Every day, on every project, lessons are happening inside AEC firms. But without the right infrastructure, those insights often remain tucked away in meeting notes or siloed with project teams—making it likely that future teams will repeat the same mistakes on their projects.

It doesn’t have to be this way. With the right infrastructure in place, AEC firms can learn faster than one project at a time and turn individual insights into organizational knowledge.

At Affiliated Engineers, Inc. (AEI), Company Wide Teams (CWTs) provide that infrastructure. For more than 25 years, these peer-led, cross-office teams have served as the scaffolding for firmwide learning, continuous improvement, and leadership development. The idea is simple but powerful: Don’t just share lessons, learn from them—and not just as a project team, as an organization.

The structure is clear and repeatable. Project lessons are identified and prioritized during monthly CWT meetings. From there, lessons are shared across the firm through a variety of lightweight formats: curated presentations, short-form write-ups, and open technical forums. When a lesson points to a deeper need, it’s operationalized—transformed into templates, toolkits, or shared guidelines—improving how the whole firm works.

Of course, none of that happens without trust. AEI has also invested deeply in building a culture where people feel safe naming their mistakes, confident their insights will help others grow.

What follows is a look at one of the most durable and dynamic knowledge-sharing programs in the AEC industry—what it looks like in action, and what other firms can learn from it.

Over the past year, much of the conversation around AI and knowledge management in AEC has rightly focused on technology. Generative AI platforms, AI search offering, and emerging capabilities like AI agents are transforming how firms surface and share what they know. 

We’ve also spent a lot of time exploring the benefits: how AI can support emerging professionals, elevate subject matter experts, improve onboarding, streamline marketing, and accelerate learning and development, to name a few.

But one deceptively simple question from the Q&A session at the end of our KM 3.0: Connecting People to Knowledge and Expertise in the Flow of Work webinar has stayed with me:

“How is the work of AEC knowledge management teams changing because of AI?”

In many ways, that question became the organizing impulse for this issue—because KM 3.0, this new era of AI-powered knowledge management, isn’t just about technology. KM 3.0 is also about people, process, and culture, and how AI is reshaping the work of knowledge management teams.

Over the past few months, I’ve spoken with some of the most thoughtful and forward-thinking KM leaders in our community—members of Knowledge Architecture’s Research Council and others leading mature programs across firms of all sizes. 

And to be clear, not everyone doing this work has “knowledge” in their title. Across the AEC industry, we see knowledge management being led by a diverse mix of roles—knowledge managers, design technology leaders, operations directors, IT leaders, marketing and communications professionals, learning and development leads, innovation strategists, practice leaders, quality assurance directors, and even CEOs.

Regardless of their title or department, what they share is a deep investment in how knowledge flows across the firm and a commitment to making it more usable, accessible, and strategic.

What follows is a synthesis of 12 key trends—emergent patterns in how the smartest KM teams are evolving their work to thrive in this new era of AI-powered knowledge management.

The idea behind Shive-Hattery’s Plus One program is disarmingly simple: when you’re heading into a client meeting, proposal interview, or project kickoff, don’t go alone. Bring someone with you. Someone earlier in their career. Someone who wouldn’t normally be in the room. Have them observe. Encourage them to ask questions. Invite them to lead a small part of the meeting.

That’s it.

But inside that simple idea lives something incredibly powerful.

Shive-Hattery is a 600-person architecture and engineering consulting firm based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with roots dating back to 1895.

Plus One is both a knowledge strategy and an employee engagement strategy. It helps the firm transfer wisdom from senior staff, build client continuity, and develop future leaders in real time. At the same time, it helps early-career professionals feel seen, valued, and included in the real work of the firm, years before they might otherwise have had the chance.

It’s one of those rare practices that builds both business resilience and human connection.

In fact, I’d argue that’s part of why it works so well. It sits at the intersection of what firms need and what people want. Firms need succession planning, leadership development, and client coverage. People want mentorship, growth, and visibility. Plus One delivers both, and it’s exactly the kind of habit that helps a firm become a learning organization.

And because it’s lightweight, repeatable, and aligned with the natural rhythms of project work, it scales easily. 

Over the past month, I’ve been researching how the role of the AEC knowledge manager is evolving in the age of AI. One theme has come up again and again in surveys and interviews: AI literacy is quickly becoming a core responsibility of KM teams. In many firms, knowledge managers are stepping into a new role as AI educators, guides, and shepherds.

They’re the ones helping colleagues understand the art of the possible. Teaching prompting techniques. Introducing good habits like verifying sources. Navigating the messy intersections of internal data, external tools, and firm-specific workflows.

But a question keeps tugging at me:

Do we need to elevate everyone to the same level of AI fluency? Or will the future of AI learning look more jagged, role-based, and use case specific?

If you didn’t have the good fortune of meeting Ed Friedrichs before his passing in 2021, here are a few high-level facts: Ed was a visionary architect and firm leader. He played a pivotal role in shaping Gensler into the global design practice it is today. He joined the firm in 1969, founded the Los Angeles office in 1976, and served as Gensler’s President and CEO from 1995 to 2003. Under his leadership, the firm grew significantly in scale, sophistication, and ambition—while also codifying many of the cultural principles that still define it.

But for me, Ed’s legacy began long before I launched Knowledge Architecture—before I even knew what knowledge management was.

I first met Ed in 2005 at a conference called Firm of the Future, hosted by ZweigWhite. The conference brought together forward-thinking leaders to explore where the AEC industry was headed in the next 10, 15, 20 years. It was a fantastic premise, and it launched me on the path I’ve been walking ever since.

That event introduced me to firms that were being intentional about how they managed knowledge. These firms were investing in research, building systems for innovation, sharing what they learned internally, and connecting people across offices and disciplines. No one at the conference was using the term “knowledge management”—at least not that I can recall—but that’s exactly what they were doing. They were trying to make better use of what they knew.

Ed was one of the speakers at that conference. I attended his talk, then stayed afterward to ask questions. I later found him at a meal and sat next to him, eager to learn more. He was generous with his time—patient, encouraging, and deeply thoughtful.

What I didn’t fully realize until recently—when I went back and reviewed the old conference program—is that Ed didn’t just speak at the event. He chaired and designed it. He was the one who brought those people together. He shaped the experience that set me on this path.

Looking back, it all makes sense. The connecting thread running through the entire conference—the idea that architects and engineers shouldn’t only design buildings and infrastructure, but should also design their firms to be smarter—was Ed’s idea. His point of view gave the event its energy, its distinctiveness, and its sense of possibility.

That conference was the moment I first began to see knowledge management as a tool you could use to design a better business.

When Tricia Esser, KTGY’s CEO, initially brought up the idea of building a leadership development program from scratch, John Robison, COO, was skeptical.

John was already deep in the research process for leadership development programs. He had lined up a shortlist of external options: Stanford executive education, Korn Ferry programs, Vistage coaching networks. These were proven, respected, turnkey solutions. Why reinvent the wheel?

But when Tricia had a memorable conversation with a client who had built their own leadership development program in-house, everything changed.

She asked the client, "Isn’t building your own program a huge time commitment?"

The client answered: "Yes. Can you tell me something more important you're working on?"

That question landed hard.

Tricia and John realized they couldn’t entrust something this important to a third party.

That was the moment ELEVATE began.