Friday afternoon

What does the future of AEC technology look like? Lots of smart people are thinking and working on this but I’ve got so high-level thoughts. /1

1. Look for standards, classifications, and contracts to be replaced by services, APIs, and applications.

- AIA contracts
- Specifications
- Construction Drawings
- Building Codes ( @upcodes )
- COBie & BIM LoD agreements
- Financing ( @apt_buildings )

/2

These exist to standardize the flow of money, risk, and information between firms. We now have the technology to build better ways to transfer those things. /3

2. Look for the monolithic BIM applications to get broken up into “jobs to be done” scaled applications

that operate through APIs or a standardized data format ( @SpeckleSystems )

/4

This will happen because Revit (and others) are monopoly sized incumbents that have lost the incentive or ability to continue to innovate and add functionality that the industry needs.

(Sloped walls ain’t it) /5

Instead of trying to build massive applications that try to do everything, start up competitors will bite off small chunks where they feel they can offer value. /6

Like :
- early stage design ( wave @TestFitInc )
- modeling - manual or computational ( @HyparAEC )
- documentation
- direct to fabrication
- building commissioning & POE
- facility management

/7

3. Look for small, vertically integrated, design-build firms that specialize in a market or material and that leverage technology to be hyper competitive against incumbents. ( @trycanoa )

/8

They will be able to offer an end-to-end customer experience with better communication, less risk, better timelines, and lower costs because they’ve thrown out the ‘standards’ that bog down incumbents. /9

/ end. What am I missing? Who is doing these things already?