Leading a Learning Organization: Lessons from Angela Watson of Shepley Bulfinch

May 20, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, I'm joined by Angela Watson, President and CEO of Shepley Bulfinch, a nationally recognized architecture firm whose work spans healthcare, higher education, and civic design. Angela leads with a conviction she traces back to her time teaching at MIT: that real learning doesn't happen through lecture — it happens through doing, through struggle, and through the kind of exploration that only comes when people are given room to fail safely and try again. That belief didn't stay in the classroom. It became the foundation for how she thinks about leading a firm.

Learning by doing is the foundation of how AEC professionals and firms develop. The problem is that great ideas stay trapped in pockets — one team figures something out, another team struggles with the same thing, and the knowledge never travels. Angela saw that dynamic playing out at Shepley Bulfinch as the firm grew into a national practice, work-sharing across five offices with project cycles too long and feedback loops too slow to rely on informal transfer alone. Becoming a learning organization became an operational necessity, but it turned out to be much harder than it looked.

The conversation traces the full arc of what that effort has looked like in practice and what Angela has learned leading it. Why it's so hard for subject matter experts to codify and teach what they know. Why the traditional apprenticeship model is breaking down as plates get fuller and mentorship gets crowded out. What Shepley Bulfinch learned from building Birdfeeder, their internal peer-to-peer learning platform — what worked, what was too ambitious, and what the firm is rethinking now. And why the harder problem isn't building a course catalog — it's connecting learning to where someone actually wants to go in their career.

The thread running underneath all of it is psychological safety. Angela talks about "Back to the Future," Shepley Bulfinch's reframe on lessons learned — a format designed to celebrate the imperfect and make it safe to share what went wrong. She reflects on what it took for her, as CEO, to model that vulnerability publicly, and why she believes culture is the soil in which any learning organization either takes root or doesn't.

If you lead an AEC firm, manage a team, or are thinking seriously about how your organization develops its people, this episode is for you. Angela offers deep insight into what's worked, what hasn't, and what is still to be figured out on Shepley Bulfinch's journey to becoming a learning organization.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

Designing Learning That Actually Improves Performance | Clark Quinn of Quinnovation

May 6, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, I’m joined by Clark Quinn, a cognitive scientist who has spent his career translating decades of learning research into practical guidance for organizations. He is the founder of Quinnovation and co-founder of the L&D Accelerator. His work is grounded in a simple conviction: most organizations are leaving enormous potential on the table — not for lack of effort or care, but because the science of how people actually learn has rarely made it into the room where learning decisions get made.

In most AEC firms, learning and development didn’t start with a formal strategy. It emerged organically. Executives responsible for talent came up through practice. L&D leaders stepped into their roles because they wanted to make their firms better, not because they were trained in the discipline. Subject matter experts shared what they know without ever having been taught how to teach.

As a result, most learning organizations in the AEC industry were largely built by accident rather than by design. And in that gap lies a significant opportunity: to create learning that doesn’t just inform, but actually improves capability and performance.

That is what this conversation is about.

Clark walks us through the science that most accidental L&D leaders never had access to. He explains why training so often stops at information transfer, what it really takes to design for performance rather than content delivery, and what the research says about learning design that actually moves the needle. We explore the shift from content-heavy training to practice-led learning, how to identify the root causes behind critical performance gaps before reaching for a training solution, and how to determine whether learning is even the right intervention.

We also step back and look at what a true learning ecosystem requires: not just courses, but performance support, job aids, communities of practice, mentoring, and the cultural conditions where learning compounds over time. Where knowledge is shared openly. Where failure is discussed. And where leadership sets the tone.

Finally, we go deep on one of the most important dynamics in any AEC firm: how to effectively work with busy and highly billable subject matter experts by drawing out what they know, pairing them with skilled learning designers, and building a coaching culture that makes expertise transferable at scale.

If you lead an AEC firm, build learning programs, or teach others what you know—and you’ve largely been figuring it out as you go—this conversation offers a foundation for doing it smarter. By design.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

The Modern Learning Organization Maturity Model for AEC Firms

April 28, 2026 Christopher Parsons

All AEC firms are learning organizations.

They have to be. From the moment a new firm takes on its first project, it begins a process of continuous learning. Learning how to deliver work, how to collaborate across disciplines, how to listen to clients, how to navigate permitting authorities, and how to translate ideas into drawings and built form. With each successive project that learning deepens and expands, shaped by new challenges, new contexts, and new people.

As firms grow, so does the scope of what they must learn. They learn how to recruit and onboard talent, how to develop people into capable and confident contributors, how to expand into new markets and take on unfamiliar project types, how to adopt and integrate new technologies, and how to navigate the broader cycles of the industry—periods of rapid growth as well as moments of contraction and uncertainty. Over time, many firms also learn how to transition leadership across generations, preserving what matters while adapting to what’s next.

In this sense, if a firm has endured—if it has grown, evolved, and remained relevant over time—it has done so by learning, continuously, and across every part of the organization.

And yet, while learning is ever-present, it is not always intentionally designed.

In many firms, learning emerges organically from the work itself. It is embedded in projects, carried through conversations, shaped by mentorship, and accumulated through experience. It is often rich and valuable, but also uneven—varying from team to team, from project to project, and from one moment in time to the next. It is deeply human, but not always structured in a way that allows the firm to scale with consistency.

For a long time, this has been sufficient. In fact, it has been the foundation of how the AEC industry has developed expertise for generations.

But the context in which firms operate is changing. The pace of work is accelerating. The complexity of projects is increasing while the timelines and budgets are shrinking. The demands on teams are growing as experienced professionals are stretched across more responsibilities, and we’re asking emerging professionals to take on more advanced tasks earlier in their careers than ever before. At the same time, new technologies, particularly those related to AI, are beginning to reshape how knowledge can be captured, accessed, and applied.

In this environment, the difference between firms is no longer simply what they know. It is how effectively they are able to learn, adapt, and apply that knowledge over time.

Over the past year, working closely with firms adopting Synthesis LMS and AI-powered search, I’ve started to notice a shift. The organizations that seem to be gaining the most traction are not just implementing new tools; they are becoming more intentional about how learning happens within their firms. They are stepping back and beginning to redesign the organization itself—how knowledge is created, how it is shared, how people develop skills, and how all of that connects to the work they do every day.

I’ve come to think of this shift as a movement from what we might call a traditional learning organization to a modern learning organization—one that is not defined by any single program or platform, but by a more deliberate and integrated approach to building and sustaining collective intelligence.

To better understand this change, I created a maturity model—one that reflects how learning capabilities tend to develop over time within AEC firms. This model begins with the foundational ways people learn through experience and interaction, and extends through more structured, scalable, and technology-enabled approaches, culminating in the emerging potential of AI-powered, just-in-time learning in the flow of work.

In the sections that follow, I’ll walk through that progression as a seven-level maturity model for AEC firms. Along the way, we’ll explore what each level looks like in practice, where it creates value, where it begins to show its limits, and how firms move from one stage to the next. We’ll also look at what fundamentally changes as organizations become more intentional in how they learn—and why the ability to learn well may become one of the defining characteristics of the most successful firms in the years ahead.

Here we go.

WEBINAR | Unlocking Collective Intelligence with AI Search and Knowledge Management @ MBH Architects

April 20, 2026 Knowledge Architecture

Featured Guests

Hillary Thompson, Principal

Webinar Summary

As AI-powered search and learning tools become more capable, their effectiveness depends on something far more fundamental: the quality, structure, and completeness of a firm’s knowledge foundation.

Over the past year, MBH Architects has advanced a series of focused initiatives to strengthen how knowledge is captured, structured, and maintained across the firm. What began as a small proof of concept quickly expanded into a broader effort spanning marketing, studio-level practice knowledge, structured project data, and now firmwide learning.

In this webinar, Hillary Thompson, Principal at MBH Architects, shares how MBH is deliberately investing in its knowledge foundation to enable better AI outcomes, improve access to expertise, and create a continuous pipeline connecting project experience, institutional knowledge, and learning.

We explore:

How MBH scoped and executed targeted knowledge capture initiatives to demonstrate early, measurable value
How capturing practice knowledge, studio standards, and best practices is becoming essential groundwork for smarter retrieval and collaboration
The role of structured project data in unlocking new possibilities for search, storytelling, and institutional insight
How MBH is beginning to translate project experience and expertise into scalable learning through Synthesis LMS
Practical strategies for communicating value, building momentum, and sustaining long-term knowledge management initiatives

This session offers a practical, behind-the-scenes look at how one firm is strengthening its knowledge infrastructure to ensure the right knowledge reaches the right person at the right time—and how that foundation is enabling the next generation of AI-powered knowledge and learning.

Enjoy!

Modernizing Learning to Scale Quality at Lionakis | Laura Knauss and Kristina Williams

April 14, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of Smarter by Design, I’m joined by Laura Knauss, President and Chief Practice Officer at Lionakis, and Kristina Williams, Director of Design Technology at Lionakis, for a conversation about how their firm is modernizing learning to scale quality and consistency across their practice.

At the heart of that shift is a deep respect for the apprenticeship model. For generations, one-on-one mentorship has been the foundation of how architects and engineers learned their craft—and it remains essential today. But as firms grow, diversify, and take on increasingly complex work, Lionakis has recognized that apprenticeship alone isn’t enough to provide the consistent, firmwide foundation that today’s environment demands.

In response, Lionakis is repositioning apprenticeship by building a more intentional and scalable learning system that ensures every team member starts from a shared baseline, while still allowing mentorship to do what it does best: helping people apply that knowledge in the context of real projects.

We explore two major shifts behind that transformation.

First, the evolution of Lionakis’s Design Technology Boot Camp. What began as long, lecture-heavy training sessions has been reimagined into a more modular, learner-centered experience built around short, focused video lessons, hands-on exercises, and live, collaborative sessions. Along the way, Kristina shares what they’ve learned about attention, retention, and how to design learning that actually sticks.

Second, we look at how those same principles are being applied beyond Boot Camp to reshape how the firm teaches practice itself. From specifications and building envelope design to programming and coordination, Lionakis is moving away from ad hoc training toward a more strategic learning roadmap that captures core project knowledge, standardizes how it’s taught, and makes it accessible across the entire firm.

The goal is both simple and ambitious: to create a shared foundation that allows any team member, in any office, to step into any project and contribute with confidence, consistency, and clarity.

What emerges is a picture of a firm learning how to operate as a modern learning organization—where knowledge, learning, and practice are tightly connected, and where investment in learning is directly tied to the quality of the work.

If you’re thinking about how to scale expertise, support the next generation of talent, or move beyond training as a one-time event, this conversation offers a clear and compelling path forward.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

Like No Other Conference

April 6, 2026 Christopher Parsons

Many AEC professionals will tell you KA Connect is their favorite conference of the year.

We asked them why.

Here’s what they said.

WATCH VIDEO

Leveraging Knowledge Management as a Competitive Advantage in AEC Firms

April 3, 2026 Christopher Parsons

Knowledge Architecture founder and CEO Christopher Parsons recently joined the Engineering Management Institute podcast to discuss how knowledge management is evolving—and why it’s becoming a true competitive advantage for AEC firms.

In the conversation, Chris explores a shift we’re seeing across the industry.

For many firms, knowledge management has historically been treated as a support function—focused on organizing content, improving access, or preserving institutional knowledge. While those capabilities remain important, they only scratch the surface of what’s possible.

Leading firms are beginning to approach knowledge management differently.

They’re using it to accelerate learning, scale expertise, and improve consistency across projects and teams. In doing so, they’re turning knowledge into infrastructure—something that actively shapes how the business operates and competes.

The discussion also touches on the role of AI in this transformation. As AI-powered search and knowledge agents become more embedded in daily workflows, the ability to connect people to the right knowledge at the right time is becoming both more achievable and more essential.

This convergence of knowledge management, learning, and AI is opening the door to a new model for AEC firms: one where institutional knowledge is not just captured, but continuously activated.

If your firm is exploring how to improve performance, reduce reinvention, or better leverage its collective experience, this episode offers a thoughtful starting point.

Watch Episode

Maximizing the Value of Learning & Development Investments | Chris and Susan of Knowledge Architecture

March 25, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, Susan Strom and I discuss The Modern Learning Organization Pipeline—a framework for helping AEC firms prioritize and maximize the return on their learning and development investments.

For decades, most AEC learning programs have relied on familiar formats: lunch-and-learns, live training sessions, and recorded presentations. But a new generation of tools—AI search, modern intranets, modular learning systems, and knowledge agents—is dramatically increasing the potential ROI of learning assets. When knowledge can be searched instantly, accessed on demand, and revisited whenever someone needs it, learning assets become far more valuable than they used to be.

That shift creates a new challenge: how do firms decide where to invest their time and energy? You can’t manage all the knowledge in your firm. So the real question becomes: which knowledge and learning investments produce the greatest return?

In this conversation, Susan and I walk through how to identify, prioritize, and design high-impact learning experiences in AEC firms using the Modern Learning Organization Pipeline.

Along the way, we explore:

Why AEC firms need to evolve into modern learning organizations
How firms can maximize the value of learning and development investments
The DESIRE framework, a practical tool for prioritizing learning opportunities
Why learning experiences should increasingly be treated like products
How firms are modernizing learning experiences for the AI era
How learning content can become searchable organizational knowledge
Why learner involvement and piloting are essential to good learning design
The rise of dedicated knowledge and learning roles inside AEC firms

Underlying the discussion is a broader idea: the industry is entering a platform shift in how knowledge, learning, and expertise are developed and distributed. As AI-powered knowledge and learning platforms like Synthesis make knowledge more accessible and reusable, the potential return on learning investments is rising dramatically. The challenge for firms is where to invest their time and energy to create the greatest impact.

If you’re leading an AEC firm and wondering where to invest in learning, knowledge, and capability building, this episode introduces a practical framework for prioritizing the opportunities that will matter most.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

Overcoming the Unspoken Barriers That Keep AEC Experts From Sharing What They Know

March 11, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In the last issue of Smarter by Design, I introduced the Modern Learning Organization Pipeline — a practical, end-to-end model for turning learning opportunities into durable capability inside AEC firms. The nine steps of the pipeline move through identifying and prioritizing learning needs, designing and delivering learning experiences, unlocking just-in-time retrieval, and ultimately to measurement and continuous improvement.

At a strategic level, the logic of the pipeline is straightforward. If firms systematically capture expertise, distribute it intelligently, and reinforce it in the flow of work, they become more capable, more resilient, and less dependent on any single individual.

But models on paper are the easy part.

The road to the Modern Learning Organization runs directly through subject matter experts — through their willingness and ability to share what they know — and through the organization’s ability to help transfer and scale that knowledge.

And this is where things get interesting.

If you ask a senior architect or engineer to document what they know, record a short course, or capture best practices from a recent project, what objection would you expect to hear?

For most people, it’s the same answer. “I don’t have time.” Or, closely related, “I’m too busy.”

Picture an iceberg. The visible portion above the waterline is what gets said out loud. “I don’t have time.” “I’m too busy.”

Those are socially acceptable objections. They are real, and they matter. But they are rarely the whole story.

Beneath the waterline sit quieter forces of the iceberg— unspoken barriers to keeping experts from sharing knowledge which revolve around identity, legitimacy, confidence, cultural norms, maintenance, and trust. Questions about whether sharing knowledge will actually improve the quality of someone’s workday. Questions about whether the effort will have an impact. Questions about whether they are truly the right person to step forward. Questions about whether the system will support them or simply ask them to do more.

If we respond only to the spoken barriers of “I don’t have time” or “I’m too busy” we miss a major opportunity to overcome more deeply-seated emotional barriers to knowledge sharing.

Over the past 25 years working in knowledge management in AEC — and through countless conversations with subject matter experts, knowledge and learning leaders, CEOs, and project teams — I’ve come to see a pattern. The resistance to sharing expertise is rarely about time. It is almost always about something deeper and more emotional.

In this article, I surface seven of those unspoken barriers. More importantly, I explore what leading firms are doing to address them — through culture, partnership, process, and modern learning infrastructure.

What Will It Mean to Be an Expert in 2030? | Christopher Myers of Johns Hopkins University

March 4, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, I’m joined by Christopher Myers, Peetz Family Professor of Leadership and Faculty Director of the Center for Innovative Leadership at Johns Hopkins University, for a wide-ranging conversation about expertise, learning, and how AI is reshaping knowledge-intensive organizations like healthcare providers and AEC firms.

Christopher studies how professionals learn from experience and from one another. Together, we explore what happens when AI becomes extraordinarily good at synthesizing information but still struggles with judgment, context, and tacit nuance. In fields like healthcare, architecture, and engineering—where decisions carry real liability and long feedback loops—the distinction between synthesis and judgment matters deeply.

We examine a growing paradox: In the near future AI may be able to perform much of the “junior work” that once served as the apprenticeship path to becoming an expert. If AI creates the slide decks, drafts the notes, checks the drawings, and summarizes the literature, how do emerging professionals gain the reps, exposure, and judgment that traditionally came from doing those tasks? And if organizations eliminate junior roles in pursuit of efficiency, what happens to the future pipeline of senior expertise?

The conversation also explores how expertise actually forms. Christopher shares his research on vicarious learning—how professionals learn from stories, informal conversations, and communities of practice—and why hybrid work may be compressing or eroding some of those learning opportunities. We discuss why informal knowledge sharing sometimes outperforms formal systems, and how simulation and AI-powered scenarios may offer new ways to scale apprenticeship in the future.

At the center of the episode is a deeper question: What will it mean to be an expert in 2030? As AI raises the “standard of care” across industries, leaders must rethink not only how work gets done, but how judgment, responsibility, and organizational intelligence are developed over time.

If you’re leading an AEC firm and wondering how AI will affect your talent pipeline, apprenticeship model, or long-term expertise, this conversation offers a thoughtful and research-backed perspective on what may lie ahead.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

Introducing Synthesis for Revit

February 21, 2026 Christopher Parsons

We’re excited to share that Synthesis for Revit will be available to all Synthesis clients at the close of business on Friday, February 27th.

Synthesis for Revit brings your firm’s Synthesis content directly into the Revit environment. The goal is simple: reduce context switching and make trusted knowledge available at the moment it’s needed without leaving Revit.

The add-in:

Opens as a dockable panel inside Revit
Automatically reflects your firm’s branding and permissions
Connects directly to Synthesis content designed for Revit users (standards, guides, learning resources, and more)

Watch this short video overview to walk through installation and configuration.

As always, thank you for the feedback that helps shape what we build.

Happy Reviting!

What the Best Synthesis Teams Do Differently | Susan Strom of Knowledge Architecture

February 18, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of Smarter by Design, I talk with Susan Strom, Chief Client Officer at Knowledge Architecture, about the patterns she’s seen across the most successful Synthesis teams. Drawing on years of implementation experience, Susan explains how great teams build momentum, lead change intentionally, and bring people into the process one person at a time.

We explore the human side of intranet, LMS, and AI Search rollouts—what strong project champions do, how they prepare their organizations, and the leadership behaviors that consistently set teams up for long-term success.

Whether you're evaluating Synthesis, preparing for a new implementation, or trying to take Synthesis to the next level at your firm, this conversation offers practical insight into what the best teams do differently.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

The Modern Learning Organization Pipeline for AEC Firms

February 11, 2026 Christopher Parsons

I believe learning and development in AEC is going to change more in the next five years than it has in the last twenty-five.

Outside of work, people have grown accustomed to immediate, searchable, personalized access to information. That experience is reshaping what they expect from learning and knowledge inside their firms.

Many AEC professionals now expect knowledge and learning to be accessible exactly when they need it, in the flow of their work, rather than scheduled far in advance. And they would like to be able to find answers to their questions on demand, without having to attend hour-long, day-long, or week-long training delivered in linear formats. That shift is being shaped by generational change, the increased pace of work, and the growing availability of on-demand and AI-enabled tools.

For the first time, AEC firms have a real opportunity to deliver the right knowledge and learning to the right person at the right time. Technology is a major part of that story—including recent advances in AI and video capture, editing, and transcription—but it’s not the whole story. The real shift will come from how firms bring together people, process, technology, and culture to support learning as a core organizational capability.

That kind of change doesn’t happen organically. It happens by design.

I believe the firms that take full advantage of this moment will be the ones that intentionally evolve into what I’ve been calling Modern Learning Organizations.

In simple terms, a Modern Learning Organization does three things:

Builds and maintains collective intelligence
Leverages technology to deliver knowledge in the flow of work
Continuously adapts and thrives in a rapidly changing environment

This issue of Smarter by Design is the first in a multipart series exploring what it means to design a Modern Learning Organization in the AEC industry.

In this issue, I’ll introduce the Modern Learning Organization Pipeline—a practical, end-to-end model for turning learning opportunities into real, durable organizational capability. The pipeline reflects my nearly 25 years of knowledge management work in AEC, insights from the Knowledge Architecture community, and lessons emerging from firms in the Synthesis LMS public beta actively experimenting with new learning approaches.

Some parts of this model reflect practices that have always mattered: thoughtful prioritization, intentional design, and continuous improvement. Other parts reflect what has changed dramatically—especially the ability to unlock just-in-time, dynamically assembled learning that meets people where work actually happens.

My goal with this model isn’t to prescribe a single “right” way forward for all AEC firms. It’s to offer a shared framework you can react to, adapt, and refine as you think about how learning really works inside your firm—and how it could work better.

Here we go.

Join Us in Exploring the Future of Learning & Development at AEC TalentMAX 2026

February 9, 2026 Coe Hoeksema

We’re excited to share that Knowledge Architecture has curated a dedicated Knowledge & Learning Management track for PSMJ’s AEC TalentMAX 2026 conference, including main stage keynote presentations, a panel discussion, and multiple breakout sessions.

AEC TalentMAX will take place May 27–29, 2026 in Austin, Texas.

The focus of our track will be on the future of learning and development in AEC. Specifically, how firms are increasingly investing in becoming modern learning organizations—which blend knowledge management, learning and development, and artificial intelligence into a more integrated and intentional approach to capability building.

If you aren’t familiar with it, AEC TalentMAX is the essential skills and strategy conference for architecture and engineering firm leaders committed to sourcing and engaging the best employees, keeping them enthusiastically engaged, and providing them with the knowledge and learning management tools they need to excel.

Christopher Parsons, our Founder and CEO, will be delivering a keynote and facilitating a main stage panel discussion. An outstanding group of KA community members will be sharing real-world insights and case studies from their firms during the breakout sessions.

We believe it’s going to be an excellent few days—thoughtful, practical, and inspirational. We hope to see you there!

Why AEC Firms Are Leveling Up as Learning Organizations Now | Turner Fleischer and Greenprint

February 4, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, I’m joined by Ellen Bensky, CEO of Turner Fleischer, and Nicole Chavas, President and COO of Greenprint Partners, for a wide-ranging conversation about what it takes to level up as a learning organization in the AEC industry.

As both firms evolve beyond primarily live and synchronous training models, Ellen and Nicole share how they’re building systems to deliver the right knowledge, to the right people, at the right time—while reducing overload and lifting the burden from learning leaders to serve as “air traffic controllers.”

We explore how integrating their learning management systems with their intranets and AI Search is helping their teams access critical information in the flow of work, as well as how that shift is also encouraging more subject matter experts to contribute knowledge, knowing it will reach the right audience at the right moment.

We also dive into the mindset shifts required to scale learning effectively. From navigating the balance between live and on-demand learning, to designing hybrid programs that combine asynchronous content with meaningful human interaction, Ellen and Nicole show how their teams are rethinking training as a design problem—one centered on empathy, access, and adaptability.

This episode is a candid, behind-the-scenes look at how two growing firms are building learning organizations that reflect the pace of modern practice, the needs of emerging professionals, and the realities of day-to-day AEC work.

If you’re grappling with learning at scale, looking to reduce information overload, or wondering how to balance video, in-person, and AI-powered tools, this conversation offers fresh insight and practical ideas.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

Introducing Stock Icon Favorites

January 29, 2026 Christopher Parsons

We’re happy to share that Stock Icon Favorites will be available to all Synthesis clients at the close of business on Friday, February 6th.

With Stock Icon Favorites, teams can mark commonly used stock icons as Favorites, create new favorites directly from the stock icon search interface, and quickly access those icons wherever they’re working. This reduces repetitive searching and helps teams build pages that are more consistent and on brand.

A quick note on permissions: Stock Icon Favorites are global, meaning everyone in your firm will see the same set of favorites. To keep things intentional, only Global Administrators and users with Branding permissions can add, edit, or remove favorites.

This is a small feature, but one we’ve heard strong requests for, and we think it will make day-to-day content creation in Synthesis just a little smoother.

As always, thank you for the feedback that helps shape what we build. We’re excited to see how your teams use it.

Introducing Advanced Project Search

January 27, 2026 Christopher Parsons

Finding the right project—whether for marketing, staffing, or learning from past work—is harder than it should be in most AEC firms.

That’s why we built Advanced Project Search—a powerful new AI Search capability in our Synthesis platform that helps teams explore their firm’s project history with far greater clarity. Whether employees are searching by project type, location, size, client, consultants, or team members, Advanced Project Search helps them find meaningful answers faster.

Advanced Project Search combines structured project data from integrations with leading AEC systems—such as Deltek, Unanet, aec360, and OpenAsset—with natural-language search. The result is AI-powered answers that reveal not just individual projects, but also their relationships with employees, clients, and collaborators.

In this short video, you’ll see how Synthesis can answer questions like:

What’s our average cost per square foot for higher education projects?
Which lab projects over 200,000 square feet have we delivered in Washington in the last five years?
Which projects have won AIA awards?
Which projects have we designed with automated humidification controls?
Which healthcare projects have we completed with LMNO Consultants?
Which architects have worked on projects in Wisconsin?
Which higher ed projects have Em Davisson and Ann Johnson worked on together with BCN Engineering?

Want to learn more about Synthesis? Let’s talk.

Schedule a demo

How Knowledge Agents Will Change the Way AEC Firms Scale Expertise and Accelerate Learning

January 14, 2026 Christopher Parsons

Imagine you’re early in your career and newly staffed on a healthcare project. You’ve been asked to help work through the onstage/offstage model for a new facility—a concept you’ve heard before, but you don’t feel fluent enough in to start designing with confidence. You know your firm has done this work many times, and you know the knowledge exists somewhere. What you don’t know is where to look or how to get started.

So you turn to your firm’s AI-powered Healthcare Knowledge Agent.

You ask a simple, situational question: What are the key considerations when designing an effective onstage/offstage model for a healthcare project? The response you get is grounded in how your firm approaches healthcare work. It draws from internal best practices, past projects, and recorded talks from senior healthcare leaders. It highlights what to pay attention to early, where teams often run into trouble, and how different decisions affect patient experience and staff workflows.

Along the way, it points you to specific internal resources—an upskilling video on healthcare planning, linked directly to the exact moment where this concept is discussed; a standards page that captures onstage/offstage best practices; and a case study from a past project that shows how these ideas come together in the real world. If you want to go deeper, you can. If you just need enough context to start shaping a design direction, you have it.

Later that week, you’re asked to begin contributing to an imaging suite—something you’ve never worked on before. You ask the Healthcare Knowledge Agent what’s important to consider. Again, the agent synthesizes the firm’s best thinking, pulling together insights from different people, in different formats, shared at different times. And when follow-up questions move into territory it can’t answer with confidence, it doesn’t pretend otherwise. It clearly signals the limits of its knowledge and points you to the right subject-matter experts to answer the hard questions.

You’re able to stay in the flow of work—learning as you go, making progress, and building confidence.

Now imagine the same moment from the other side of the equation.

You’re one of the firm’s healthcare leaders. You’ve spent years building deep expertise through projects, research, and mentoring. You care deeply about developing the next generation, but you also know how often your time is consumed by answering the same foundational questions—important questions, but repeatable ones. Questions that interrupt deep work and pull you away from clients, strategy, and the harder problems that really need your attention.

By contributing to your firm’s digital knowledge base—through interviews, recorded talks, and curated guidance—your expertise becomes accessible on demand, 24/7, in a form that’s contextual, searchable, and connected. When emerging professionals come to you with questions, they’re better informed and more specific. Your time is spent mentoring at the right level, serving clients, advancing the firm’s thinking, and continuing to add new insights that strengthen the firm’s collective knowledge over time.

In short, your expertise has been leveraged so you can have more impact and your firm’s emerging professionals can develop faster.

Once you can imagine this working in healthcare, it’s not hard to extrapolate the same pattern applying elsewhere—whether that’s a Sustainability Knowledge Agent helping teams navigate materials and approaches, or a Revit Knowledge Agent supporting designers while freeing design technology teams to focus on innovation. Across disciplines, the dynamic is the same: expertise scales, learning accelerates, and the organization gets smarter.

This vision explains why Knowledge Agents will be the next major pillar in the Synthesis platform, alongside Intranet, LMS, and AI Search capabilities.

In this issue of Smarter by Design, I’ll take you deeper into how Knowledge Agents will work, what processes and cultural habits will make them successful, and how you can begin to lay the foundation for their arrival later in 2026.

Redesigning Learning for the Next Generation of AEC Talent | Dan Hottinger and Kari Shonblom of BWBR

January 6, 2026 Christopher Parsons

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, I’m joined by Dan Hottinger, Principal and Director of Professional Services at BWBR, and Kari Shonblom, Knowledge Manager at BWBR, for a deep conversation about how their firm is redesigning learning to meet the realities of today’s AEC industry and the expectations of the next generation of talent.

Dan and Kari take us inside BWBR’s Landmark Learning program, a decade-long effort to help emerging professionals build judgment, confidence, and technical fluency faster than experience alone would allow. We explore how BWBR uses quality assurance (QA) and construction administration (CA) feedback loops to identify recurring gaps in practice, translate real project issues into targeted learning, and continuously evolve what and how the firm teaches technical skills to emerging professionals.

Along the way, we talk about how learning itself is changing. As the next generation of AEC professionals has grown up searching first, watching short-form videos, and expecting knowledge on demand, BWBR is rethinking traditional training models. Dan and Kari share how the firm is experimenting with shorter, more focused content while preserving the value of longer, story-driven sessions where context, judgment, and tacit knowledge can be shared.

The conversation also explores a hybrid approach to learning: pairing on-demand resources with live discussion, designing learning paths that evolve across career stages, and connecting technical instruction with the softer skills—such as communication, leadership, and decision-making—that become critical over time. At the center of it all is a simple but demanding idea: learning only matters if it shows up as improvement in the work.

This episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at how learning, QA, and career development can be woven into a single system that allows BWBR to develop talent from within, adapt to changing expectations, and build resilient expertise over time.

If you’re thinking about how your AEC firm can redesign learning for a new generation, connect knowledge management to real project outcomes, or move beyond training as a one-off event, this conversation is for you.

▶ Watch or Listen

Watch or listen to this episode via YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

📺 🎧 YouTube
📺 🎧 Spotify
🎧 Apple Podcasts

NEW FEATURES | Synthesis Voice Search + Continue Watching

January 5, 2026 Christopher Parsons

We’re excited to announce that two new features are coming to Synthesis at the end of the day on Friday, January 9th: Voice Search and Continue Watching.

Below is a quick overview of what’s coming.

Voice Search

Voice Search lets you interact with your firm’s knowledge in a natural, conversational way.

You can use Voice Search for:

Simple keyword searches
Longer, more conversational questions
Exploratory or multi-part queries where you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for yet

Voice Search works on both web and mobile and it supports follow-up questions so you can refine your search as you go.

Watch a short demo here.

Pro Tip: When you’re finished speaking, you can press Enter / Return on your keyboard to submit the search immediately.

Continue Watching

We’ve also added Continue Watching for videos across the platform.

Since September 23, 2025, Synthesis has been tracking video progress behind the scenes. With this update, that progress becomes visible and actionable.

What this means for you:

Videos now remember where you left off
A progress bar appears on videos you’ve started watching
You can easily resume unfinished videos or see which ones you’ve completed

This applies to all videos in Synthesis, and it’s especially useful as firms continue to use video more heavily for training, onboarding, and learning programs.