The speed of change in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is ever-increasing. Proliferation of computation in architectural design, exploration of eliminating waste in design and construction, and new construction techniques are all changing how we work.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the need to partner with clients early in a highly responsive design environment where fabrication intelligence is built in, project-specific research can be applied, and true innovation can be realized. The need to articulate constructible design solutions with clarity, allowing downstream cost and schedule certainty, is also still relevant to how we work, as is being responsive and engaging in meaningful communication throughout the team.

A firm’s migration to a digital practice is a disciplined undertaking where we continue to provide those things that have not changed, in an industry that is continually evolving. By leveraging data-driven workflows, we explore with our clients more options in more depth than ever before. By automating information flow from design and analysis through documentation, we make better decisions, collaborate more, and are more responsive to project developments. With a data-centric approach, providing our construction partners with helpful information becomes easier.

But that’s not enough — digital delivery is only an amplifier. Good design can be digitally informed, but great design is disciplined and engages human ingenuity and experience. Ours remains a people-based industry with personal relationships, trust, teamwork, and communication at its core. By becoming more digital, we can focus on working more closely with our clients to solve new challenges, becoming more lean, concentrating on value at every step of a project, and are free to apply our cumulative knowledge and insight to improve project outcomes. By becoming more digital, we become more personal, deepening and expanding our cherished client relationships.