This week's partner: Cogram - Give your team back the hours lost to project admin
Most architects didn’t spend years training to write up meeting notes and dig through email chains, yet that is where a large part of the week goes. Cogram is an AI platform built for architects and engineers that takes this work off the team’s plate. It produces meeting minutes in your own templates, files and searches project correspondence, turns dictated site observations and photos into field reports, and logs RFIs and submittals. It works alongside the tools you already use, including Teams, Outlook, Zoom and Autodesk, and it is SOC 2 Type II certified with no AI models trained on your data.
Book a demo and mention it was ADDD who referred you.
Hi there,
Both of my posts this week deal with the same question from opposite ends, which is how much of its own economics an architecture practice actually controls. The first looks at money going out, in the form of software licences tied to a handful of vendors who set both the price and the direction of travel. The second looks at value coming in, and argues that the route to better fees runs through how we work rather than how loudly we ask for more. In both cases the practices that are doing well are the ones that have stopped waiting for someone else to fix the problem for them.
Below you'll find both posts, a live session on real-time digital twins, three events worth your time before Christmas, six new tools in the ADDD Database, and a product role at a company using AI to check drawings for compliance.
Let's get into it. 👇
What Sparked the Most Discussion This Week
Software cost is becoming structurally unsustainable. Not because of too many tools, but because of a dependency on a few.
Featured Live session
From Data to Decisions: Real-Time Digital Twins in Practice
Monday 16 November, 18:00 to 19:00 GMT, online. Register here
Every architect has had a client approve the drawings, then see the finished building and say it isn't what they pictured.
Real-time digital twins are one of the ways the industry is closing that gap. In plain terms, a digital twin is a live 3D version of a building or place, often built from the same Revit or Rhino model you already have, which clients, planners and communities can explore and use to make decisions before anything is fixed.
That idea ran through From Data to Decisions, the white paper I wrote with Epic Games, and on Wednesday 4 November I am taking it further in a live session with people who build these environments for a living. Each speaker will show one project and explain what decision it supported, who made it and what would have happened without it.
Who is speaking
-/ David Munro, Cityscape Digital - whose work includes the interactive planning platform for British Land's Canada Water regeneration.
-/ Dorian Vee, Imerza - who makes the case that a twin should be treated as a living asset that informs investment decisions, rather than a one-off deliverable.
-/ Sarah Causey, Implexus Lab - whose operational twin at Argonne National Laboratory moved engineers from 2D dashboards to live sensor readings in 3D and VR.
What we will get into
After the project snapshots we will move on to the questions that usually decide whether a twin succeeds or quietly stops being used:
-/ Where the data actually lives, and how many platforms it passes through on the way to the twin.
-/ Who keeps the model current after handover, when the design team has moved on.
-/ Who pays for it, and how the value is proven to the people signing off the budget.
The session is built for practice leaders and digital leads who are being asked whether twins are worth the investment and would rather hear the answer from people who have delivered them. If there is a question you would like the speakers to answer, reply to this email and I will take the strongest ones into the session.
News & Events
What's working in Architecture? Join Allister Lewis at Digital Construction North
I will be at Digital Construction North hosting the Architects Meet Up. Join me at the Meeting Hub for an informal catch-up with fellow architects, BIM managers and digital design leads. There are no slides and no sales pitches, just an honest conversation about how practices are really using technology and AI day to day: which tools are earning their place, how workflows are changing, and where adoption tends to stall. Allister spends most weeks working inside architecture practices, so bring your questions, your experiments and whatever is working well for you.
When: Wednesday 18 November 2026, 11:00am - 12:00pm
Where: Manchester Central
Women in BIM Tech Clinic, London Build Expo
I am taking part in the new Women in BIM Tech Clinic at London Build Expo, run in partnership with Graitec. It offers one-to-one appointments with people from the Women in BIM network and the wider industry, and it is built for practical questions rather than presentations or sales pitches. I will be there to talk about workflows, early stage design and technology, so bring me your questions and we can work through them together.
When: 25th November
Where: London Build Expo, ExCeL London
Each expert only has a handful of appointments, so it is worth booking ahead, although any slots left can be taken on the day: book a Women in BIM Tech Clinic appointment
Christmas BIM & AEC London Meetup
The Christmas BIM & AEC London Meetup is a free evening of presentations, open discussion and networking with people from across architecture, engineering, construction and technology. The last one sold out with a waiting list, so this time we have opened 100 places. It is hosted by PLP Architecture and sponsored by GRAITEC UK, with snacks, drinks and perhaps a small Christmas surprise.
There are four talks this time:
Nick Johns - 2026 in Review: AEC Business Insights, Learnings and Outlook
Abhinav Chaudhary and Gizem Nalbur MacKenzie - PLP's Digital Augmentation: Mapping AI in Architecture
Allister Lewis - Before Revit: Tracing the Early-Stage Design Workflow
Tiago Santos - From Data to Design: How Information Drives Project Delivery at Grimshaw
When: Wednesday 2 December, 18:00 to 22:00 (talks start at 19:00)
Where: PLP Architecture, London
Places go quickly, so grab yours early: register here
New this week: 6 new software added to the ADDD Database
Each week I'll continue to share new software added to the ADDD Database, plus specific categories, to help you find the right solutions and stay up to date on what's emerging.
6 new tools, from AI-native design to energy modelling in the browser
Calq - A browser-based BIM modeller where you and Calq AI build a single model together, then produce plans, sections, elevations and sheets with IFC export. The full modeller is free with an account. calq.live
Dream - Automates design and engineering for commercial buildings such as offices, shopfronts and data centres, using what it calls "built world models" to produce construction-ready drawings. dreamhq.com
UNLIMITED - An AI-driven engineering and construction firm that designs and builds large industrial facilities, from energy plants to computing centres, and is paid on milestones rather than billable hours. unlimitedindustries.com
Pinocchio-EP - EnergyPlus building energy modelling in the browser, with IDF import, eQUEST conversion, DXF tracing and an automatically generated ASHRAE 90.1 Appendix G baseline for design-stage decisions. ergoenergy.in/pinocchio
Ondera - Design review and PDF markup for AEC teams on web and iPad, turning handwritten notes into tasks and site photos into punch lists. Free during Early Access. ondera.co
SpaceSync - A schematic design workspace that takes architects from site and brief to massing and presentation, with live area checking and two-way sync with Revit and Rhino. spacesync.ai
Interviews You Need to Watch
One Role Worth Noticing This Week
Freeda builds an AI-assisted compliance review platform for construction, where AI reads architectural plans and flags potential non-compliances and technical experts then validate and complete those findings. This role owns the internal platform those reviewers use every day, working out which steps the AI pipeline can take over and turning reviewer feedback into shipped features. As the listing puts it, "Our reviewers are not short of opinions about what costs them time."
→ View role: Here
See all roles here: www.aectechjobs.com/search
What this issue means for practice leaders
My reading of this week is that most practices are trying to fix their economics from the outside, by asking clients to pay more and by absorbing whatever their software vendors decide to charge next year. Both posts point the other way. When two or three platforms sit at the centre of your workflow, the cost and direction of your tools are set by someone else, and when the case for higher fees rests on frustration rather than better outcomes, the client sets the price.
The tools in this issue show what the alternative looks like in practice: Calq and Pinocchio-EP run in a browser and work with open formats, Ondera and SpaceSync let clients and reviewers in without a paid seat, and the Freeda role exists because someone took the time to understand exactly where reviewers lose their time.
The practical step is to find out where your own time and money actually go before you buy anything else. List the vendors at the centre of your workflow, what you pay each of them, and which single workflow you could move off one of them in the next six months. Then pick one recurring task that eats your team's week, whether that is minutes, reports or document sorting, and test one of the tools above against it. If you would like help doing that properly, my practice technology workshop is designed for exactly this, or you can book a 30-minute call to talk it through.
If you would like help making these decisions across the whole practice, that is what the ADDD workshop is for: a half-day session, in person or online, that looks at where technology creates friction across your workflows and ends with a written report on the problems, the priorities and the next steps. The easiest way to start is a 30-minute call.
That's it for this week.
If something in here landed - or if you disagree - reply and tell me. I read every response.
Thanks for reading!
Allister
Richard got in the bins again this week.
