A conversation (YouTube interview) about a 'video-first' workflow for capturing expert knowledge in AEC firms: run short prep sessions, record experts performing tasks (including screen clicks), then use AI (Copilot/ChatGPT/Finch) to generate written technical guides from the recorded content. Claimed efficiency gains include roughly a 5x speed-up for writing and reductions of expert time to 1–5 hours; a detailed example (Construction Cloud project startup) is estimated to have required ~200 hours previously and can be produced from short videos with the AI producing a guide in ~1.5 hours.
Questions this video answers
Approximately 200 hours (claimed).
About 1.5 hours ("within like an hour and a half").
Reduced to about 1–5 hours of expert time (claimed).
About one-fifth the time ("a fifth of the amount of time") or greater speed-up in some cases (claims of up to 20x for expert time reductions).
Chapters
And what we're doing lately, now that we have the AI search is we actually build the video first. So you spend a short amount of time doing like a prep session. You're like, these are the things we want to go over. You get an expert on the call, they talk through it. You can actually see screen clicks, which I love. And you can actually see everything on the screen, not just what's been screenshot and written guide. And then you can use something like Copilot or chatgpt or sometimes we use like the Finch, the synthesis AI to actually write a technical guide to go with it. And so instead of asking like the Internet or like AI basically to make you a thing from the Internet, you're asking it to summarize like content that you have built yourself already. Like you've already said the things. This is how we talk about how we do things at Shepley. And then it builds the written content around it. So we've been, I did a whole thing of interviewing all the people who've been building this kind of content and they're all the same people that usually write like all our written content did a little like comparison and it's like a fifth of the amount of time to do it. And then if you think about it like your content experts don't need to edit the video. That could be someone in like a level one position or in my case like our design technology specialists. So those people, then it's even less of an ask when you're content experts. Like 20th of the time it gets it down to like 1 to 5 hours of their time. And then you have the people who are editing or consuming that content because they're watching and watching and watching while they're doing the edit. And so you're building that knowledge within someone who could become like the next as Chris likes to use.
Can you give an example, Jess, of like some of the things that used to be like 100 or 200 hour efforts for these written guides that you're now doing video first and compressing that for sure.
One of the examples is like construction cloud, like just project startup. You would have like seven or eight guides of like setting up a project. This is our folder structure. This is why things are a certain way. They are. This is how you upload a model and that can be distilled down into eight three minute videos and then you have the AI write a guide within like an hour and a half. And so even though like that one, for example, the guess is like 200 hours to write something like that. Like, that's a lot of content and it's very technical and it's a lot of screenshots. And then peer reviewing is a big part of it too. So someone having to actually, like, read through the thing, try it, see if you're missing anything. Whereas, like, the reviewing, watching a video, like, you just watch it and you do it and you're like, yeah, that, that works.
Because the writing so slow. Right? Just because you have to stop, you don't have all the stuff memorized, and you're like, doing it on one screen, writing on another, screenshotting. And then for someone to QA it, they have to actually then go do all those things too, versus if I'm watching. If you recorded it, Jess, you don't have to think about that stuff. But I'm also watching you do it. And I'm like, well, unless she completely invented a ui, I don't need you to go QA this thing. Right?
Right. I think also, like, us as technical people, we get really into, like, writing. The perfect way to describe how to do something versus, like, someone recording you do it. That's the other thing too. And I was talking a little bit with Susan at KA that the prep meeting and the facilitating is probably part of what makes it faster is you have someone who's kind of like, rather than asking someone, like, hey, you're the expert at detailing doors. Teach this class. It's like, oh, we want to run a class on these five things. Can you speak to it? And I think our people don't necessarily think. Think of themselves as experts, even though they are, but they know that they're good at specific things. So you can kind of prompt out exactly what you need them to show or say in a video really quickly, and then you just kind of make them look good, clean it up.
