Power Platform AI in AEC: Your Virtual Design Assistant

Like most AEC firms, you likely have an extensive library of requirements that guide your design work: legal parameters, client specifications, internal standards, and more.

As your firm grows, this library can quickly become unwieldy. Your design guidelines will likely expand and evolve daily as new legal, internal, or client-driven standards emerge. How do you ensure that these evolving standards guide your designers on all projects? You need a Design Assistant.

Let’s consider how this technology might transform efforts for a firm working on a project in the City of Dallas, where the official Street Design Manual spans a full 250 pages. Instead of relying on one or two team members who may have years of experience with that specific manual — or requiring another team member to spend hours digging through hundreds of pages of municipal regulations — you could simply ask the Design Assistant any question that arises as your team executes the project.

Here’s how it works:

• Navigate to the app’s home screen and enter your specific question.
• Get an answer.
• A link to the source document is provided, allowing you to easily verify the information or find additional context.
• Ask follow-up questions as needed to get the exact answer you need.
• Unlike some AI technologies like ChatGPT, the Design Assistant searches your firm’s internal library of approved guidelines and specifications. Your teams get results that are accurate and curated directly from your own data, not the public Internet.

Let’s see it in action:

Our aec360 team’s Design Assistant is just one example of how Microsoft’s Power Platform  and AI tools can give your firm a competitive edge and save your team hours of busy work. Imagine the opportunities that it presents in other areas of design, regulatory compliance, marketing, human resources, accounting, project management, and more.

With minimal effort from your IT department, low/no-code applications like the Design Assistant allow your teams to build solutions for any challenge. Working with a consulting firm like HSO can help your teams make the most of these advanced capabilities and successfully launch a suite of custom-designed apps to improve efficiency, accuracy, quality, and productivity.

Reach out to HSO today to find out how we can help your AEC firm take advantage of AI-driven technology and the full spectrum of Power Platform functionality.