Rethinking SOPs in AEC Delivering the Right Process at the Right Time with AI Search

Yeah, I wanna build on something you were talking about, Ellen, on, uh, the SOPs. PSMJ just recently had some bold statement that the SOP is dead. And I actually, I disagree. I think AI search is bringing back the SOP and I'm, I'm actually seeing the value. I'm just, I'm starting to see how it all fits together where you need these detailed processes. Yeah. They're essential and I do not expect anyone to ever read them, but AI search makes whatever you need from them accessible. At any time and you can just focus on what you need. And then that also has been influencing how I'm thinking about doing trainings because I think in the past I would have done a training like, okay, here, I'm, I'm just basically reading you the SOP because I, this is my moment to get you to understand the SOP. And now I can give a training that's a little bit higher level, a little bit more about the why, why is this important? Here's an overview of how it all works. And now that you've got that in your brain, you have the SOPs, you have the toolkit, and you can now dig deeper in that if you want because you're so pumped up about this, or, you know, you can use AI search to get to the specifics when you're ready for it. And I see it as this whole bigger picture of the detailed SOPs, the AI search, and then higher quality, higher level trainings that focus on the why instead of the how.

And that person, if they're not applying that SOP today, What's the point in teaching the detail of it anyway? Like, it's just going to— it's just a waste of energy. I couldn't agree more with you that the SOP is alive and well for another reason that you didn't bring up. As we start having more agentic employees in our workplace, like if we ever want agents to be able to help us do work, you've got to teach the agent the SOP. Like even more important than an employee. In order for agents to work, they have the context, they have to know what good looks like. You have to teach them the way you want to work. So you get this double benefit of really explaining how your firm works and standardizing. It helps employees have more clarity, but it also helps the AI agents of the future have more clarity.

And to that, Chris, if you've got AI on top of it all, and you've got the subject matter experts talking about the why in the LMS and people, you know, and then you've got the wikis that are getting into the details of it, you've got everything that you need. Right, for people to get the, the knowledge that they need. And Nicole, for you, as a growing organization, as you continue to add people and you continue to have more complex processes, what better way to onboard them to what's unique about Greenprint than be like, hey, you know, take these 3 learning paths over here and then take a look at these documents over here, and boom, you've got somebody who's got both and can hit the ground running way faster. And that's where, you know, it, it never ends. Like even at the size I am, every time we onboard somebody, you can just imagine we have a lot of processes and there's a lot of whys. Why do we do things in this unique way? And I am so excited to be able to have all of that and to be able to have people and even people that have been here a long time. So I have the reverse problem because we've been around for so long