Christopher Parsons (speaking in 2025) argues that AI is the next major disruptor for knowledge management in AEC firms. He emphasizes AI search and retrieval as the primary way organizations will turn captured, shared knowledge into findable answers or people who can help on specific technical questions (e.g., pipe detail, grab bar, standards).
Chapters
Here we are now in 2025 with AI arriving, and that's the next big disruptor. And every time there's been a tech disruptor, it has changed the way we manage knowledge. And so there's a lot of different ways that people are looking to use AI around knowledge management. But the big way that knowledge architecture has been thinking about it has been from AI search and retrieval. So we've captured all this good knowledge. People have been sharing knowledge, but now I want to find the thing. I've got a question about a pipe, or I've got a question about a grab bar or a standard, or who's the person I go to being able to search across all that knowledge and either find the answer or find the person who can help me, mentor me. Like whatever it is, worked on a certain project that is now what we think is really, really possible. We're seeing that in our technology. And it's really exciting because it's always been the hard part is we get at the answer. So that's kind of how we're thinking about knowledge management.