned stamping the plans. That's got to be done by an engineer of record or architect of record. But there's a human touch to this that, you know, how do you balance that, that human touch with the AI? Is that something that you deal with in your teaching?

45:07 - Peter
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I think the danger becomes when the human being that's using the tool starts being overly reliant on a tool and they cede the decision-making to the tool completely. That's not what you want to do. Use the tool, create a decision-making matrix based on your input, but you make a human decision. The human has to make a decision. There's a lot of things that go into a human decision. And AI cannot replace that. And actually, I encourage you to continue to make those human decisions, those humane decisions, not what people say, oh, objectively, or, oh, what's best for the company. Make human decisions.

46:00 - Andy
Yeah. That sounds like good advice to me. A leader in the AEC industry, or really anybody in the AEC industry, trying to start out with AI. I'm sure a lot of people have done that already, but what are some workflows that they should consider? You gave one to start us out, a quick tip of sorts, but what are some workflows that we should be considering to help demonstrate some value in our work?

46:29 - Peter
Yeah, absolutely. I did mention pilot, summarize emails, note-taking during meetings, that's another one. Again, what you want to focus on, you want to focus on the small things. Things that are repetitive, things that are boring, things that nobody really enjoys to do. Back in the day, we call it dog work. I don't know if that term is still used. Just boring stuff. Start with the boring stuff because nobody's going to be upset if you take away boring tasks from them. Nobody woke up and said, I can't wait to take notes for this meeting today and put them all in an email and type an action list item to everybody else. Start with the boring things. They're very low risk. They're very low risk. The second one I talk about is if you get a lot of RFPs and you have like this RFP response team and such, maybe this is for bigger companies. You can train your AI on your decision-making matrix and just drop an RFP, PDF in the AI and tell it, does this fit my decision-making matrix or not? Or what are some of the key things or criteria that I need to look at? Don't have someone look at an RFP for five hours and give you a yes-no decision. Too can do it much faster. That's another one. That's another risk. I know from people that I work with on a day-to-day basis, nobody really loves to Read pages and pages and pages of PDFs. Right. Especially the municipality RFPs. Nobody. No dissing to any of those municipalities. Nobody likes to Read those pages, infinite amount of pages. And if you have any folks that work for the municipality who are listeners, we love you, appreciate what you do, and I know you might be also frustrated with the amount of paperwork that you have to deal with.

48:23 - Andy
For sure.

48:24 - Andy
Is there any tools to do that, the PDF reading? I mean, is this just ChatGPT?

48:29 - Peter
We're using Copilot in our organization. Yeah, you can do ChatGPT. Copilot, because it's so seamless between, you can use it with Excel, you can use it with Word. It's very seamless. Now they have some really powerful functionalities in Excel as well that I advise you to use. It's very nice. And it helps you pull data. It's just such a powerful data tool. I'll give an example. We're working on a list of potential leads, customers. I'm working with a colleague. And he's like, well, I don't know how to focus my energy. I have to go to Google and research all these companies. This was like a list of 50 companies. I said, why don't you go to this AI tool, drop the list in the AI tool, and ask it to give you the headquarters and what are some decision makers from their website. Just do that data pool. Dropped it in GPT, did a deep search, came back within 10 minutes. Practically, he checked a couple of them. Practically had all that information. Had this been a human being, probably would have taken two days of research. Research, data analytics. Simple summarization stuff. These are all things you want to start with. They save you a ton. Can't believe how much time you can save starting with this.

49:57 - Andy
Yeah. OK. Awesome. That sounds like some good tips for AI. And now when you are evaluating new tools, which is something you do, do you have a decision making process for that? How do you do that?

50:14 - Peter
I act like an AI. No, I'm kidding. What I do is I, first of all, what I say, if someone gives a demo of some sort, look at it very objectively. Don't be like, wow, this is amazing. Break it down into smaller pieces, like finite elements. Break it down into smaller pieces and find whether the solution that you're being offered actually fits one of your problems. I think that's the first one. That's the top priority into evaluating any of these things. First thing is, check if what you're being provided or shown or a capability that you're being sold on by a company is actually fits one of your needs or pain points. And that pain point has to be painful, has to be like a priority. Second, if it passes it, do a pilot. Don't purchase a hundred users and stuff Do a small pilot with a group of people, diversify from the organization, look at your organizational pyramid, pick different people from the organization, have them use it, pilot, time frame it, and pull some metrics behind it. Like did it increase efficiency? What was their review or net promoter score? Did they think it was intuitive or what did they think needs to be done? Done different. If it passes that step, look at your tech stack, look at your existing tech stack. Does this tool fit seamlessly or is it a hard integration? Let's say you have a project management tool that everybody in the organization uses and loves. Is there integration within those two tools? If there isn't, then you might have to exit. You can't do it. Is it compliant? That's Does it comply with your rules as a company? Yes, no. That could also be a kill decision. If you pass that, go to the next step. See if you have early champions. So you show it to a select group of people that could be what we call early adopters or evangelists. We talked about that at the KP Ready. Those are people who like innovation. They will tell you what you're not seeing. If you have a blind spot, if for some reason you really like the demo of that tool and you really thought it could solve the problem, but in reality, we're seeing this with a totally skewed lens. That's the next step. Try to find if you can have evangelists, because these are the ones that are going to help people use it within the organization. They're the ones that are going to tell their friends and their team and their project managers, oh, you have to use this tool. Because if you push things from the top, People will be like, oh, friction point. This is the big, big boss telling me to do this. Instead, find their peer or their colleague and see if that person thinks that they should tell everybody else about technology. If you think that works, go to the next step. Now you can actually deploy the technology and check every few months if you're hitting your return on investment. If you have a good relationship with the company that sold you this tool, continue to evaluate. But that's when you're actually enabling technology. So that's the last step is technology enablement. But you have to check routinely. So look at data analytics. Look at your metrics. Are you actually saving time? Is this functioning the way you intended it to function? And if it's not, troubleshoot. So that's kind of how I look at evaluating technology. And I think at the end of the day, What we're all trying to do is to help people have higher outputs per unit of time, which means they have more of their time and they can do more. They can perform better. They're happier with what they're doing. They're not doing tasks that, again, some people might love looking at 30 page PDF RFPs. I'm not that person.

54:12 - Andy
Yeah. Well, we have, you know, this is, our you know one of our primary art audiences architects right um obviously engineers we listen to our show and contractors and geotechnical engineers as well but I think about some of the architects listening and you know they want to design they want to draw buildings right not work on RFPs or RFQs and not note take notes so these are ideas that you're providing to do that. And because people may say, well, this is work, right? This is hard to implement this technology. There's blockers, if you will, you know, one of which is just difficult. I mean, sometimes they don't work. You have to pull the no-go button, the no-go trigger. And that's sad sometimes. But what are some blockers that you're finding that people have a hard time implementing technology implementing these tools.

55:16 - Peter
Absolutely. And I did want to make a, I guess I want to tell you kind of a, how does this look like in a different industry beyond the AEC industry? Maybe it helps also give a better example to the listener. Sure. So I attended a lot of medical conferences living in Nashville, focused on healthcare, the healthcare built environment. And in those conferences, you get a lot of physicians that in, you get some technology companies working to help physicians have more of their time, everybody mentions the notion of working at the top of your license. Which means for an architect, designing. Which means for an engineer, probably also designing. For a contractor, building. And enabling physicians to work at the top of their license, they help them automate a lot of the things that physicians don't like, For example, note-taking. A lot of AI tools are focused on note-taking, medical note-taking, or health records. That's the part that physicians dread. That's the tool they're solving. That's what we can use AI in parallel in our industry to help us with those tasks that we do not really enjoy doing. So we can all work at the top of our license. So you could be stamping plants designing or doing your site visit to check, to do forensics for structural engineering and such. And now if I look at the blocker from a technology adoption today, it's the leaders. It's the leadership. And I understand where they are coming from I think majority of leaders in this industry are either Gen X or boomers. They did not grow up with technology and they were very successful in this business for 20 plus, even 30 plus years in this business.

57:21 - Peter
And when you get to that age, you're looking more for stability.

57:24 - Peter
So it's hard for you to take risks and try to bring in new technology, try to invest in these types of technology that odds are you're not going to use for many years.

57:39 - Peter
And kudos to the leaders that actually are very open and there is so many of them.

57:45 - Peter
They're open to technology, they allow people who are younger generations to come in, do what they do best, create tools, try to enhance processes and such in the organization.

57:59 - Peter
So I think it starts with leadership.

58:02 - Andy
Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree with that.

58:06 - Andy
I mean, the company you're working for is a good example.

58:09 - Andy
I mean, you have a company where they've invested in really an innovation leader in their company.

58:18 - Andy
This is a department of sorts that are focused on improving through innovation, and it really goes back to the original aspect of this, which is what is the end game, or some of the themes of this conversation, which is what is the end game, how do you sharpen your tool to reach that end game, right?

58:39 - Andy
That's what we've really been talking about a lot today.

58:42 - Andy
And that's what you're trying to do, right?

58:45 - Andy
I mean, you're trying to get to that end game through this technology, through resources.

58:52 - Andy
And it takes this decision-making process to do that, right?

58:58 - Andy
But you have blockers.

59:01 - Andy
So I guess if you're a leader in your company, in your organization, what are things that you're going to advise and recommend to those leaders to do?

59:15 - Andy
What are some things they need to do to empower their team to put better bring innovation in?

59:23 - Peter
It's the messaging.

59:25 - Peter
The messaging that starts at the top trickles through the organization.

59:29 - Peter
And the messaging cannot be wishy-washy.

59:33 - Peter
It has to be, we innovate or we die as an organization.

59:37 - Peter
And this is the organization.

59:39 - Peter
It's not the personal leader's decision-making.

59:41 - Peter
Because as a leader, he's a steward for the company that's a going the company should survive forever and technically when you build a company your plan is for the company to survive forever so the company has to innovate or the organization will die and I think if you focus that message that we are at the heart an innovative company and kudos to the company I work for ECS over a hundred developers Big, big IT team focus on building tools and letting, you know, again, making processes easier for people.

1:00:23 - Peter
But that's how, that's how it's done.

1:00:24 - Peter
We innovate or we die as an organization.

1:00:27 - Peter
And that messaging flows through the organization and you show it, you show that you mean it by making those investments, by hiring a big developer team, by having people focus on technology.

1:00:39 - Peter
I think that would be the best thing to start for executives.