April 19, 2025 • 23 secs
Charles Corley traveled to Singapore via Hong Kong to start a new chapter over thirty years ago. He stepped off a night train into a bustling world heretofore only seen on a big screen at the cinema. Charles is not afraid of change, he embraces the new.
As Director of Development at M Moser and Associates, Charles and their global teams are leveraging 3D modeling, virtual reality, and cross-disciplinary collaboration to bring workplaces to life, not only as a ‘show’ deliverable, but as the centerpiece for the entire design process, start to finish. Sitting in Singapore, with visibility on project around the world, Charles has a unique vantage to learn about what works, and why.
Even more intriguing, Charles has used ChatGPT every day since it was launched in November 2022. Every day. Looking for ideas on how to get started with AI. Already started, but not sure how to get more value at work. You will love, Love, LOVE this episode and Charles’ AI discovery and current state. Kudos to Moira Moser for making the investment in all at the organization having access to the entire suite of AI tools.
Please join me in welcoming Charles Corley to the Work 20XX podcast
Charles also reminds us how far we’ve come from ‘Sick Building Syndrome’ to a focus on wellness, sustainability, and creating an environment for people to do their best work. Engagement and Adaptability are key words.
Editor's note: There was some unexpected maintenance happening in an adjoining unit in Singapore, so you might hear some banging and sawing and drilling here and there, but I assure you, everyone is ok, and the redo looks smashing.
Thank you Charles.
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(00:00):
All right,so then
I will count us down
and we will go
in three, two, one.
Hey welcome back everybodyJeff Frick here
coming to youfrom the home studio
for another episodeof ‘Work 20XX’
And we know workplace isundergoing this tremendous,
you know,kind of transformation.
It's hard to believeit's been five years
since Covidreally accelerated
(00:21):
a bunch of processesthat were already underway.
And I'm really excitedto have somebody join us today
who's kind of at the cuttingedge of what's happening
in workplace design,
what's happening and best practices.
And he's coming to usactually from the future,
which we can all have a glimpseinto the future from Singapore.
So joining us through the magic of the internet
over the Pacific Ocean.
He's Charles Corley the Director of Development
(00:42):
for M Moser and Associates
Charles great to see you.
Well it's great to see you again. Yes.
So give me some good news on the future.
How's it lookover there.
Oh, it's you got to wear shades.
it, you know, it looks
It looks good.
Until AI is our overlord,
I think we're going to see huge benefits.
You know, I think that the conversation has shifted really from,
(01:05):
what you describedjust now from
from Covid and,you know
I think the, return to office mandateshave been thoroughly analyzed.
The evidenceis there.
People have been ableto push back.
So we're on to something else now.
I hope so.
I tried tomake a
make a creed me and all my other
kind of future of workplace people in 2025
we’re not going to talk about RTO. [return to office]
(01:26):
We're not going to talk about mandates.
We're not going to talk about days in the week.
We're just going to talk about workand try and redesign work.
But let's get into it.
And I've, you know,
you guys really at the top level, I think as
is it's really about design.
And you guys havea really comprehensive
kind of design processand strategy
as you saidall the way from
(01:46):
from starting from zero into goingand trying to do a remodel.
And what's interesting,you've got a bunch of cool little videos
you're posting on LinkedIn right now
for people should to go out
and check them out.
And what's interesting is you'retouching on all these kind of
attributes of good designand objectives of good design
that are not, so many buttsper square feet.
(02:06):
You know, they're not kind ofwhat I would imagine was kind of
classic utilizationcost numbers.
But really, I think the biginteresting transformation,
which has been across IT[information technology]
and all these other departmentsthat used to be considered,
you know, SGA[Selling, General, and Administrative]
nobody wants to be SGA anymore, right?
We have to be contributingto the fundamental business
and in the place of workplace.
(02:28):
I think what's really kind of
been inspiring for people who are on the cutting edge
is, you know,
we want to create the environment
for people to do the best work of their lives.
[Jeff] And that's a really different[Charles] For sure
objective than just tryingto squeeze a bunch of butts
in seats and maximize that.
And so you've gotall these cool little videos
they’re like a couple minutes long.
And I just want to talk about
(02:48):
some of the themes that are design themes that are all in
congruent with business objectives,
but they're not all business objectives.
But let's just startwith the business objectives.
And you talk about,strategy goals and utilization
and productivity,not just pure efficiency.
So when you talkabout the business goals,
do you get pushback when you'restarting one of these projects
(03:10):
with a senior person that says,
‘Is this really going to help our business goals?’
Or am I just spendinga bunch of money
on design, where you know,
[ Jeff] I’d rather spend that money on something else?[Charles] oh no.
No, that's a big part of their concern.
The people we work with,
quite often CRE leaders or leaders of workplace or whatever
have a verycomplex job to do,
and they, they have so many stakeholders,
(03:32):
and any oneof them
can push back andcriticize what they're doing.
And especially in thelarger corporations,
it's a minefield.
The strategy and business objectivesare very much a part of it
because everybody'sgoing to critique what
this person's trying to achievefor the company.
So yes, we get involvedin that very deeply.
(03:52):
And that's really,strategy is not static either.
Strategy keeps dynamicallychanging all the way through.
And updating.
So it's it’s a big part.
They don't mind,discussing that in detail.
And you're right, it's not so much about
number of tables and seatsand so forth.
Because, well,the workplace itself is,
(04:16):
has changed to be something
that's more of a hub,more of a destination.
And not everybody is assigned necessarily a table.
Well, let's back up a stepbecause I think you're right.
Maybe we should have started there.
Like, do people understandthat the objectives,
the purpose of a workplacenow is different
because, right, the original officeswere modeled like factories
where paper were like widgetscoming down the line.
(04:37):
And you took your piece of paper
and you did yourprocess to it
and you passed itto the next person.
And that's reallywhat offices are.
And the file cabinetswere there.
And the reason to go to the office
was to actually do work.
Right.
The phone was there, the mailwas there, the files are there.
That's not the case.
So how are people really thinking about
what is the purpose of the office that
That's really,you know
(04:57):
they're spending a lot of money.
It's a big investment.
What is the purpose of office?
The purpose has become more cultural
and more about who they are and
I think that the,
there's a draw to still come to the office
for different reasons.
Now, I don't like talking intoo much generality because,
businesses are so varied,so very different.
(05:18):
Things like consultanciesand knowledge work,
and often teamwork,
these teams can be close knit.
They have to work together
quite carefully a lot of detail.
If that’s not your kind of business,maybe you can be very dispersed.
But I see a lot of peoplestill coming to the office.
Not because they're forced to,
but because they needthat interactive teamwork.
(05:40):
But also, I see,
especially in Asia,
that has a fairlyyoung workforce,
I see people comingthere because they
they want to be part of something.
They want to seecolleagues their age,
they wantto interact,
they don't want to be
just isolated at homeor some other place.
It's interesting.
Tracy Hawkinswho's now at OpenAI,
and she was atTwitter before,
(06:00):
their global workplace person.
She said,
workplace is the physical manifestation of culture
And you know, it was interesting
when I was trying to pull that quote earlier today
she mentioned culturein our interview
like 50 times whenI did a word count.
And you've talked about
why do people wantto come together
in this whole concept of,
you know, kind of a honey versus vinegar?
How do you make it attractive?
What do you put there
(06:21):
that makes peoplewant to come to the office?
So we're not talkingabout mandates,
but we're talking about a placethat offers an alternative
kind of set of solutions and activities
that you can't do at home.
And maybe you can't dosome other places.
Well, the office isn'tjust space anymore.
It's the embodimentof culture, ethos, purpose.
I wouldn't overdothe cultural part
(06:42):
and things need to get done.
It needs to help peopleget their work done.
But we're also seeinga lot of people who are
entering the workforcewho are tech savvy
and our spaces before weren’tresponding to their needs.
There's adimension that is,
cultural and purpose driven,
but there's also one of generational differences
(07:03):
and the way we work
and the flexibility in the way we work.
So it's getting,
it's getting interesting.
[Charles] Sorry, I'm not [Jeff] So there’s a lot
sure I answered your
I’m not sure I answeredyour question, but.
Well it's, well you've got it again on your little list
you’ve got fostering some of these softer things
that support the bigger business things
So for instance, creativityand innovation.
(07:23):
So what are some of thedesign tips and tricks
and things that you've seen that do encourage more,
innovation and creativity?
Yeah, it's a good questionbecause I help our own company
change and adaptto those things to.
When people, are having meetings, they're often ad hoc now.
There are meetingsthat do need privacy.
(07:44):
That do need, seclusion.
As people are working in different areasand not tied down to a desk,
to get together briefly and have a, a huddle.
And you need to havethat technology
in different spotsall around,
ready to go
ready to be available not justfor the people in the room,
but their other colleaguesthat are going to be,
(08:07):
coming infrom other places.
So you're meeting peopleand collaborating with people
that are both thereand also remote.
Right?
So the space needs to betechnology enabled.
And the fact that everybodyis not sitting in neat rows
allows you to do new thingswith the space
that you weren't able to dowhen it was just rows of desks.
(08:28):
Now the rows of deskare not gone,
but they're greatly reduced.
Right, right.
The other thing we hear a lotabout is activity based,
you know, activity based spaces
[Jeff] that are really designed around[Charles] well that’s what I was getting at
I didn't use the term,
but that's exactlywhat I was getting at.
Yeah, I was going to say, or
has it evolved to kind of beyond activity to more.
I don't want to pull you downa general purpose vocabulary,
but, you know, a little bitmore specificity around that.
(08:51):
And thinking about the usesof particular spaces for,
for what peopleare going to use them for.
I always find it'sgood to have,
dedicated spaces for certain kinds of teams that need to do work.
The word workspace can be a lot of things
When we were, say, for example,
designing Dyson’snew headquarters,
which is in a beautifulold renovated,
(09:12):
not factory, it's a power plant, actually.
They had alaboratory as well.
So obviously that's goingto be a dedicated space, right?
Because they're inventing things, so they’re
and they're,testing things,
but they also have highly collaborative,
flexible spaces.
So it depends on the typeof work that people are doing.
And there's a mix there.
(09:33):
You have to really understandget very deep into,
not just the cultural aspects,which are very important,
but,
the functionality, how peopleare actually doing their work.
I'm in a unique position, right?
My role gives me a
a global sort of disciplinary lens
to look at these things.
And although I'm not tellingwar stories anymore my focus is,
(09:54):
more on shaping methodologies.
And what I see is people having to
make a lot of decisionsearly on in their project
about how they're goingto tackle these issues.
And then, it can be hard to decide
how much to dedicatethis space to this function
and how much to do that,and how much should be flexible
and what the mix is,and even how many people
(10:16):
are workingfrom home and
It's a quitea dynamic thing.
So it's a
it can be a little scary for our clients
to get that mix right
and a
to do it usually to a
a fast timetable.
That's the challenge they haveand one we help them with.
Yeah.
So I know one of the tricksof the trade that you use a lot is
is visualizationand, you know,
(10:38):
and using 3D toolsto basically create
fancy renderings or I don't know what the right,
the right vocabulary word isof the space and the design.
I wonder if you could sharehow the use of digital tools
to enable you to have moreof an iterative approach
and more of a collaborative approachthroughout the whole process,
because, like you say,
there's a lot of balls in the air
between jugglingyour in-person people,
(10:58):
your remote people,
you know, all the different,
you know, as you say,stakeholders that have,
have their fingers in the pie
Mixing up my metaphors
You mentionedthe beautiful renderings.
And yes, it used to bethat 3D was a deliverable.
Give me somebeautiful pictures
rendered of whatmy place would look like.
But now it's how we collaborateall the way through.
(11:19):
Gone are the blueprints.
Now we have, virtual realityis the way we handle
project development
from the start, when we're having the strategic meetings
all the way to the end and
every detail through there.
So it's a completevirtual experience.
It's what we used to call‘What you See is what you Get.’
So you can actuallyimmerse yourself in that.
(11:40):
And you can do itfrom any distance.
So the clients, the contractors,
the people, the specialists,
everybody who has a part to play,
you know, on the same page and,
not have any blind spots.
They can see,
how things are going,what their,
how their work is affecting everybody,
how their decisionsare affecting the space
(12:00):
in a very natural way, really.
It's the waywe were
we were designed to look at things.
[Jeff] Is how [Charles] Not text and drawings
And how hasthat changed?
What has just the technologycome down?
Has there have been somesome breakthrough applications?
Is it ease of sharing?
Is it,is it cloud based?
What has kind of driven the change
from the old architects,looking at
(12:21):
that things that only architects can love
to actually sharing with work groups,
you know, 3D renderingsof what we might potentially do
and asking themfor their feedback.
Yeah. I think the,experts might
have a varied opinion from my own,
but I think it was compute power.
It got to a turning pointwhen we could
more quickly bring something up in 3D
(12:42):
than it took to even draft it by hand.
So the speed of the compute
has helped atremendous amount.
So I know that nowwe're talking about
Nvidia and all these companies doing amazing
teraflops of amazing things.
And so that's really just only going to get
more inthat direction.
You'll be able to do augmented reality
(13:04):
much smoother, on demandin the future,
in the near future I think
It’s happeninghere and there now.
But it's a
So that kind of poweris what changed everything.
And then of course,the programs kept up with it.
We tend to use,
lightweight, nimble programs that can be modeled
and then move around,that sort of thing.
(13:25):
There's a few programs out there
that all the architects use,and they can do 3D,
but they end up with very big,very heavy representations and models
that you can't usebecause they're so static.
So we liketo go for,
a very effective wayof keeping it light and nimble
so we can use it anytime, anywhere.
(13:47):
Another technologythat has come about
that has really helped everybody
is the ability to take different programs
with different inputs. Revit, SketchUp, you name it,
and put them allin one platform
where we can combine them
and see the effect of everybody's work.
So the engineer might be working
using one typeof technology
(14:09):
and the designers’ usinganother type of technology.
But we can now combine them
and we can move aroundand look at them
and use that as our meeting position
So we have,
highly collaborative thingsthey have BIM 360
and Trimble Connectand things like this
where you get in there, and.
It used to be when you go into a meeting,
you had everybody staring down
(14:30):
at the drawingsin front of them.
But now we all look togetherat the virtual reality.
What we'vejust finished.
Or not even finished
what we're in the process of creating.
And we can annotate thatand talk about that and
work out,things there.
Again, from together in the room
or inviting people from halfway around the world.
(14:52):
And that's oh, by the way,
that's also affected what we talked about
earlier with the culture,
because, gradually over the last ten years
I've seen more and more, people
the teams are extremely diverse
and our people are living and working in places that
might surprise others, you know.
We have a person in Cyprus,
(15:12):
we have aperson in Bali.
We have peopleall over the world
in places you wouldn't expect,
who are very much a part of what we're doing
and very connected.
Yeah, that's great.
So in terms of,
you know, kind of rollout and successand implementation success, right?
Because you can design itand then you can
it doesn't necessarilymake it a success.
What are some of thethe tricks
(15:33):
in terms of supporting,as you said,
a distributed teamaround a big project,
whether that's a remodelor a new
or a new space.
And include everybody in that,
[Jeff], you know, how does[Charles] Well 3D is a big part of that
The three dimensionalvirtual reality
is a huge chunkof that solution,
because you can't do that with flat,
disassociated technicaldrawings.
[Charles] It's [Jeff] Right
(15:54):
It starts with the responsibilityof the individuals
to show up, be prepared
use the right etiquetteand just
learn how to work with people online.
I don't particularly likethe way we do it now
because itfeels like
a talking head.
There is a
a possibility of usinga technology
that doesn't keep you as just a little talking head standing there
(16:18):
but you can actually move about
I've seen some great systems recently atCoreNet from Cisco that do this too.
The camera keeps moving,changing position,
and depending on who'sspeaking and who's
writing on the wall or whatever it is.
Right.
So the actual, use of the system is
is dynamic which II love.
I think that's a great wayto do things
(16:38):
because, what we're missing in this a
type of
asymmetricalwork is
body language isit's the closeness
It’s seeing the glimpse in somebody’s eye
It's the way they move and
you lose a lot of that
when you're just atalking head on a screen.
Right, right.
Well, what about kind of thenot the technology things,
but more the implementationsteps in terms of
(17:00):
some of the things I saw getting ready for this, you know
really making sure thatthe senior management
in the team trying to roll out the changes,
you know,
are trusted and, you know, over communicating
and you know, talking about
objectives and really kind of getting the buy in
of the team to get excitedboth by participatory
activities as well as, you know, over communicating
(17:21):
so that the daythey cut the ribbon
everybody's excitedand everybody's engaged
and everybody's, you know,
kind of partof the process
versus, oh, God,
they spent all this money on this thing.
I would have rather had a bonus.
Yeah, so you're preparing
the place with all this activity.
But you also needto prepare the people.
So we have a lot of changemanagement activities.
(17:42):
We have an entire
huge swathof our
our firm is dedicated to strategy and all its forms.
And the strategy
experts that we havewho are distributed everywhere
often lead these discussions, workshops,
all kinds of, tools they use.
Not just data. Yes, they collect some data,
(18:03):
but they also want to engage
those leadersto engage the people to
so that the end users themselves
who are going to actually occupy the space
feel they've been heard and
have a role in shaping the space, too.
So there's different degrees of that
depending on your company culture
as to how muchthey engage
and to what levelthey engage people
(18:24):
because some of thesecorporations are quite large,
but they have representativesthat’ll get together
who will take them through the process of thinking this through
sometimes consideringall possibilities early on.
And brainstorming what it could be
without anycriticism or judgment
and then honing downon what it needs to be.
(18:46):
And then taking the people.
That doesn't stop there.
You have to take themthrough a process
with town hall talkswith regular updates
with site walks to seehow it's developing
all kinds of ways to keep people fully engaged
all the way through
so that by the timethey actually get
to where they're going
and the new workspace is thereand they step in
(19:08):
they're alreadycomfortable with it.
They already knowwhat to expect.
They know how it's going to serve them.
YeahInteresting.
So, I talked to Julie Whelan from CBRE a couple of times,
it used to be pretty easy
to define a class A, a class B building.
And what kind of thestandard amenities are.
But those have changed over time.
And I'm curious if you could share any stories
about some of the more cutting edge or
(19:29):
innovative things that some of the clients have done
looking beyond, you know, just
does it have, you know, does it have food?
Does it have parking?Does it have oil change?
What are some of the
the cool amenitiesand workplace features
that you're seeing people put in
who are a little bit more progressive in this area?
Well I’m not in the trenches anymore,
so I'm not workingin the nitty grittys
of those kindsof decisions.
(19:50):
But I've been impressed with
some companies that have, really
moved the needleon trying to
make it ahealthy workspace.
The truth is that,the wellness programs are really
now fully entrenchedand very useful.
I don't knowif you can remember.
Go backI’m sure you do
Go way back to when there was a common term
(20:11):
that we don't hear anymore called ‘Sick Building Syndrome.’
Remember that?
Thankfully, I was notin real estate
during sick building syndrome.
But I can alreadyguess where
where you're going with this one.
Yeah. So.
Well, what's happenedis people used to
have serious problemsin their health.
The corporate offices were
I wouldn't say dangerous,but they were very unhealthy.
There's a lot of off gassing.
(20:32):
There was moldin the ducts.
There was just generallya very unhealthy environment.
And people would get chronicproblems that they couldn't
describe where it was coming from.
And that conversation aboutsickness being at the focus
has now changed in a positive direction
to the term wellness.
So we're not talking aboutproblem, problem.
We're talking aboutsolution, solution.
(20:52):
So I would say thatthat's probably the
the great
wonderful thingthat's come up
that wasn't therewhen I was younger
and has grown steadily over the years
is a focus on wellness.
Yeah, it’s
interesting Ryan Anderson from
from MillerKnollyou know
likes to talk about one of the great Covid outcomes was
(21:13):
just a focus on air1) because Covid was airborne.
But then if people startedfocusing on their HVACs and
you know, what's their CO2 levels
[Jeff] in the afternoon[Charles] Oh yeah
[Jeff] it just, you know, opened up that awareness.[Charles] Well you didn’t ask about the technologies.
Yeah, your, you talk about the technologies and yes.
During Covid, people were experimenting with how to
remove pathogens from the air built in
(21:33):
and all that's kind of in place now.
It's kind of
I don't know if you couldcall it common, but it's quite
quite prevalent.
Right
But what I was sayingwas that a lot of
these technologiesare being championed
by those companies that care about their employees.
And they've gone throughgreat measures to
understandwhat's causing,
(21:54):
people tofeel unwell
and to change thatwith the technologies.
But there's so many, circadian lighting
the way that they treat the air,
the amount of carbon dioxide,
there's sensors everywheremeasuring sometimes
50 different things.
I've actually donesome videos about that
my and articles on LinkedIn about that too.
About how companies are helping them gather all this data.
(22:17):
But of course, even though you have all this data,
then you could get, decision fatigue.
Well, what do you dowith all this data?
[Charles] how to respond to it[Jeff] Right
And, I remember when we,
our experts in New Yorkand London were helping,
HSBC to do their headquarters in New York. They
They went very muchin this direction
of creatinghealthy environment.
(22:38):
And now they've gotevery certification
I think out there
from LEED and WELL and RESET and everything else.
And they're heading towards a
a zero carbon, which takes years to get to
because you have toaccumulate the data
to prove that you're doing it.
Also in Asia, since I'm in Asia,I should mention also.
Yeah, as one person put itthe people in China
want to breathe fresh, clean air
(23:02):
but they, they have that problem for a long time with pollutants.
They’ve more or less conquered that now.
But it was quite bad before.
Yeah.
India still has, Indiastill has big trouble spots
and they're growing immensely.
We must have done
in the last two years maybe
50 huge headquarters or campuses there.
But there are certain partsof India that have
(23:26):
terrible problemswith their environment
where people are burning cropswhere there's smoke or there's
in factthat happened.
I was checking an appon my phone
which tells me whatthe weather is.
And normally you expect to see cloudy, rainy, cold, whatever
And when I went to New Delhiat a particularly bad time of the year
(23:47):
and I checked the app,it didn't have all those words.
It just said,smoke.
So. And it was true.
You walk out
and you feel like you've smoked a pack of cigarettes.
[Jeff] Yeah. [Charles] So
So the wellnessin the
environment whenwhere you work
is a big draw.
People want to come to the office
because it's a clean, wonderful,
place where they havegreat water, great
(24:09):
great air,
great environment to work in.
Unfortunately,we got way too familiar
with the smoke monitorsand the smoke numbers
and the air quality numbersover the last several years
with all the firesin Northern California.
[Jeff] So we’ve all rediscovered that part of the app. But,[Charles] Oh, that’s so tragic
and I had, you know, Evan Benway on,
from sounds or Moodsonic and, you know
(24:30):
talking aboutthe soundscapes.
So this wholeinvestment.
But I'm curious, you eventake it up another notch
on one of your posts,Beyond Wellness.
You talk about happiness.
Which is a whole nother step function of really
thinking about how you put people in a great environment
So how do you design for happiness?
Well, obviously it has to be part of the culture
(24:50):
in the sense that the leaders
have to knowhow to
work with their teamsand their people.
On that side of the equation.
But for the environment
I think that, it's
it’s good to have spaces wheresomething's always happening
where they can have team spaces that
open up to larger spaces
and can reconfigure
(25:12):
and can be dynamic.
So you can change your environment.
You can have more controlover your environment
that makes peoplehappier to.
And then I love that the,the some companies,
quite a lot of themare creating dynamic spaces
that don't really havea definition
they’re sort of multi-purpose spaces.
They're not just sitting therelike a basketball court,
but they’re used for other things and
(25:32):
different times of thethe day or week.
If they want to have a gettogether or a special event
they can do it.
And I personally, I'mnot speaking for the company,
but I'm a big, advocateof having someone
who oversees that
there's always something happening.
There's not just a few yoga classes,
but a lot of different activities
(25:52):
that bring people togetherthat make these people say
‘Wow, I want to come thereand be a part of that.’
So, having lots of activitiesand events and learning events
and you name itthat bring people together
it really turns it into sortof a lifestyle hub
for people to know that there'salways an event happening.
There's always somethingthat they can share because we’re
(26:14):
a lot, a large portionof us, including me.
I'm working from home with myIndonesian antiques all around me.
A large part of us
are not going into the office every day
so we want that connection.
So the happiness doescome from that.
And there hasto be a reason
aside from just going thereand doing the usual slog.
You want to have someone therein my opinion,
(26:37):
who can always be thinking ofand creating new events there
of all different types.
To engage.
Right.
Engagement, I guessengagement is the key word.
Is the key, which then drivesretention and, and,
which is a really big dealbecause it's really expensive
when you have turnoverand to hire new people.
So it's a big deal.
Let's just shift back to technology for a minute.
(26:59):
I just saw an interviewwith Kay Sergeant from HOK.
And she's talking about sensors
and the sophisticationof the sensors
that have actually been around
for quite a long timenot only occupancy sensors,
not only is there enough oxygenin the room or too much CO2,
but even withfacial recognition.
Who is in what room?How often are they used?
And so really there's a lot of opportunity
(27:21):
to increase the utilizationwith better data
than potentiallythere was before.
Have you seen the reception to or
desire to use or,you know,
maybe not quite so scared of using
some of these more advanced technologies
beyond just turning the lights on and off
when people comein and out of the room
to actually, you know, get more ROI
(27:42):
out of their investment in these spaces.
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot
and it's a mixed bag.
I’m very heavily into technology as you know
but I'm also into the ethics of it and I
I see that there's a fine line there that
I don't know if it's going to be crossed
but, the data keeps gettingmore and more rich.
(28:04):
It's key that peopletrack behaviors
and general data about whatthe employees are utilizing
and how effective spaces areand that sort of thing.
But there is an opportunitynow with more advanced data
to track the preferencesof the employees as well.
And, they're starting to do the things that
(28:25):
I'm not sure I'm on board with like
measuring the keystrokespeed of what somebody is doing
and assess them psychologically
as to whether they're having a bad day or
and they're doing itin the name of wellness, but
it feels a little invasive to me.
There is a marvelouswoman who
(28:46):
has her finger on the pulse of it
this and she
works for CBRE.
A psychologist.
And she has
she's very deep intoall these different things
and she understands
the part that I have concern with
and the parts that other peoplehave concern with.
And basically what itcomes down to is that
you can keep enriching the databy using the sensors
(29:08):
as long as you're not.
I'm not fully on boardwith tracking individuals
and understandingtheir behaviors
in the name of making their life better
[Jeff] Right[Charles] because that
could be misused
[Jeff] Right[Charles] I suppose
Right.
But our,
I mean, if you're runninginto the ethical issues
is that because people
are pretty comfortablewith the technology
(29:29):
and the younger people comingin and everyone's more
[Charles] I'm not running into them, thats[Jeff] comfortable using them
I'm not runninginto them.
That's just my
[Charles] overactive imagination [Jeff] Not running into it but if that
if that's an issue,then that would imply
that people are comfortable using it.
It if you're starting to run into things where
you knowyou've got
you know, potentiallyyou hit a switch
and maybe it's not anonymized aggregate anymore
and you turn off thethe aggregator switch.
(29:49):
And now I've got individualdata as to who was
who was where.
Or you've got
or you just have your tagthat you used to open the door
and that’s got RFIDand then that can be used
to track your every movement.
Right? Right.
So, so yeah,there's, there's
a lot of
desire tomake this
a productivitygain,
(30:11):
but it's on that cutting edge between
you know,
what's intrusive and what's not.
But I didn't quite hearyour question.
Maybe I didn't answer it.
No, no, you did. You did answer.
Okay, good.
My point being, you know, before,
I think peoplewere just
completely freaking out or that
it was too hard.
There wasn’t open systems.
You had all theseinteroperability issues.
I think, you know,a lot of those
(30:32):
those walls are probably coming down
in terms of what's really available.
And then I would imagine
just as people are youngerand more comfortable
privacy attitudesare a little bit different.
That the
The, the, the desireto put it in
or the reception to putting in some of these things
maybe is changing over time.
Versus before where itwould have been
(30:52):
‘Ah, No, no, thank you.’
I don't have any data on that,but it makes sense.
They’re certainlyless concerned.
Like, I would never evenjust have one of those
Siri or Alexa things in my home
that's like a
Like that old cartoon wheresomebody walks up, oh, oh
a wife walks upto it and says
Alexa, what's a good recipe for
(31:14):
brownies or something?
But basically you're conversing with a wiretap,\
[Charles] you know? [Jeff] Right, right.
So I don't really want to
have something that's liveand always watching
and always analyzingwhat I'm doing
but that's me.
I, as you said, the young people coming up,
they're more, they're lessconcerned with that.
They haveother priorities.
(31:34):
I just think that those of uswho know how it
that there is a linethat shouldn't be crossed
I don't know that it has been crossed.
I'm just saying, as technology is advancing so quickly
there's a possibility.
Right? Right.
Different topic.
Again, back to design,but
you've got so many different things that you
can design for.
(31:55):
Sustainability.
The United Nations Goals are[Sustainable Development Goals]
sustainability goalswere put out.
A lot of companieshave adopted them
as kind of anchor tenantsfor which they can work towards.
You mentioned one of the fancy new buildings
you're working on is all LEED Certified,
is one ofthe checkmarks
on the most cutting edgecoolest places.
So I wonder if you can sharehow the sustainability
(32:15):
goal has evolvedover time?
And how are you baking that in
and helping people achieve their sustainability goals
with things that they can do
with design with the building
Well, it’s not a‘like to have’ any more.
It's a must have.
And what we'reseeing because
space requirements have shrunk a bit
and there's some empty
floors in office buildings and there's some
(32:35):
stronger competition and real concerns
that buildings that have this already built in
where sustainability is baked into the design of the building
are having more rent
more occupancybetter everything.
So they’re performing much better.
And so it's a struggle for theolder buildings to catch up.
(32:58):
And so we have on many,many occasions we've had to
help retrofit a buildingso they can stay competitive
so that they can attract their clientele
and get the rents they,they need to survive.
So that is one part
that where you have
that sort of technologyretrofitted into an older building
in the process of upgrading the building
(33:19):
happensall the time.
We do very detailedtechnical due diligence.
You mentioned we were a design firm
we're actually an AEC firm.[Architecture, Engineering, Construction]
so we have lots of architects and designers,
but we have a hellof a lot of engineers as well.
And then we have a lot of
project managementand construction types.
So yeah, we're seeing this.
Newer buildings are doing better than older buildings,
(33:40):
and we're helping a lot of the older buildings to
to catch up.
Right
But then we want to design with your
with that in mindonce the company
a leaseholder comesinto there
and they need to take
whatever it isten floors or something
they need to make sure that it all works together with the systems.
And it's
it used to be that
(34:02):
the building management system was one technology
And what’s the technologyyou're doing to track performance
is another technology
but it's gradually getting betterthat they're woven together.
So the systemsall speak to each other
but it's been a struggleto do that over the years.
Yeah.
It's interesting that localI think it's called Local Law 97
(34:23):
the one in Manhattan
that’s going to put a lot of pressure
on some of thosemid tier buildings that
[Jeff] that aren’t making the sustainability number[Charles] Well they’re already under a lot of pressure
I'm not sure they needmore pressure.
This might bringthe wrecking balls to a few
because they said the really old cool brick stuff.
You know people love to redo that.
And then, you know, the new modern stuff.
It's some of that stuffin the middle.
In the middle that
(34:43):
that I think has beentaking the brunt of the hit.
Shift gears to another topicI've been holding off
because I knowyou're biting at the
I know you're excitedto talk about it
and that's AI.
So let's jump in.
So first we'll talk about AI
how are you using AI at work
and then we'll talk aboutAI a little bit more generally.
So for people that don't know
obviously Charles’ facejust lit up.
(35:03):
He's a big fan. He's been using it for a long time.
So let's talk about
you know, how do you use these tools
Gen AI toolsat work?
Because we're in thisreally kind of funky space.
There's a lot of peoplenot many people like you
who are kindof ahead of the curve.
There's a lot of peoplethat just
trying to get their toes in the water and
trying to figure it about.
And there's a lot of people still today
(35:25):
have not touched it at all.
So firstlet's talk about,
what you're doing at workand then we'll talk
a little bit more generally about
[Jeff] advice for people. [Charles] Yeah
How do you use AI at work in 2025?
Well, well, yeah. That's
I've gone from being heads ofdifferent offices in different countries
to leading that virtual design
and constructionwe talked about,
but now those teams are mature and
(35:47):
two years ago, well I can tell youprecisely, November of 2022
is when II was enlightened that
that ChatGPTexisted
and I was obsessed with it.
So I've been using itseven days a week since then.
[Jeff] Seven days a week since the day it came out.[Charles] And then I figured out
Sure.
If I'm in the grocery store
and I see a can of something
(36:09):
I’ll just take a picture of the backside, back of it
at the, what do you call it?
The ingredients.
And I'll say, ‘Are thereany bad things in here?’
And it will tell me.
So I use it for everything.
Almost like a proxyfor search in a way
in terms of kind ofgetting started
and trying to figure out a way,you know, what
you're asking it questions basically
like you would
Yeah
(36:29):
like you would ask a search engine but more general?
That's the first step.
That's the first step of peoplehow they use it.
The first step to using ChatGPT for a lot of people
is looking at that prompt space and saying
okay, that, I know that spacethat's similar to Google.
So I'll treat it like Google and I'll ask
Googlely type questions.
But we need to move on from that.
(36:49):
And I'm proud to saywe have been successful.
I think that the
the management positionon this helps a lot.
Now we're not doctors,lawyers, and we're not
dealing with highlysensitive information.
So we don't have a lot of controls over how we can use AI.
(37:09):
You know, we're architects,engineers, contractors,
other than a little bit of financial dataand some personnel records.
There's no reason why we can't use it for anything.
So we had to
find a way to put itin everybody's hands.
And our management
M Moser stands forMoira Moser
Moira Moser is thewoman we all work for.
She is wise enoughto give it to everybody.
(37:31):
So we now have theEnterprise Edition
which is the top tier edition of ChatGPT
for all of the models
throughout the whole firmavailable for everybody.
[Jeff] Wow, and[Charles] And so was
she made an executive decisionto make that investment.
Yeah.
And it'sI think it's an incredibly
smart decision with a lot of foresight because
(37:52):
look, AI is the biggest thing
to come down the roadsince we can remember
and it's going to changeeverything we do.
We've barely seenthe tip of the iceberg.
Right, the trick, I think, for a lot of people though
is it's going to
but what canit do today?
And I think a lot of people still struggle with trying to find
and I just think, don't thinkthey work hard enough
to find where thelittle use cases are
(38:13):
in their workflow
and in their worktheir work habits today
where they can start injecting this thing to get this
wonderful productivity gainthat they hear about
read about in the papers
because, you know, it'snot taking over everything yet.
That said, you've been using it every day.
There are places that you can
inject it into different workflows
or different processes and get a nice little boost.
(38:35):
Well
that's the next tier.
Okay, the first thingis treat it like Google
and then the next tierafter that is
focus on use casesand learn how to prompt.
But
Prompting has been a problem for people
for a multitude of reasons.
In Asia, sometimes English is a different
a second language,but we have to explain to them
(38:56):
that you can prompt in Tagalogyou can prompt in Chinese
you can prompt in any language you want.
But then, how to structure those
is kind of overthought.
[Charles] So, people [Jeff] Is overthought?
Like the big giant chart with the 87 different prompt tips
you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
that fills the whole screen.
Forget about it.
(39:16):
Na
No, it's a it's a conversation.
So we're using it as a, a thinking partner
and a digital colleague.
That's how we're approaching it.
So in the team
we have all our humans,but we also got the AI colleague.
And so the way we're doing it is we’re
we're talking to it as a human
(39:37):
and we're bouncingideas off and we're
asking it to look deeper into data
to perceive things that we may not see,
or we're asking it to
put together a risk matrix table
that will help us analyze and think
because thisleads back to
something we talked about earlier.
So the people whowe’re serving
those CRE leaders[Commercial Real Estate]
of those heads of corporations
(39:58):
have a lot of decision fatigue.
They have to figure outhow to make the right decisions.
And our leaders are helping themto structure and think through
and make those decisionsfor those big workplaces.
So our leadersuse it to help
Well they do some learning on it, yes
but they're also using it to
to help clients make wiser decisions and to
(40:18):
run their teams.
And so it's really not aboutinput and an output.
I'm happy.
In fact, I see a lot of engineers
frustrated by thatbecause they say
here's the data for the humidityand the temperature.
Give me the thing I want.
You know, what is the
what is the comfortlevel point of ...
When peopleuse it as a computer
they sometimes get disappointed.
(40:39):
The people,and this might be
what I’ve tried, and what a few other people have tried
because we like collaboration
and we're naturallycollaborative people.
We're always bouncingideas off of other people.
You are too.
And so peoplewho are collaborative
get the most out of itquite quickly
because we're
asking it, it's opinionand we're saying
What if that? How about that?What do you think of this?
(41:02):
And we're digging deeperand trying stuff fearlessly.
Whereas I thinksome people
who are stuck in a technical point of view
are just saying
here's the inputgive me the output
one transactionit's right or it's wrong.
[Charles] And that's not really the way to look at it.[Jeff] Right
[Jeff] I'm curious, do you invite it into meetings?[Charles] It’s conversation
You mentioned that when you're having a meeting or conversation
you’ve got em as kind of assistants and thought partners.
(41:23):
Do you use them in,in active meetings?
The listening and the voice part is not fully mature yet.
So that's hard to do.
Not so much.
Not so muchas a
as like a monitor that comes back.
But say you're in a meeting and, you know
you got a question and
[Jeff] let's ask right now in the moment[Charles] Oh yes!
[Charles] Absolutely, yes[Jeff] absolutely.
And the conversation will change.
(41:44):
So if you have to structure a perfect prompt
to get a perfect output
you're not gonna
you're gonna have a hard time.
There are tools whereyou can create agents
or you can createstructured things
if you're repeating themall the time.
But what you want to have inas a consultant or
a knowledge workeris something
that is like a second brain
that helps you think things through.
So we mightgo through
(42:04):
I might upload some photographs.
Let's say of a construction site
and I'll say,
What's your assessment of this and that?
Rate it on a scaleof 1 to 10
and it’ll say well it's an 8.5
because I see this stuffwhere this needs to be fixed
and it can readthe photograph perfectly
and give youits opinion of
what's right and what's wrong with it.
So you do that with a lot ofphotographs and then say
(42:25):
Okay, based on that,
how much manpowerdo you think I will need
to finish this inin one week?
And it will compute that.
And it will tell youhow many different electricians,
how many contractors,how many of this and that.
And then I can say, well,
some of those peoplewill come off their work
and can be reassignedto other jobs.
Maybe we could dynamically do it so that
when these people are
(42:46):
are finishedand they're
they're not experts injust one trade,
they can moveon over
and help these guys
and then we can do it faster.
And it said yeah, good idea.
So let'stry that
and it comes outwith a better one
now you don’t need 15 workersyou need 12 workers.
And will take less time.
I'm like okay. So then
my leader needs a way to manage these people.
Let's assign names to each of these
(43:07):
12 people
and let's talk about which daysthey do which activities.
And itputs out that.
And then I say, okay,then I need checklists
for myproject manager to,
make sure they're focusedon the right things
and know whatthe priorities are.
So we go through the priorities
and it creates all those check lists
and all thatcame about
from uploading a few photographs.
(43:29):
So you start withthe photographs
and by the end of it you have a complete schedule
a work descriptioneverything.
And you cando that.
You can then go to the next stepand say, what about cost?
And talkabout cost.
The conversation can change
and talk about any directionyou want to take it.
So what abouthallucinations?
What about hallucinations?
Because, you know,you just went through
(43:51):
a great use case of theof a kind of conversational way
to unwind a bunch of detail
around a projectstarting with pictures.
But let's just say it did thethe calculation wrong.
You should have hadyou know, 18 people, not 12.
And its information on the price of lumber is is dated.
So your budget is off.
I mean, how do you kind of
(44:11):
keep an eye out for hallucinations
make judgmentsabout hallucinations
work around hallucinations or
or do you find
they're not a problem?
What you know, kind of where are you
what's your
what's your kind oftake for people
who are just scared ofgetting the wrong answer
in an area that they don't have enough knowledge about
that maybe they make a bad decision.
It's a concern.
It's a concern and
(44:32):
Our, our unspoken
it's not written,but our policy is
that the person who'soverseeing the thing
has to check it as though they were checking a colleagues work
So,
the AI is your your junior colleague.
Even thoughit's brilliant
it gives you the workand you as the senior person
have to go through itand check it.
You can't assume that it's ready to go out the door.
(44:54):
So, it makes,in my opinion
others may disagree,
but I think it makesas many mistakes
or less actuallythan a human makes.
So I haven't found thatit's made more
more mistakesthan a human.
[Jeff] Right[Charles] So
the mistakes that it will make
and you pointed outa great example of that
was a cost.
(45:14):
I wouldn't trust the cost datacoming out of it.
I would have to check itwith local supplies
and things like that.
But within that 30 minutes
I've broken down
so much information
that it would have takenme four days to do.
Now I can spend that timejust checking a few thoughts
or whatever, and to doublechecking a few things, right?
(45:35):
So if you're
if you had to buy a generatorfor your new building
and put it on the roof
you can askyou know
of these suppliers, which one supplies to this country
of those, which oneuses biofuel?
And this one you know
and then we’re
narrow it down to a few choices for you.
And then you have to do thefinal check on those choices.
(45:55):
You don't have to just believe anything.
So, yeah, it's a
anything that comes out of Generative AI, LLMs, is a draft.
It's not a final thing.
[Jeff] Right, right[Charles] But, but it’s
But it's usually better
well thought out, smarterand certainly faster
than your junior colleague
that you might and it won’t argue with you.
(46:16):
[Jeff] It’s just so funny [Charles] It never get’s frustrated
never gets frustrated.
Never gets frustratedor gets angry.
You never got an angry AI
That's funny.
I just think it's so funny how our
our opinionson trust are so varied.
And, you know,we just tend to trust technology
that it's going to workbecause we're just so
comfortable becausethis stuff works so often.
(46:38):
My favorite example’s
you know, peopledriving in the back
sitting in the backof a Tesla
going down the highway.
And it's not a level five autonomous vehicle
not even close.
And yet people justthey just trust.
And it's funnyyou talk about
it makes the same amount of mistakesor less than a junior assistant.
You know, driverlessautomobiles here.
You know, we've got Waymo's nowrunning around San Francisco.
(46:59):
I think they're in Phoenixand a couple other countries
they don't crash.
They get crashed into.
And if there's any crash at allyou know, people are up in arms
where they're way better than99% of the drivers out there.
But we don't havethe same, you know,
kind of threshold or bar of,of what we expect.
(47:20):
So it's funny that you couch it in the form
of a junior colleague.
Then maybe then people can get more comfortable
with the fact they need to check the work
versus this,this all knowing
you know, super,super machine that
that you know, is going to
absolutely always give me the right answer.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind AI as my copilot
I just don't want it to be necessarily be the pilot.
(47:42):
So, I think that's fine.
You know, it's
it probably would make alot of smart decisions
and say, here's a better route.
Oh, watch out.There’s construction ahead.
I don't know what.
You know, that's a much more complex system
and one I know,not that much about.
I studied a bit about it
when I was doingmy certifications in AI.
because I had to understandall the different ways
(48:03):
that AI came upacross many industries.
But, yeah, there'slife safety at risk there.
I don't think what we're doingis quite the same thing.
I certainly if you're doing a building
and your you'recalculating the structures
I wouldn't trustits calculations.
That wouldbe a life safety issue.
But there it can do very powerful.
There are some models in there that do
(48:25):
extremely good calculationsand do them very well.
And most of the problems occurwhen you're
when you're question asking
prompting if you like.
It's not that wellthought out.
It's not really, clear.
I'm not saying you haveto structure a perfect prompt
but you have to give itsome context and explain
the parameters of what you're trying to do
(48:45):
just like you would a colleague.
So usually mistakescome out from that.
Now if it does,as you say, hallucinations
and gives you a wrong calculation.
ChatGPT o1for example
will show you how it came up with the calculations
and it will calculateeverything for the structure
of your newbuilding very fast.
And then you can spend more timejust going through and making sure
(49:07):
that you and the structural engineer agree
when it’s
it's done it alreadysuper fast
and it's showing you all the calculations.
It's not a black box.
It shows you what it's doing.
So I'm fine with that as long as the humans
do the checking.
Yeah that's a goodthat's a good strategy.
All right Charles, we're gettingtowards the end of our time.
You've got a great kindof global view of all these
(49:30):
progressive companies buildingthe newest, coolest things.
In workplace.
What are you excited aboutover the next couple of years
we've got, you know, thankfullyCovid is well behind us
and hopefully RTO and all that junk is behind us
and people are looking forward.
So as you look forwardto the future of workplace
what are youexcited about?
What do you think'sgoing to happen
over the nextcouple of years?
Well, Crystal-balling it
(49:51):
has never workedfor big issues, but
in terms of theindustry I'm in
workplaces and architectureand engineering.
It's, we've already discussed
that it's not aboutoffice mandates anymore.
It's about
readiness and adaptability.
I think adaptability is a key word.
Maybe even modularityin many cases.
(50:13):
And the next real conversationhas to be about AI
that adaptability and designing
workplaces that reflect who we are
and what we're becoming.
So, that's an evolving thing.
Nobody can really crystal ball it.
But I think all
some of your my notes say
you want to keep it
keep it evolving. Right.
(50:33):
It's never supposed to bea static situation anyway.
Right.
You have toyou have to
but AI has to be
it's going to pervade everythingwe do in the tech sense.
But adaptabilityfor companies is key.
So I don't knowif I've done a video on that.
If I haven't, I will.
I don't have that on my list of, cool things.
I have purpose, scale,sustainability,
(50:55):
happiness, efficiency,digital twins, mental health,
creativity, innovation,inspiration, connection.
Wow
Efficiency you got a lot
[Charles] I talked about all that?[Jeff] I don’t know how many more
videos you have to do?
Oh yeah I well I have
I like sharing knowledge
I love it.
I love it.
And I think adaptability
(51:15):
is what weneed because
because we can't crystal ball it.
Nobody could have told youthat Covid was coming.
Well, some peopleclaim they can.
Nobody could have told you the effect that
work from home mandates
work from home
would have on office leases.
Nobody predictedit really.
Nobody predictedAI’s fast rise.
We don't really knowwhat's coming up.
So adaptability is
(51:38):
in all its forms
it’s going to be howwe help clients
to preparethat
you can't reallyfuture proof.
But we can put it underthe umbrella of future proofing.
Right. All right, Charles.
So I think we'llleave it there.
I appreciatethe conversation.
I appreciate all the sharing of,of the insights.
And really good to, to catch up today.
(51:58):
Okay, well it was wonderful seeing you again.
I hope we can get together again soon.
Absolutely. All right. Thanks again.
All right.
He's Charles I'm Jeff
You're watchingWork 20XX.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listeningon the podcast.
Catch you next time. Take care.
All right. We are clear.
All right
All right.Very good.
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
(52:18):
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All right,so then
I will count us down
and we will go
in three, two, one.
Hey welcome back everybodyJeff Frick here
coming to youfrom the home studio
for another episodeof ‘Work 20XX’
And we know workplace isundergoing this tremendous,
you know,kind of transformation.
It's hard to believeit's been five years
since Covidreally accelerated
(00:21):
a bunch of processesthat were already underway.
And I'm really excitedto have somebody join us today
who's kind of at the cuttingedge of what's happening
in workplace design,
what's happening and best practices.
And he's coming to usactually from the future,
which we can all have a glimpseinto the future from Singapore.
So joining us through the magic of the internet
over the Pacific Ocean.
He's Charles Corley the Director of Development
(00:42):
for M Moser and Associates
Charles great to see you.
Well it's great to see you again. Yes.
So give me some good news on the future.
How's it lookover there.
Oh, it's you got to wear shades.
it, you know, it looks
It looks good.
Until AI is our overlord,
I think we're going to see huge benefits.
You know, I think that the conversation has shifted really from,
(01:05):
what you describedjust now from
from Covid and,you know
I think the, return to office mandateshave been thoroughly analyzed.
The evidenceis there.
People have been ableto push back.
So we're on to something else now.
I hope so.
I tried tomake a
make a creed me and all my other
kind of future of workplace people in 2025
we’re not going to talk about RTO. [return to office]
(01:26):
We're not going to talk about mandates.
We're not going to talk about days in the week.
We're just going to talk about workand try and redesign work.
But let's get into it.
And I've, you know,
you guys really at the top level, I think as
is it's really about design.
And you guys havea really comprehensive
kind of design processand strategy
as you saidall the way from
(01:46):
from starting from zero into goingand trying to do a remodel.
And what's interesting,you've got a bunch of cool little videos
you're posting on LinkedIn right now
for people should to go out
and check them out.
And what's interesting is you'retouching on all these kind of
attributes of good designand objectives of good design
that are not, so many buttsper square feet.
(02:06):
You know, they're not kind ofwhat I would imagine was kind of
classic utilizationcost numbers.
But really, I think the biginteresting transformation,
which has been across IT[information technology]
and all these other departmentsthat used to be considered,
you know, SGA[Selling, General, and Administrative]
nobody wants to be SGA anymore, right?
We have to be contributingto the fundamental business
and in the place of workplace.
(02:28):
I think what's really kind of
been inspiring for people who are on the cutting edge
is, you know,
we want to create the environment
for people to do the best work of their lives.
[Jeff] And that's a really different[Charles] For sure
objective than just tryingto squeeze a bunch of butts
in seats and maximize that.
And so you've gotall these cool little videos
they’re like a couple minutes long.
And I just want to talk about
(02:48):
some of the themes that are design themes that are all in
congruent with business objectives,
but they're not all business objectives.
But let's just startwith the business objectives.
And you talk about,strategy goals and utilization
and productivity,not just pure efficiency.
So when you talkabout the business goals,
do you get pushback when you'restarting one of these projects
(03:10):
with a senior person that says,
‘Is this really going to help our business goals?’
Or am I just spendinga bunch of money
on design, where you know,
[ Jeff] I’d rather spend that money on something else?[Charles] oh no.
No, that's a big part of their concern.
The people we work with,
quite often CRE leaders or leaders of workplace or whatever
have a verycomplex job to do,
and they, they have so many stakeholders,
(03:32):
and any oneof them
can push back andcriticize what they're doing.
And especially in thelarger corporations,
it's a minefield.
The strategy and business objectivesare very much a part of it
because everybody'sgoing to critique what
this person's trying to achievefor the company.
So yes, we get involvedin that very deeply.
(03:52):
And that's really,strategy is not static either.
Strategy keeps dynamicallychanging all the way through.
And updating.
So it's it’s a big part.
They don't mind,discussing that in detail.
And you're right, it's not so much about
number of tables and seatsand so forth.
Because, well,the workplace itself is,
(04:16):
has changed to be something
that's more of a hub,more of a destination.
And not everybody is assigned necessarily a table.
Well, let's back up a stepbecause I think you're right.
Maybe we should have started there.
Like, do people understandthat the objectives,
the purpose of a workplacenow is different
because, right, the original officeswere modeled like factories
where paper were like widgetscoming down the line.
(04:37):
And you took your piece of paper
and you did yourprocess to it
and you passed itto the next person.
And that's reallywhat offices are.
And the file cabinetswere there.
And the reason to go to the office
was to actually do work.
Right.
The phone was there, the mailwas there, the files are there.
That's not the case.
So how are people really thinking about
what is the purpose of the office that
That's really,you know
(04:57):
they're spending a lot of money.
It's a big investment.
What is the purpose of office?
The purpose has become more cultural
and more about who they are and
I think that the,
there's a draw to still come to the office
for different reasons.
Now, I don't like talking intoo much generality because,
businesses are so varied,so very different.
(05:18):
Things like consultanciesand knowledge work,
and often teamwork,
these teams can be close knit.
They have to work together
quite carefully a lot of detail.
If that’s not your kind of business,maybe you can be very dispersed.
But I see a lot of peoplestill coming to the office.
Not because they're forced to,
but because they needthat interactive teamwork.
(05:40):
But also, I see,
especially in Asia,
that has a fairlyyoung workforce,
I see people comingthere because they
they want to be part of something.
They want to seecolleagues their age,
they wantto interact,
they don't want to be
just isolated at homeor some other place.
It's interesting.
Tracy Hawkinswho's now at OpenAI,
and she was atTwitter before,
(06:00):
their global workplace person.
She said,
workplace is the physical manifestation of culture
And you know, it was interesting
when I was trying to pull that quote earlier today
she mentioned culturein our interview
like 50 times whenI did a word count.
And you've talked about
why do people wantto come together
in this whole concept of,
you know, kind of a honey versus vinegar?
How do you make it attractive?
What do you put there
(06:21):
that makes peoplewant to come to the office?
So we're not talkingabout mandates,
but we're talking about a placethat offers an alternative
kind of set of solutions and activities
that you can't do at home.
And maybe you can't dosome other places.
Well, the office isn'tjust space anymore.
It's the embodimentof culture, ethos, purpose.
I wouldn't overdothe cultural part
(06:42):
and things need to get done.
It needs to help peopleget their work done.
But we're also seeinga lot of people who are
entering the workforcewho are tech savvy
and our spaces before weren’tresponding to their needs.
There's adimension that is,
cultural and purpose driven,
but there's also one of generational differences
(07:03):
and the way we work
and the flexibility in the way we work.
So it's getting,
it's getting interesting.
[Charles] Sorry, I'm not [Jeff] So there’s a lot
sure I answered your
I’m not sure I answeredyour question, but.
Well it's, well you've got it again on your little list
you’ve got fostering some of these softer things
that support the bigger business things
So for instance, creativityand innovation.
(07:23):
So what are some of thedesign tips and tricks
and things that you've seen that do encourage more,
innovation and creativity?
Yeah, it's a good questionbecause I help our own company
change and adaptto those things to.
When people, are having meetings, they're often ad hoc now.
There are meetingsthat do need privacy.
(07:44):
That do need, seclusion.
As people are working in different areasand not tied down to a desk,
to get together briefly and have a, a huddle.
And you need to havethat technology
in different spotsall around,
ready to go
ready to be available not justfor the people in the room,
but their other colleaguesthat are going to be,
(08:07):
coming infrom other places.
So you're meeting peopleand collaborating with people
that are both thereand also remote.
Right?
So the space needs to betechnology enabled.
And the fact that everybodyis not sitting in neat rows
allows you to do new thingswith the space
that you weren't able to dowhen it was just rows of desks.
(08:28):
Now the rows of deskare not gone,
but they're greatly reduced.
Right, right.
The other thing we hear a lotabout is activity based,
you know, activity based spaces
[Jeff] that are really designed around[Charles] well that’s what I was getting at
I didn't use the term,
but that's exactlywhat I was getting at.
Yeah, I was going to say, or
has it evolved to kind of beyond activity to more.
I don't want to pull you downa general purpose vocabulary,
but, you know, a little bitmore specificity around that.
(08:51):
And thinking about the usesof particular spaces for,
for what peopleare going to use them for.
I always find it'sgood to have,
dedicated spaces for certain kinds of teams that need to do work.
The word workspace can be a lot of things
When we were, say, for example,
designing Dyson’snew headquarters,
which is in a beautifulold renovated,
(09:12):
not factory, it's a power plant, actually.
They had alaboratory as well.
So obviously that's goingto be a dedicated space, right?
Because they're inventing things, so they’re
and they're,testing things,
but they also have highly collaborative,
flexible spaces.
So it depends on the typeof work that people are doing.
And there's a mix there.
(09:33):
You have to really understandget very deep into,
not just the cultural aspects,which are very important,
but,
the functionality, how peopleare actually doing their work.
I'm in a unique position, right?
My role gives me a
a global sort of disciplinary lens
to look at these things.
And although I'm not tellingwar stories anymore my focus is,
(09:54):
more on shaping methodologies.
And what I see is people having to
make a lot of decisionsearly on in their project
about how they're goingto tackle these issues.
And then, it can be hard to decide
how much to dedicatethis space to this function
and how much to do that,and how much should be flexible
and what the mix is,and even how many people
(10:16):
are workingfrom home and
It's a quitea dynamic thing.
So it's a
it can be a little scary for our clients
to get that mix right
and a
to do it usually to a
a fast timetable.
That's the challenge they haveand one we help them with.
Yeah.
So I know one of the tricksof the trade that you use a lot is
is visualizationand, you know,
(10:38):
and using 3D toolsto basically create
fancy renderings or I don't know what the right,
the right vocabulary word isof the space and the design.
I wonder if you could sharehow the use of digital tools
to enable you to have moreof an iterative approach
and more of a collaborative approachthroughout the whole process,
because, like you say,
there's a lot of balls in the air
between jugglingyour in-person people,
(10:58):
your remote people,
you know, all the different,
you know, as you say,stakeholders that have,
have their fingers in the pie
Mixing up my metaphors
You mentionedthe beautiful renderings.
And yes, it used to bethat 3D was a deliverable.
Give me somebeautiful pictures
rendered of whatmy place would look like.
But now it's how we collaborateall the way through.
(11:19):
Gone are the blueprints.
Now we have, virtual realityis the way we handle
project development
from the start, when we're having the strategic meetings
all the way to the end and
every detail through there.
So it's a completevirtual experience.
It's what we used to call‘What you See is what you Get.’
So you can actuallyimmerse yourself in that.
(11:40):
And you can do itfrom any distance.
So the clients, the contractors,
the people, the specialists,
everybody who has a part to play,
you know, on the same page and,
not have any blind spots.
They can see,
how things are going,what their,
how their work is affecting everybody,
how their decisionsare affecting the space
(12:00):
in a very natural way, really.
It's the waywe were
we were designed to look at things.
[Jeff] Is how [Charles] Not text and drawings
And how hasthat changed?
What has just the technologycome down?
Has there have been somesome breakthrough applications?
Is it ease of sharing?
Is it,is it cloud based?
What has kind of driven the change
from the old architects,looking at
(12:21):
that things that only architects can love
to actually sharing with work groups,
you know, 3D renderingsof what we might potentially do
and asking themfor their feedback.
Yeah. I think the,experts might
have a varied opinion from my own,
but I think it was compute power.
It got to a turning pointwhen we could
more quickly bring something up in 3D
(12:42):
than it took to even draft it by hand.
So the speed of the compute
has helped atremendous amount.
So I know that nowwe're talking about
Nvidia and all these companies doing amazing
teraflops of amazing things.
And so that's really just only going to get
more inthat direction.
You'll be able to do augmented reality
(13:04):
much smoother, on demandin the future,
in the near future I think
It’s happeninghere and there now.
But it's a
So that kind of poweris what changed everything.
And then of course,the programs kept up with it.
We tend to use,
lightweight, nimble programs that can be modeled
and then move around,that sort of thing.
(13:25):
There's a few programs out there
that all the architects use,and they can do 3D,
but they end up with very big,very heavy representations and models
that you can't usebecause they're so static.
So we liketo go for,
a very effective wayof keeping it light and nimble
so we can use it anytime, anywhere.
(13:47):
Another technologythat has come about
that has really helped everybody
is the ability to take different programs
with different inputs. Revit, SketchUp, you name it,
and put them allin one platform
where we can combine them
and see the effect of everybody's work.
So the engineer might be working
using one typeof technology
(14:09):
and the designers’ usinganother type of technology.
But we can now combine them
and we can move aroundand look at them
and use that as our meeting position
So we have,
highly collaborative thingsthey have BIM 360
and Trimble Connectand things like this
where you get in there, and.
It used to be when you go into a meeting,
you had everybody staring down
(14:30):
at the drawingsin front of them.
But now we all look togetherat the virtual reality.
What we'vejust finished.
Or not even finished
what we're in the process of creating.
And we can annotate thatand talk about that and
work out,things there.
Again, from together in the room
or inviting people from halfway around the world.
(14:52):
And that's oh, by the way,
that's also affected what we talked about
earlier with the culture,
because, gradually over the last ten years
I've seen more and more, people
the teams are extremely diverse
and our people are living and working in places that
might surprise others, you know.
We have a person in Cyprus,
(15:12):
we have aperson in Bali.
We have peopleall over the world
in places you wouldn't expect,
who are very much a part of what we're doing
and very connected.
Yeah, that's great.
So in terms of,
you know, kind of rollout and successand implementation success, right?
Because you can design itand then you can
it doesn't necessarilymake it a success.
What are some of thethe tricks
(15:33):
in terms of supporting,as you said,
a distributed teamaround a big project,
whether that's a remodelor a new
or a new space.
And include everybody in that,
[Jeff], you know, how does[Charles] Well 3D is a big part of that
The three dimensionalvirtual reality
is a huge chunkof that solution,
because you can't do that with flat,
disassociated technicaldrawings.
[Charles] It's [Jeff] Right
(15:54):
It starts with the responsibilityof the individuals
to show up, be prepared
use the right etiquetteand just
learn how to work with people online.
I don't particularly likethe way we do it now
because itfeels like
a talking head.
There is a
a possibility of usinga technology
that doesn't keep you as just a little talking head standing there
(16:18):
but you can actually move about
I've seen some great systems recently atCoreNet from Cisco that do this too.
The camera keeps moving,changing position,
and depending on who'sspeaking and who's
writing on the wall or whatever it is.
Right.
So the actual, use of the system is
is dynamic which II love.
I think that's a great wayto do things
(16:38):
because, what we're missing in this a
type of
asymmetricalwork is
body language isit's the closeness
It’s seeing the glimpse in somebody’s eye
It's the way they move and
you lose a lot of that
when you're just atalking head on a screen.
Right, right.
Well, what about kind of thenot the technology things,
but more the implementationsteps in terms of
(17:00):
some of the things I saw getting ready for this, you know
really making sure thatthe senior management
in the team trying to roll out the changes,
you know,
are trusted and, you know, over communicating
and you know, talking about
objectives and really kind of getting the buy in
of the team to get excitedboth by participatory
activities as well as, you know, over communicating
(17:21):
so that the daythey cut the ribbon
everybody's excitedand everybody's engaged
and everybody's, you know,
kind of partof the process
versus, oh, God,
they spent all this money on this thing.
I would have rather had a bonus.
Yeah, so you're preparing
the place with all this activity.
But you also needto prepare the people.
So we have a lot of changemanagement activities.
(17:42):
We have an entire
huge swathof our
our firm is dedicated to strategy and all its forms.
And the strategy
experts that we havewho are distributed everywhere
often lead these discussions, workshops,
all kinds of, tools they use.
Not just data. Yes, they collect some data,
(18:03):
but they also want to engage
those leadersto engage the people to
so that the end users themselves
who are going to actually occupy the space
feel they've been heard and
have a role in shaping the space, too.
So there's different degrees of that
depending on your company culture
as to how muchthey engage
and to what levelthey engage people
(18:24):
because some of thesecorporations are quite large,
but they have representativesthat’ll get together
who will take them through the process of thinking this through
sometimes consideringall possibilities early on.
And brainstorming what it could be
without anycriticism or judgment
and then honing downon what it needs to be.
(18:46):
And then taking the people.
That doesn't stop there.
You have to take themthrough a process
with town hall talkswith regular updates
with site walks to seehow it's developing
all kinds of ways to keep people fully engaged
all the way through
so that by the timethey actually get
to where they're going
and the new workspace is thereand they step in
(19:08):
they're alreadycomfortable with it.
They already knowwhat to expect.
They know how it's going to serve them.
YeahInteresting.
So, I talked to Julie Whelan from CBRE a couple of times,
it used to be pretty easy
to define a class A, a class B building.
And what kind of thestandard amenities are.
But those have changed over time.
And I'm curious if you could share any stories
about some of the more cutting edge or
(19:29):
innovative things that some of the clients have done
looking beyond, you know, just
does it have, you know, does it have food?
Does it have parking?Does it have oil change?
What are some of the
the cool amenitiesand workplace features
that you're seeing people put in
who are a little bit more progressive in this area?
Well I’m not in the trenches anymore,
so I'm not workingin the nitty grittys
of those kindsof decisions.
(19:50):
But I've been impressed with
some companies that have, really
moved the needleon trying to
make it ahealthy workspace.
The truth is that,the wellness programs are really
now fully entrenchedand very useful.
I don't knowif you can remember.
Go backI’m sure you do
Go way back to when there was a common term
(20:11):
that we don't hear anymore called ‘Sick Building Syndrome.’
Remember that?
Thankfully, I was notin real estate
during sick building syndrome.
But I can alreadyguess where
where you're going with this one.
Yeah. So.
Well, what's happenedis people used to
have serious problemsin their health.
The corporate offices were
I wouldn't say dangerous,but they were very unhealthy.
There's a lot of off gassing.
(20:32):
There was moldin the ducts.
There was just generallya very unhealthy environment.
And people would get chronicproblems that they couldn't
describe where it was coming from.
And that conversation aboutsickness being at the focus
has now changed in a positive direction
to the term wellness.
So we're not talking aboutproblem, problem.
We're talking aboutsolution, solution.
(20:52):
So I would say thatthat's probably the
the great
wonderful thingthat's come up
that wasn't therewhen I was younger
and has grown steadily over the years
is a focus on wellness.
Yeah, it’s
interesting Ryan Anderson from
from MillerKnollyou know
likes to talk about one of the great Covid outcomes was
(21:13):
just a focus on air1) because Covid was airborne.
But then if people startedfocusing on their HVACs and
you know, what's their CO2 levels
[Jeff] in the afternoon[Charles] Oh yeah
[Jeff] it just, you know, opened up that awareness.[Charles] Well you didn’t ask about the technologies.
Yeah, your, you talk about the technologies and yes.
During Covid, people were experimenting with how to
remove pathogens from the air built in
(21:33):
and all that's kind of in place now.
It's kind of
I don't know if you couldcall it common, but it's quite
quite prevalent.
Right
But what I was sayingwas that a lot of
these technologiesare being championed
by those companies that care about their employees.
And they've gone throughgreat measures to
understandwhat's causing,
(21:54):
people tofeel unwell
and to change thatwith the technologies.
But there's so many, circadian lighting
the way that they treat the air,
the amount of carbon dioxide,
there's sensors everywheremeasuring sometimes
50 different things.
I've actually donesome videos about that
my and articles on LinkedIn about that too.
About how companies are helping them gather all this data.
(22:17):
But of course, even though you have all this data,
then you could get, decision fatigue.
Well, what do you dowith all this data?
[Charles] how to respond to it[Jeff] Right
And, I remember when we,
our experts in New Yorkand London were helping,
HSBC to do their headquarters in New York. They
They went very muchin this direction
of creatinghealthy environment.
(22:38):
And now they've gotevery certification
I think out there
from LEED and WELL and RESET and everything else.
And they're heading towards a
a zero carbon, which takes years to get to
because you have toaccumulate the data
to prove that you're doing it.
Also in Asia, since I'm in Asia,I should mention also.
Yeah, as one person put itthe people in China
want to breathe fresh, clean air
(23:02):
but they, they have that problem for a long time with pollutants.
They’ve more or less conquered that now.
But it was quite bad before.
Yeah.
India still has, Indiastill has big trouble spots
and they're growing immensely.
We must have done
in the last two years maybe
50 huge headquarters or campuses there.
But there are certain partsof India that have
(23:26):
terrible problemswith their environment
where people are burning cropswhere there's smoke or there's
in factthat happened.
I was checking an appon my phone
which tells me whatthe weather is.
And normally you expect to see cloudy, rainy, cold, whatever
And when I went to New Delhiat a particularly bad time of the year
(23:47):
and I checked the app,it didn't have all those words.
It just said,smoke.
So. And it was true.
You walk out
and you feel like you've smoked a pack of cigarettes.
[Jeff] Yeah. [Charles] So
So the wellnessin the
environment whenwhere you work
is a big draw.
People want to come to the office
because it's a clean, wonderful,
place where they havegreat water, great
(24:09):
great air,
great environment to work in.
Unfortunately,we got way too familiar
with the smoke monitorsand the smoke numbers
and the air quality numbersover the last several years
with all the firesin Northern California.
[Jeff] So we’ve all rediscovered that part of the app. But,[Charles] Oh, that’s so tragic
and I had, you know, Evan Benway on,
from sounds or Moodsonic and, you know
(24:30):
talking aboutthe soundscapes.
So this wholeinvestment.
But I'm curious, you eventake it up another notch
on one of your posts,Beyond Wellness.
You talk about happiness.
Which is a whole nother step function of really
thinking about how you put people in a great environment
So how do you design for happiness?
Well, obviously it has to be part of the culture
(24:50):
in the sense that the leaders
have to knowhow to
work with their teamsand their people.
On that side of the equation.
But for the environment
I think that, it's
it’s good to have spaces wheresomething's always happening
where they can have team spaces that
open up to larger spaces
and can reconfigure
(25:12):
and can be dynamic.
So you can change your environment.
You can have more controlover your environment
that makes peoplehappier to.
And then I love that the,the some companies,
quite a lot of themare creating dynamic spaces
that don't really havea definition
they’re sort of multi-purpose spaces.
They're not just sitting therelike a basketball court,
but they’re used for other things and
(25:32):
different times of thethe day or week.
If they want to have a gettogether or a special event
they can do it.
And I personally, I'mnot speaking for the company,
but I'm a big, advocateof having someone
who oversees that
there's always something happening.
There's not just a few yoga classes,
but a lot of different activities
(25:52):
that bring people togetherthat make these people say
‘Wow, I want to come thereand be a part of that.’
So, having lots of activitiesand events and learning events
and you name itthat bring people together
it really turns it into sortof a lifestyle hub
for people to know that there'salways an event happening.
There's always somethingthat they can share because we’re
(26:14):
a lot, a large portionof us, including me.
I'm working from home with myIndonesian antiques all around me.
A large part of us
are not going into the office every day
so we want that connection.
So the happiness doescome from that.
And there hasto be a reason
aside from just going thereand doing the usual slog.
You want to have someone therein my opinion,
(26:37):
who can always be thinking ofand creating new events there
of all different types.
To engage.
Right.
Engagement, I guessengagement is the key word.
Is the key, which then drivesretention and, and,
which is a really big dealbecause it's really expensive
when you have turnoverand to hire new people.
So it's a big deal.
Let's just shift back to technology for a minute.
(26:59):
I just saw an interviewwith Kay Sergeant from HOK.
And she's talking about sensors
and the sophisticationof the sensors
that have actually been around
for quite a long timenot only occupancy sensors,
not only is there enough oxygenin the room or too much CO2,
but even withfacial recognition.
Who is in what room?How often are they used?
And so really there's a lot of opportunity
(27:21):
to increase the utilizationwith better data
than potentiallythere was before.
Have you seen the reception to or
desire to use or,you know,
maybe not quite so scared of using
some of these more advanced technologies
beyond just turning the lights on and off
when people comein and out of the room
to actually, you know, get more ROI
(27:42):
out of their investment in these spaces.
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot
and it's a mixed bag.
I’m very heavily into technology as you know
but I'm also into the ethics of it and I
I see that there's a fine line there that
I don't know if it's going to be crossed
but, the data keeps gettingmore and more rich.
(28:04):
It's key that peopletrack behaviors
and general data about whatthe employees are utilizing
and how effective spaces areand that sort of thing.
But there is an opportunitynow with more advanced data
to track the preferencesof the employees as well.
And, they're starting to do the things that
(28:25):
I'm not sure I'm on board with like
measuring the keystrokespeed of what somebody is doing
and assess them psychologically
as to whether they're having a bad day or
and they're doing itin the name of wellness, but
it feels a little invasive to me.
There is a marvelouswoman who
(28:46):
has her finger on the pulse of it
this and she
works for CBRE.
A psychologist.
And she has
she's very deep intoall these different things
and she understands
the part that I have concern with
and the parts that other peoplehave concern with.
And basically what itcomes down to is that
you can keep enriching the databy using the sensors
(29:08):
as long as you're not.
I'm not fully on boardwith tracking individuals
and understandingtheir behaviors
in the name of making their life better
[Jeff] Right[Charles] because that
could be misused
[Jeff] Right[Charles] I suppose
Right.
But our,
I mean, if you're runninginto the ethical issues
is that because people
are pretty comfortablewith the technology
(29:29):
and the younger people comingin and everyone's more
[Charles] I'm not running into them, thats[Jeff] comfortable using them
I'm not runninginto them.
That's just my
[Charles] overactive imagination [Jeff] Not running into it but if that
if that's an issue,then that would imply
that people are comfortable using it.
It if you're starting to run into things where
you knowyou've got
you know, potentiallyyou hit a switch
and maybe it's not anonymized aggregate anymore
and you turn off thethe aggregator switch.
(29:49):
And now I've got individualdata as to who was
who was where.
Or you've got
or you just have your tagthat you used to open the door
and that’s got RFIDand then that can be used
to track your every movement.
Right? Right.
So, so yeah,there's, there's
a lot of
desire tomake this
a productivitygain,
(30:11):
but it's on that cutting edge between
you know,
what's intrusive and what's not.
But I didn't quite hearyour question.
Maybe I didn't answer it.
No, no, you did. You did answer.
Okay, good.
My point being, you know, before,
I think peoplewere just
completely freaking out or that
it was too hard.
There wasn’t open systems.
You had all theseinteroperability issues.
I think, you know,a lot of those
(30:32):
those walls are probably coming down
in terms of what's really available.
And then I would imagine
just as people are youngerand more comfortable
privacy attitudesare a little bit different.
That the
The, the, the desireto put it in
or the reception to putting in some of these things
maybe is changing over time.
Versus before where itwould have been
(30:52):
‘Ah, No, no, thank you.’
I don't have any data on that,but it makes sense.
They’re certainlyless concerned.
Like, I would never evenjust have one of those
Siri or Alexa things in my home
that's like a
Like that old cartoon wheresomebody walks up, oh, oh
a wife walks upto it and says
Alexa, what's a good recipe for
(31:14):
brownies or something?
But basically you're conversing with a wiretap,\
[Charles] you know? [Jeff] Right, right.
So I don't really want to
have something that's liveand always watching
and always analyzingwhat I'm doing
but that's me.
I, as you said, the young people coming up,
they're more, they're lessconcerned with that.
They haveother priorities.
(31:34):
I just think that those of uswho know how it
that there is a linethat shouldn't be crossed
I don't know that it has been crossed.
I'm just saying, as technology is advancing so quickly
there's a possibility.
Right? Right.
Different topic.
Again, back to design,but
you've got so many different things that you
can design for.
(31:55):
Sustainability.
The United Nations Goals are[Sustainable Development Goals]
sustainability goalswere put out.
A lot of companieshave adopted them
as kind of anchor tenantsfor which they can work towards.
You mentioned one of the fancy new buildings
you're working on is all LEED Certified,
is one ofthe checkmarks
on the most cutting edgecoolest places.
So I wonder if you can sharehow the sustainability
(32:15):
goal has evolvedover time?
And how are you baking that in
and helping people achieve their sustainability goals
with things that they can do
with design with the building
Well, it’s not a‘like to have’ any more.
It's a must have.
And what we'reseeing because
space requirements have shrunk a bit
and there's some empty
floors in office buildings and there's some
(32:35):
stronger competition and real concerns
that buildings that have this already built in
where sustainability is baked into the design of the building
are having more rent
more occupancybetter everything.
So they’re performing much better.
And so it's a struggle for theolder buildings to catch up.
(32:58):
And so we have on many,many occasions we've had to
help retrofit a buildingso they can stay competitive
so that they can attract their clientele
and get the rents they,they need to survive.
So that is one part
that where you have
that sort of technologyretrofitted into an older building
in the process of upgrading the building
(33:19):
happensall the time.
We do very detailedtechnical due diligence.
You mentioned we were a design firm
we're actually an AEC firm.[Architecture, Engineering, Construction]
so we have lots of architects and designers,
but we have a hellof a lot of engineers as well.
And then we have a lot of
project managementand construction types.
So yeah, we're seeing this.
Newer buildings are doing better than older buildings,
(33:40):
and we're helping a lot of the older buildings to
to catch up.
Right
But then we want to design with your
with that in mindonce the company
a leaseholder comesinto there
and they need to take
whatever it isten floors or something
they need to make sure that it all works together with the systems.
And it's
it used to be that
(34:02):
the building management system was one technology
And what’s the technologyyou're doing to track performance
is another technology
but it's gradually getting betterthat they're woven together.
So the systemsall speak to each other
but it's been a struggleto do that over the years.
Yeah.
It's interesting that localI think it's called Local Law 97
(34:23):
the one in Manhattan
that’s going to put a lot of pressure
on some of thosemid tier buildings that
[Jeff] that aren’t making the sustainability number[Charles] Well they’re already under a lot of pressure
I'm not sure they needmore pressure.
This might bringthe wrecking balls to a few
because they said the really old cool brick stuff.
You know people love to redo that.
And then, you know, the new modern stuff.
It's some of that stuffin the middle.
In the middle that
(34:43):
that I think has beentaking the brunt of the hit.
Shift gears to another topicI've been holding off
because I knowyou're biting at the
I know you're excitedto talk about it
and that's AI.
So let's jump in.
So first we'll talk about AI
how are you using AI at work
and then we'll talk aboutAI a little bit more generally.
So for people that don't know
obviously Charles’ facejust lit up.
(35:03):
He's a big fan. He's been using it for a long time.
So let's talk about
you know, how do you use these tools
Gen AI toolsat work?
Because we're in thisreally kind of funky space.
There's a lot of peoplenot many people like you
who are kindof ahead of the curve.
There's a lot of peoplethat just
trying to get their toes in the water and
trying to figure it about.
And there's a lot of people still today
(35:25):
have not touched it at all.
So firstlet's talk about,
what you're doing at workand then we'll talk
a little bit more generally about
[Jeff] advice for people. [Charles] Yeah
How do you use AI at work in 2025?
Well, well, yeah. That's
I've gone from being heads ofdifferent offices in different countries
to leading that virtual design
and constructionwe talked about,
but now those teams are mature and
(35:47):
two years ago, well I can tell youprecisely, November of 2022
is when II was enlightened that
that ChatGPTexisted
and I was obsessed with it.
So I've been using itseven days a week since then.
[Jeff] Seven days a week since the day it came out.[Charles] And then I figured out
Sure.
If I'm in the grocery store
and I see a can of something
(36:09):
I’ll just take a picture of the backside, back of it
at the, what do you call it?
The ingredients.
And I'll say, ‘Are thereany bad things in here?’
And it will tell me.
So I use it for everything.
Almost like a proxyfor search in a way
in terms of kind ofgetting started
and trying to figure out a way,you know, what
you're asking it questions basically
like you would
Yeah
(36:29):
like you would ask a search engine but more general?
That's the first step.
That's the first step of peoplehow they use it.
The first step to using ChatGPT for a lot of people
is looking at that prompt space and saying
okay, that, I know that spacethat's similar to Google.
So I'll treat it like Google and I'll ask
Googlely type questions.
But we need to move on from that.
(36:49):
And I'm proud to saywe have been successful.
I think that the
the management positionon this helps a lot.
Now we're not doctors,lawyers, and we're not
dealing with highlysensitive information.
So we don't have a lot of controls over how we can use AI.
(37:09):
You know, we're architects,engineers, contractors,
other than a little bit of financial dataand some personnel records.
There's no reason why we can't use it for anything.
So we had to
find a way to put itin everybody's hands.
And our management
M Moser stands forMoira Moser
Moira Moser is thewoman we all work for.
She is wise enoughto give it to everybody.
(37:31):
So we now have theEnterprise Edition
which is the top tier edition of ChatGPT
for all of the models
throughout the whole firmavailable for everybody.
[Jeff] Wow, and[Charles] And so was
she made an executive decisionto make that investment.
Yeah.
And it'sI think it's an incredibly
smart decision with a lot of foresight because
(37:52):
look, AI is the biggest thing
to come down the roadsince we can remember
and it's going to changeeverything we do.
We've barely seenthe tip of the iceberg.
Right, the trick, I think, for a lot of people though
is it's going to
but what canit do today?
And I think a lot of people still struggle with trying to find
and I just think, don't thinkthey work hard enough
to find where thelittle use cases are
(38:13):
in their workflow
and in their worktheir work habits today
where they can start injecting this thing to get this
wonderful productivity gainthat they hear about
read about in the papers
because, you know, it'snot taking over everything yet.
That said, you've been using it every day.
There are places that you can
inject it into different workflows
or different processes and get a nice little boost.
(38:35):
Well
that's the next tier.
Okay, the first thingis treat it like Google
and then the next tierafter that is
focus on use casesand learn how to prompt.
But
Prompting has been a problem for people
for a multitude of reasons.
In Asia, sometimes English is a different
a second language,but we have to explain to them
(38:56):
that you can prompt in Tagalogyou can prompt in Chinese
you can prompt in any language you want.
But then, how to structure those
is kind of overthought.
[Charles] So, people [Jeff] Is overthought?
Like the big giant chart with the 87 different prompt tips
you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
that fills the whole screen.
Forget about it.
(39:16):
Na
No, it's a it's a conversation.
So we're using it as a, a thinking partner
and a digital colleague.
That's how we're approaching it.
So in the team
we have all our humans,but we also got the AI colleague.
And so the way we're doing it is we’re
we're talking to it as a human
(39:37):
and we're bouncingideas off and we're
asking it to look deeper into data
to perceive things that we may not see,
or we're asking it to
put together a risk matrix table
that will help us analyze and think
because thisleads back to
something we talked about earlier.
So the people whowe’re serving
those CRE leaders[Commercial Real Estate]
of those heads of corporations
(39:58):
have a lot of decision fatigue.
They have to figure outhow to make the right decisions.
And our leaders are helping themto structure and think through
and make those decisionsfor those big workplaces.
So our leadersuse it to help
Well they do some learning on it, yes
but they're also using it to
to help clients make wiser decisions and to
(40:18):
run their teams.
And so it's really not aboutinput and an output.
I'm happy.
In fact, I see a lot of engineers
frustrated by thatbecause they say
here's the data for the humidityand the temperature.
Give me the thing I want.
You know, what is the
what is the comfortlevel point of ...
When peopleuse it as a computer
they sometimes get disappointed.
(40:39):
The people,and this might be
what I’ve tried, and what a few other people have tried
because we like collaboration
and we're naturallycollaborative people.
We're always bouncingideas off of other people.
You are too.
And so peoplewho are collaborative
get the most out of itquite quickly
because we're
asking it, it's opinionand we're saying
What if that? How about that?What do you think of this?
(41:02):
And we're digging deeperand trying stuff fearlessly.
Whereas I thinksome people
who are stuck in a technical point of view
are just saying
here's the inputgive me the output
one transactionit's right or it's wrong.
[Charles] And that's not really the way to look at it.[Jeff] Right
[Jeff] I'm curious, do you invite it into meetings?[Charles] It’s conversation
You mentioned that when you're having a meeting or conversation
you’ve got em as kind of assistants and thought partners.
(41:23):
Do you use them in,in active meetings?
The listening and the voice part is not fully mature yet.
So that's hard to do.
Not so much.
Not so muchas a
as like a monitor that comes back.
But say you're in a meeting and, you know
you got a question and
[Jeff] let's ask right now in the moment[Charles] Oh yes!
[Charles] Absolutely, yes[Jeff] absolutely.
And the conversation will change.
(41:44):
So if you have to structure a perfect prompt
to get a perfect output
you're not gonna
you're gonna have a hard time.
There are tools whereyou can create agents
or you can createstructured things
if you're repeating themall the time.
But what you want to have inas a consultant or
a knowledge workeris something
that is like a second brain
that helps you think things through.
So we mightgo through
(42:04):
I might upload some photographs.
Let's say of a construction site
and I'll say,
What's your assessment of this and that?
Rate it on a scaleof 1 to 10
and it’ll say well it's an 8.5
because I see this stuffwhere this needs to be fixed
and it can readthe photograph perfectly
and give youits opinion of
what's right and what's wrong with it.
So you do that with a lot ofphotographs and then say
(42:25):
Okay, based on that,
how much manpowerdo you think I will need
to finish this inin one week?
And it will compute that.
And it will tell youhow many different electricians,
how many contractors,how many of this and that.
And then I can say, well,
some of those peoplewill come off their work
and can be reassignedto other jobs.
Maybe we could dynamically do it so that
when these people are
(42:46):
are finishedand they're
they're not experts injust one trade,
they can moveon over
and help these guys
and then we can do it faster.
And it said yeah, good idea.
So let'stry that
and it comes outwith a better one
now you don’t need 15 workersyou need 12 workers.
And will take less time.
I'm like okay. So then
my leader needs a way to manage these people.
Let's assign names to each of these
(43:07):
12 people
and let's talk about which daysthey do which activities.
And itputs out that.
And then I say, okay,then I need checklists
for myproject manager to,
make sure they're focusedon the right things
and know whatthe priorities are.
So we go through the priorities
and it creates all those check lists
and all thatcame about
from uploading a few photographs.
(43:29):
So you start withthe photographs
and by the end of it you have a complete schedule
a work descriptioneverything.
And you cando that.
You can then go to the next stepand say, what about cost?
And talkabout cost.
The conversation can change
and talk about any directionyou want to take it.
So what abouthallucinations?
What about hallucinations?
Because, you know,you just went through
(43:51):
a great use case of theof a kind of conversational way
to unwind a bunch of detail
around a projectstarting with pictures.
But let's just say it did thethe calculation wrong.
You should have hadyou know, 18 people, not 12.
And its information on the price of lumber is is dated.
So your budget is off.
I mean, how do you kind of
(44:11):
keep an eye out for hallucinations
make judgmentsabout hallucinations
work around hallucinations or
or do you find
they're not a problem?
What you know, kind of where are you
what's your
what's your kind oftake for people
who are just scared ofgetting the wrong answer
in an area that they don't have enough knowledge about
that maybe they make a bad decision.
It's a concern.
It's a concern and
(44:32):
Our, our unspoken
it's not written,but our policy is
that the person who'soverseeing the thing
has to check it as though they were checking a colleagues work
So,
the AI is your your junior colleague.
Even thoughit's brilliant
it gives you the workand you as the senior person
have to go through itand check it.
You can't assume that it's ready to go out the door.
(44:54):
So, it makes,in my opinion
others may disagree,
but I think it makesas many mistakes
or less actuallythan a human makes.
So I haven't found thatit's made more
more mistakesthan a human.
[Jeff] Right[Charles] So
the mistakes that it will make
and you pointed outa great example of that
was a cost.
(45:14):
I wouldn't trust the cost datacoming out of it.
I would have to check itwith local supplies
and things like that.
But within that 30 minutes
I've broken down
so much information
that it would have takenme four days to do.
Now I can spend that timejust checking a few thoughts
or whatever, and to doublechecking a few things, right?
(45:35):
So if you're
if you had to buy a generatorfor your new building
and put it on the roof
you can askyou know
of these suppliers, which one supplies to this country
of those, which oneuses biofuel?
And this one you know
and then we’re
narrow it down to a few choices for you.
And then you have to do thefinal check on those choices.
(45:55):
You don't have to just believe anything.
So, yeah, it's a
anything that comes out of Generative AI, LLMs, is a draft.
It's not a final thing.
[Jeff] Right, right[Charles] But, but it’s
But it's usually better
well thought out, smarterand certainly faster
than your junior colleague
that you might and it won’t argue with you.
(46:16):
[Jeff] It’s just so funny [Charles] It never get’s frustrated
never gets frustrated.
Never gets frustratedor gets angry.
You never got an angry AI
That's funny.
I just think it's so funny how our
our opinionson trust are so varied.
And, you know,we just tend to trust technology
that it's going to workbecause we're just so
comfortable becausethis stuff works so often.
(46:38):
My favorite example’s
you know, peopledriving in the back
sitting in the backof a Tesla
going down the highway.
And it's not a level five autonomous vehicle
not even close.
And yet people justthey just trust.
And it's funnyyou talk about
it makes the same amount of mistakesor less than a junior assistant.
You know, driverlessautomobiles here.
You know, we've got Waymo's nowrunning around San Francisco.
(46:59):
I think they're in Phoenixand a couple other countries
they don't crash.
They get crashed into.
And if there's any crash at allyou know, people are up in arms
where they're way better than99% of the drivers out there.
But we don't havethe same, you know,
kind of threshold or bar of,of what we expect.
(47:20):
So it's funny that you couch it in the form
of a junior colleague.
Then maybe then people can get more comfortable
with the fact they need to check the work
versus this,this all knowing
you know, super,super machine that
that you know, is going to
absolutely always give me the right answer.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind AI as my copilot
I just don't want it to be necessarily be the pilot.
(47:42):
So, I think that's fine.
You know, it's
it probably would make alot of smart decisions
and say, here's a better route.
Oh, watch out.There’s construction ahead.
I don't know what.
You know, that's a much more complex system
and one I know,not that much about.
I studied a bit about it
when I was doingmy certifications in AI.
because I had to understandall the different ways
(48:03):
that AI came upacross many industries.
But, yeah, there'slife safety at risk there.
I don't think what we're doingis quite the same thing.
I certainly if you're doing a building
and your you'recalculating the structures
I wouldn't trustits calculations.
That wouldbe a life safety issue.
But there it can do very powerful.
There are some models in there that do
(48:25):
extremely good calculationsand do them very well.
And most of the problems occurwhen you're
when you're question asking
prompting if you like.
It's not that wellthought out.
It's not really, clear.
I'm not saying you haveto structure a perfect prompt
but you have to give itsome context and explain
the parameters of what you're trying to do
(48:45):
just like you would a colleague.
So usually mistakescome out from that.
Now if it does,as you say, hallucinations
and gives you a wrong calculation.
ChatGPT o1for example
will show you how it came up with the calculations
and it will calculateeverything for the structure
of your newbuilding very fast.
And then you can spend more timejust going through and making sure
(49:07):
that you and the structural engineer agree
when it’s
it's done it alreadysuper fast
and it's showing you all the calculations.
It's not a black box.
It shows you what it's doing.
So I'm fine with that as long as the humans
do the checking.
Yeah that's a goodthat's a good strategy.
All right Charles, we're gettingtowards the end of our time.
You've got a great kindof global view of all these
(49:30):
progressive companies buildingthe newest, coolest things.
In workplace.
What are you excited aboutover the next couple of years
we've got, you know, thankfullyCovid is well behind us
and hopefully RTO and all that junk is behind us
and people are looking forward.
So as you look forwardto the future of workplace
what are youexcited about?
What do you think'sgoing to happen
over the nextcouple of years?
Well, Crystal-balling it
(49:51):
has never workedfor big issues, but
in terms of theindustry I'm in
workplaces and architectureand engineering.
It's, we've already discussed
that it's not aboutoffice mandates anymore.
It's about
readiness and adaptability.
I think adaptability is a key word.
Maybe even modularityin many cases.
(50:13):
And the next real conversationhas to be about AI
that adaptability and designing
workplaces that reflect who we are
and what we're becoming.
So, that's an evolving thing.
Nobody can really crystal ball it.
But I think all
some of your my notes say
you want to keep it
keep it evolving. Right.
(50:33):
It's never supposed to bea static situation anyway.
Right.
You have toyou have to
but AI has to be
it's going to pervade everythingwe do in the tech sense.
But adaptabilityfor companies is key.
So I don't knowif I've done a video on that.
If I haven't, I will.
I don't have that on my list of, cool things.
I have purpose, scale,sustainability,
(50:55):
happiness, efficiency,digital twins, mental health,
creativity, innovation,inspiration, connection.
Wow
Efficiency you got a lot
[Charles] I talked about all that?[Jeff] I don’t know how many more
videos you have to do?
Oh yeah I well I have
I like sharing knowledge
I love it.
I love it.
And I think adaptability
(51:15):
is what weneed because
because we can't crystal ball it.
Nobody could have told youthat Covid was coming.
Well, some peopleclaim they can.
Nobody could have told you the effect that
work from home mandates
work from home
would have on office leases.
Nobody predictedit really.
Nobody predictedAI’s fast rise.
We don't really knowwhat's coming up.
So adaptability is
(51:38):
in all its forms
it’s going to be howwe help clients
to preparethat
you can't reallyfuture proof.
But we can put it underthe umbrella of future proofing.
Right. All right, Charles.
So I think we'llleave it there.
I appreciatethe conversation.
I appreciate all the sharing of,of the insights.
And really good to, to catch up today.
(51:58):
Okay, well it was wonderful seeing you again.
I hope we can get together again soon.
Absolutely. All right. Thanks again.
All right.
He's Charles I'm Jeff
You're watchingWork 20XX.
Thanks for watching.
Thanks for listeningon the podcast.
Catch you next time. Take care.
All right. We are clear.
All right
All right.Very good.
Hey, Jeff Frick Here
big shout out to the podcast audience.
(52:18):
Thanks for listening in.
You can get show notes and transcripts at Work20XX.com
And that also has links to the videos as well.
Appreciate you listeningin on the podcast
Do reach out
say hello, like subscribeand smash that notification bell.
Thanks for listening.Take care. Bye bye.
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