"Affiliated Engineers was searching for a knowledge management platform that would allow for a more seamless technical exchange of information across our 19 offices. We wanted to culturally and professionally better unite our 700+ employees.

We have found that we can improve the quality of our design processes and design results by sharing our ideas for engineering approaches and project solutions across an audience much broader than that in any given local office. Synthesis has allowed for better transparency of our challenges and our successes with projects, with clients, and with the overall professional growth of our firm.

The interface between Synthesis and Deltek Vision allows us to connect people and projects in a readily accessible format with relatively little active management of the process. Our activity stream and wiki pages are also alive with constant input from our firmwide team. And, personally, my favorite is the mobile app, which allows me to access direct contact info to each and every colleague while I am on the go.

Many AEC firms could benefit from the convergence of knowledge exchange that occurs with technical, marketing, and firm culture content."

— Krista Murphy, Principal

Engineering
400 Employees
10 Offices

"As part of our strategic planning process we realized that in order to achieve our strategic goals we would need to create a better internal communications network where information could flow easily to everyone and from everyone.  We also wanted to do a better job of managing AKF’s knowledge capital. Synthesis offered us the opportunity to address both needs and more.

Synthesis has allowed us to accelerate achievement of our strategic goals and has helped us build a more robust community across our different offices. We have also found that our staff has quickly embraced the platform and have connected with each other on many topics, from serious to personal. It has helped our various offices feel more connected with each other. 

Synthesis has had a profound impact on our firm. The support provided by Knowledge Architecture has been exceptional and we appreciate how they involve us in the continued evolution of the Synthesis platform."

— Rob Diemer, Partner

"First and foremost, the most valuable feature of Synthesis is the ability to link the members of the firm across offices, departments, and disciplines. Second, Synthesis provides a platform for knowledge sharing and management that we just didn’t have before. We expect our intranet to improve our work product and efficiency over time and provide real and measurable dividends. The fact that anyone can contribute content is also very important. On our previous intranet only a few people had access to add content and the process could take a while. With Synthesis everyone can contribute. Our focus has shifted from managing often out of date content to curating current content. We have more information available to everyone and a place where people can ask questions if content isn’t available and get a response.

 It can seem daunting at first to take on a whole new intranet, however the implementation process with Knowledge Architecture was great, and as we got into it, it was liberating to be able to start something fresh and dump all the old legacy content that we didn’t need. We were unsure how the staff would take to the whole new version, but in the past 6 months they have exceeded our expectations for adapting to the platform. They quickly took to sharing information via posts and have made our intranet the starting place for information — not the last resort."

— Shannon Kaplan, Operations

Design + Planning
175 Employees
3 Offices

"We have recommended Knowledge Architecture and Synthesis many times. Synthesis has been a catalyst for change in our firm. We consider the team at KA to be our strategic partners and trusted advisors."

— Luanne Greene, President

Architecture
80 Employees
2 Offices

"WARNING: Knowledge Architecture is posing as a software company but really carries the torch to brighten the path to unlock the power of sharing practices and building internal communities.

KA’s support and implementation team is outstanding. They are not just selling software. Through regional conferences, workshops, and individual sessions they helped us understand the "why" and worked with us on the "how" to improve not only our Intranet, but bring us closer to being a learning organization."

— Bill Spaulding, Director of Education

Architecture + Interiors
165 Employees
3 Offices

"One of the “features” if you can call it that of working with Knowledge Architecture and subscribing to Synthesis is you get support.  A real person who understands your business, takes the time to learn about your specific practice and works with you to ensure you are getting value out of the product. This resource and our relationship with Knowledge Architecture has been more than just helping us utilize a piece of software, but has helped us build a culture of learning, knowledge sharing, thought leadership, and research in practice."

— Pete Smith, President & CEO

"One of the largest impacts for us is the networking and knowledge sharing within the Knowledge Architecture community. Through connections we have made at KA Connect, KA Advance, and the online communities – we have learned, and continue to learn, from others in the broader AEC community

I struggled for years to find my “tribe” of others interested in or already doing Knowledge Management (KM). Knowledge Architecture made the connections easy and offers numerous opportunities to stay connected in this growing community. Being a mid-sized firm, we see Knowledge Architecture as a key member of our KM team. They help to accelerate our initiatives, encourage improvement projects (and even give us the playbook for projects!), and serve as our accountability team (who couldn’t benefit from that!)."

— Stefnee Trzpuc, Principal, Finance and Operations Leader

Engineering + Planning
130 Employees
2 Offices

"I think when we look back 20 years from now, implementing Synthesis will be one of the defining moments for Civiltech. What we're doing here, how we're changing the way that we work — we will be able to work it all back to our partnership with Knowledge Architecture.

Knowledge Architecture is selling more than a product. It's more than Synthesis. They're educating us. They're keeping us up-to-date on the latest and the greatest in knowledge management — what works in our industry, and what doesn't. We have an opportunity to see what their other clients are doing, and how what they've implemented is working out for them. I also love coming to KA Connect. I get to hear from knowledge management theorists and get a global perspective, and I also get to see speakers drill down specifically into how knowledge management is working in the AEC industry.

Civiltech is in its 30th year of business, and in the 20 years that I've been here, this partnership has left the largest impact on our organization in terms of affecting how we work."

— Kyle Mishler, Director of Operations

"The big feature for us is that everyone can contribute, everyone has a voice. Back in the days of the static intranet, before Synthesis, you had to email somebody that had posting access to push it out. If collaboration was happening, it was happening in groups, not across the company. We weren't capturing knowledge and saving it. We were not able to reuse our knowledge at a future date.

Synthesis has revolutionized the way that we work now. We have a great concept of working out loud, which is something that was not happening with our previous solution. Output has significantly increased because we now have the ability to share, to work out loud, and to collaborate.

And it's accessible anywhere — via phone, at home, and in the office. Our static intranet wasn't a tool, it was just something that existed. Synthesis is a true tool for us."

— Meredith Wuellner, Marketing Manager

Architecture, Engineering, Interiors, and Planning
1,200 Employees
30 Offices

"We bought Synthesis after a year-long search for a solution to a big strategic directive — 'create a rich knowledge sharing platform.' This big idea was part of a VISIONing session we did as a firm and became one of five strategic priorities we created for the firm.

We were a growing firm — demographically, financially, geographically, institutionally, and intellectually. We needed a tool that could mine, organize, and communicate data of all kinds to share with our entire workforce. I needed a way to create a transparent communication tool that all of our staff would utilize and benefit from.

Today our Synthesis platform is the centerpiece of our digital sharing culture in so many ways. This tool has helped to create a strong and consistent brand, has enabled hundreds to participate and share on a daily basis, and is our digital portal for most everything in our business.

Synthesis has changed the way we use and share information. It changed the frequency and consistency of our knowledge sharing. It spawned the addition of a core value of our firm — SHARING! It changed our culture!"

— Griff Davenport, Chief Executive Officer

"We were trying to forge a unified identity as one firm — a single DLR Group brand. There was this vast source of unexploited knowledge and experience trapped in offices and design teams that was not easily accessible by our staff. We all knew the information was out there, but people did not know who or where to go for information. We believed the solution was a robust intranet that could link offices, studios, disciplines, and people across the firm. Knowledge Architecture had developed a platform that met our needs.

Synthesis stitches the operational needs and strategic vision of the enterprise together with the nuance native to local offices and project teams and the result is a more connected design culture. It's where 1,200 people become one design firm."

— Andy Ernsting, Brand Communications Leader

Architecture + Engineering
825 Employees
10 Offices

Architecture + Engineering
900 Employees
40 Offices

"For the AEC  industry, an intranet that integrates industry-standard software, provides a collaborative space, and makes data easily accessible, without the need to know complex database searching — guided by a company that is committed to developing your company’s organizational learning —  is more than worth the price of admission. Our company has benefited in ways well beyond an awesome intranet. We're more connected, continue to build accessible knowledge bases, have easy access to project and employee information, and people are building their personal brand and enhancing their careers by being visible and engaged in sharing stories, lessons, and innovations.

Knowledge Architecture is not about selling software; they’re about developing a premium product and providing the resources to improve your organizational development. Plus, Chris (Knowledge Architecture's CEO and Founder) remembers the name of my boat. You don't get that from Bill Gates!"

— Pat Peyton, Knowledge Manager

Architecture, Interiors, Landscape Architecture, and Preservation
175 Employees
5 Offices

"In 20 years, Synthesis is the best investment we have made to impact culture and communication in our firm."

— Tony Steinhardt, Partner and Strategic Development Officer

Architecture
175 Employees
4 Offices

"We named our Synthesis intranet Finch. Many of our colleagues wonder how we existed before Finch, which is now a verb. 'Why don't you Finch that?' 'Share that on Finch!' 'Ask Finch!' It is almost as if the persona has become our version of 'you should Google that'!

Since we began, Knowledge Architecture has given us a shared platform to feel like we are truly one firm. Synthesis helps us learn from each other and share the great things happening in our projects and with our clients. People know each other even though they are thousands of miles apart and celebrate in each other's work, play, learning, and sharing."

— Carole Wedge, President

"#AskFinch is a mechanism for employees to ask questions and get answers from the rest of the firm using Finch (our Synthesis intranet). Any time anyone asks me, 'Can you validate the value of Finch?', I simply point to the 1200 questions and answers that we've banked in Finch via our #AskFinch process. These questions and answers are now available for all of our employees going forward amplifying the value of the effort of asking and answering them.

In my experience, Knowledge Architecture is unique among enterprise software providers in the AE space. Between the robust client community they've cultivated, all-inclusive on-boarding support, evolving best practices, and usage analytics, the tools they provide to help us drive adoption of Synthesis in our business are outstanding. If more of our partners in software development adopted this model, we would be so much better off."

— Jim Martin, Chief Information Officer

Architecture + Engineering
210 Employees
2 Offices

"I cannot overstate this point — the SMMA/KA connection has been transformative for our firm. They are the partner that wants SMMA to succeed as much as I do. With KA, I like to say, 'You come for the software, but you stay for the community.' 

We have had Synthesis for approximately 6 years now. When we launched, we wrote a welcome statement on the home page that is still there today. I believe that statement is a testament to the platform and encompasses why we value the tool. It reads, 'Welcome to the Hub — a resource portal and digital forum to help facilitate sharing of best practices, cultivation of ideas, propagation of strategy, and celebration of our people and practice.'

KA and the community they nurture have helped us improve in so many ways. We are extremely lucky to work with such good people."

— Ryan Farias, Director of Marketing