(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Okay, welcome everybody out to podcast number 1311. Today we've got an interesting subject. We're going to talk about AIA contract documents and much more with Luke. 

I think it's Diorio, right? Or Diorio. Diorio, yeah. Got it right. 

And we're excited to talk about this together with an industry expert, so stay with us. This is the Elevate Construction Podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction, wanting to take their next step. Get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder as he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life, and expect more. 

Let's go. Welcome, everybody. I hope you're doing well. 

Luke, would you mind giving us an introduction about yourself so we can connect with you? Your experience the whole night. Yeah, Jason, happy to. Thanks for asking. 

So I'm Luke Diorio. I'm the senior vice president of partnerships and strategy at AIA contract documents. I've been with AIA and AIA contract documents since 2016, and in my role, I'm really focused on finding the ways in which we can, as a business, drive more value for our customers in terms of how the industry standard contracts, agreements, documents, and forms are delivered to the market, whether it's through our software platform or through our content and through our partnerships and any new product development. 

So really focused in on sort of how you think about risk management writ large on a design and construction project and how we support that. Wonderful. What about your experience personally? Where'd you come from? What makes you? Yeah, what makes me? So that's an interesting question. 

I'm an avid golfer, if that makes any sense. I get three kids and a dog and live in southern Delaware down at the beach, which is kind of fun. So really enjoy that. 

But in terms of sort of history and background, I started my career in consulting, actually helping universities and research institutions commercialize their intellectual property, startups, things of that nature, and then actually took that sort of experience and ended up helping a few associations kind of rethink how they drive member value in terms of the things they can do that are a little bit more commercially oriented than say your traditional sort of membership experience. So what intellectual property do they have that they can bring to market that can obviously help offset membership dues and drive revenue for the organization so that they can continue to drive value. I did that in the medical healthcare space for a little while, and then took that role into the AIA and did that. 

And then of course took on a bigger role with AIA contract documents in terms of helping drive the business strategy there. I love it. Okay, so that gives me I got one more question before we begin. 

What is the biggest thing that's been on your heart and mind lately like passion thought just interest focused? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think, you know, from a business perspective, risk has come up a lot, not just in sort of design and construction, but in everything we do right in our everyday lives in terms of whether it's the economy, whether it's decisions you make in terms of lifestyle and all that stuff in terms of what risks are you creating. It really kind of ties home for me because that's what we do on and from an everyday business perspective in terms of being the leading risk management workflow solution in the industry.

You know, it's kind of interesting how you think about it, you know, from a contract or document perspective, but then also think about the same risks you might be facing somewhat differently in your everyday life and how it all comes together. So risk is the big word these days all around. I like that. 

And as a, as a business owner, it's a big one. Yeah, absolutely. Because it takes, it could take upwards of $10 to make a dollar, but one every dollar you save is worth a dollar, right? Yeah. 

Yeah. In business coaching, that's like one of the first things they, they tell you. I mean, I mean, obviously spend money and invest and do the things you have to do, but losing money is definitely a bad strategy.

Yeah, losing money tends to be a bad strategy for sure. But yeah, I would agree. I think, you know, business owners face a really kind of interesting risk because they have this sort of responsibility to themselves and their lives.

And then they have this responsibility to their business, which may employ people, which may include a job site where they have to protect people, protect materials, things of that nature. So it's, it's all around us. And I think it's just one of those things that you've got to learn how to manage and be smart about and, and hopefully benefit from that management in the long term.

I love it. Okay. Real quick. 

Can you tell me what is the difference? So what's the relationship difference or no, actually, let me do this. AI contract documents. Explain to me what that entity is and what is their relationship to AI? Yeah, so AI contract documents. 

We have been around, geez, 140 plus years now, in terms of being the industry standard, you know, content, whether it's agreements, documents and forms for design and construction. Interestingly enough, the first agreement ever put out was actually an owner contractor agreement, not an owner architect agreement, which is kind of interesting when you think about sort of coming up out of the AIA, right? And so the AIA managed that business for a long, long time. And a few years ago, decided to find an investment partner to take that business and spin it out of the Institute and run it in a little bit more of a commercial fashion.

The AIA is still a key stakeholder and active investor in our business in terms of having a stake in who we are and our success. And the AIA documents committee still meets four times a year and weekly to help us make sure that we're hitting the industry standard in terms of best practices around content and the like. But because we are more of a software solution, the decision was made to obviously sort of rethink how that was structured and no offense to not-for-profits, but they're not always the best in terms of running software platforms and you need a different set of skills and the like to be able to bring that value to market and really benefit the key stakeholders who are the customers, which are the architects, general contractors, trade contractors, lawyers, etc.

So, you know, we are a standalone private business right now, but obviously the AIA is still actively engaged in our success. That's very nice. Real quick, I have to get this in before, because I'm about to ask you your purpose, what you want people to know, how you can help the whole nine.

But yeah, I've got to do a selfish plug in here. So we, this might offend you, but hopefully not too much, but like I'm on a mission to kill CPM as a scheduling system in construction. And I know it's woven into most industry contracts and the general conditions. 

At a minimum, I want to make sure that we have options for tacked planning and last planner as well. How would somebody like me? Well, so here, let me just say something else. We've already drafted what it, what time impact analysis would look like.

We've already drafted specs, attempted to mimic the Dow bear standard for scheduling. How could I get in and see if we could get some good tacked last planner and lean options or content or contract options with the AIA? What would be the next step for that? Sure. Yeah. 

So that would be something that we would bring to our content team and the AIA documents committee in terms of recommendation and industry feedback in things that might need modifications to the templates themselves, or even just an understanding in terms of a guide or some other material we may need to bring to the market to give people sort of optionality when it comes to those types of things. You know, it's probably important to note that, you know, especially on our contracts, you know, they are a starting point and a template. And believe it or not, you can actually edit, you know, with your subscription, you can edit almost all of our documents whole cloth in terms of making the changes that you need to make to, you know, meet your business needs, address the situations you're in on your project and the like.

We obviously think that we've got sort of the best standard to start from in terms of just our history, our place in the case law. But there are opportunities to make changes along the way when you have situations where you need to manage your risk in a certain way, change the way you have a process, you know, instrumented into your business and have those documents meet your needs in a better way. Okay, so great. 

We'll move on. But here's the challenge. Here's the challenge for you.

Sure. Whether it's bringing that forward to the committee or having a one on one for like an hour with one of the in house. Sure. 

I'm going to say subject matter experts or attorneys or whatever the case may be. I'm ready to go. We're drafted. 

I think it would be an absolute amazing addition for you. I think we can probably make that happen. Okay.

All right. So you all reached out there. You have a purpose, you have a mission and you have something that you're wanting to make sure that gets out there.

So talk to me. What is your purpose right now? Yeah. So almost a year ago, we launched a new platform that we called Katina. 

And, you know, ACD 5, AIA Contract Documents 5, was the older platform. We got really creative with the name on that one. You know, just stuck the number behind it. 

And, you know, I would say legacy platform, not a lot of innovation. Obviously, it served its purpose. It gave you access to the content and helped you do what you need to do on a daily basis.

But we invested a lot of time and energy over the last couple of years to rethink this sort of engagement model with the documents in the Katina platform. So Katina came out in April, almost one full year in, which means we've got almost all of our customers, you know, old and new on the platform, which is awesome. And I really think as we kind of think about the next level of innovation in terms of how folks are working on the job site and the like, whether it's, you know, pre-design, design, pre-construction, construction and closeout.

There's just this really interesting opportunity for project teams to be more collaborative and working in a space, whether it's our platform or the platforms that use for project management and the like, to have a better understanding of sort of how they manage risk and be a little bit more informed. And Katina is the type of platform that's meant to help build that out as we continue to innovate upon it and bring more people into it and help people understand the risks that they're executing on these documents and pushing them through the workflow. So if I'm a project manager, what would that look like? Sure. 

So interesting, you brought that up. We actually have a couple of use cases with some of our customers where, you know, the project managers, the project executives are actually the front line of the contract review. You know, a lot of people just assume it's like a general counsel, a risk manager or, you know, the attorney's office.

And what we've learned is that, you know, these customers, whether they're large or small or medium size, you know, they've got 50, they've got five, they've got one project manager executive who understands, you know, the risks that they need to manage on a project right out of the gate. So they serve as that sort of point of entry to start facilitating the risk management through the documents that we helped create. And, you know, so which is great because oftentimes what that does is, you know, you can get right out of the gate, you can get those top 10 things that you know you must have or that you, you know, won't agree to right out of that, you know, right from the get go.

And then you can push the things through the workflow to the others in the process in a more efficient manner, right? Rather than here's everything, right? Here's all the changes, you know, you have to go through each item separately. You know, you can be in a better position now to say, okay, look, these 10 things we've checked off the box. These are our standards. 

We're good with it. General counsel, risk manager, project executive number two, just look at these two, three things. Let us know what you think about how we can accept risk here on a project.

And the goal obviously is to help things be managed better and hopefully more efficiently. Got it. So if I had to put that in Jason terms, you have a platform where instead of just going through the contracting process like it's a checkbox or the process.

You are focusing on the, the, I would say the, the most risky items, and you're able to through a workflow to get those to the right people to quickly come to the right decision to capture that in a reasonable contract that keeps everyone safe. That's the that's the goal. Yep. 

Okay, that is easy and simple as possible for everybody. Well, that's awesome. So when, so when people hear this podcast, let's say they're a PM or super or project executive, what do you want them to do? You want them to hop on your website, contact you, be familiar with the service. 

Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the easiest way is obviously go to, go to a contract documents.com and get onto the website and get into the platform that way. We've got a ton of resources there that you can go in and learn about all the things that we do, whether it's guides and other previous webinars and podcast other podcast recordings we've done, etc. That dive into the details of the documents right like understanding and owner architect agreement and owner contractor agreement and the subsequent families of documents that all tie together to things like the general conditions.

You know, so if you're really interested in sort of geeking out on that stuff, that's that's the best place to go. But, but ultimately, if you're in the throes of a design and construction project, you know, we're the best place to start. So grabbing a subscription to the platform, be able to come in and say, hey, you know, I can get in, I can start my project. 

I know which documents to get, I know which follow on documents I need to get because you know I'm hiring some consultants or trades or I have to do a change order, you know, and being able to access all that in one platform across the life of a project. You know, that's how we want people to dive in. That's awesome. 

And it's, it's so, it's so funny that we're doing this now. Our first project for our construction company is we're eight nine weeks away. And we've been working for quite some time on the prime agreement the master subcontract agreement the work orders the process the standard operating procedures everything.

It's a big deal. Right. And one, one thing can change, you know, like I was thinking, bonds, retainage, warranty, how do you handle that what's the contract delivery met like it's just this whole world, and how you want to handle it.

From a risk standpoint and who is holding most of that risk is is all it's all in the language and it's all going to sink right so yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we've got, I mean, you know just document wise there's like, I think, 300 340 different documents whether it's an agreement that's just, you know, at some equal level we know that's not really how it works because that's not how things are structured but, you know, again, those are tools that you have out there that you can use to help sort of right size things and and understand and come to a common agreement on how you want to manage a project on the go forward and, and it does take time contracting can take a long time, you know, it's not always plug and play. Okay, I got two more questions and we're at the we're at the right time for to close out 18 minutes is kind of where I like to be. 

Awesome. So, your biggest takeaway and doing this with AIA and the AIA docs, like what's your biggest takeaway with observation maybe, observations. Yeah, biggest observation is that our documents are used on every shape, size, color, geographical element of design and construction projects.

It's really fascinating to me that we can, you know, provide value to the entire market, whether you're building a home or doing a small renovation to, you know, the Caesar Superdome right and and it's just, it's fascinating to me that those are all very different risk profiles, right, but they're all managed from the same foundation, which is really important to me to understand that it can be done that way, you know, from the same starting point rather than having to start a new every time that you get a project right you can kind of position yourself in the right place to get going right out of the gate, which is awesome. I love that. Okay, so fine. 

Thank you. This has been really helpful. Frankly, I wish I would have known this a long time ago. 

So, what would be your challenge? So, people are listening, they're like, hey, what am I going to get out of this? Paul Akers in his book, Two-Second Lean, always at the end of the chapter says, what's the one thing? So, what's your one challenge for people listening to this and they will button up? Yeah, oh, that's a great, that's a great question. I think, I think the one challenge is really getting people to take their risk management seriously, right, like it's, and to your point earlier, understanding that there are trade offs, right, that it, you know, the risk is not always on one party on the project that there has to be some, you know, shared elements of that to make the project successful in most cases. That's not a legal position. 

That's just kind of my opinion, right, that the most successful partnerships or, you know, writ large and especially on a design construction project, kind of spread that risk around a little bit, right, and into the appropriate places. And, you know, in an ideal world that's the best building and the best outcome from one of the projects that are out there and, you know, whether it's a home or it's a place like this, these are super-dome, you know, when you're there, it brings people joy and they get to go from there. So the challenge is really understanding how you structure that so that the output, if you will, which is ultimately then a built project, can hit its goals in, you know, making people happy, having a good place to work and have fun, etc.

I love it. All right. Is there a place where you want people to contact you if they want more information or you want them just to head straight to the website? I'd love for them to head straight to the website. 

We've got all the docs up there, all the information you could possibly need. You could buy a document, you could buy a subscription, etc. And, you know, that'll get you into the weeds of the things that are a little bit more technical, etc., about our platform. 

And you get to learn all about us and how we do what we do. Awesome. Thank you so much for hopping on. 

This has been very helpful and educational. And so, you know, at the end of the day, we're all trying to build great jobs. We've got to stay in business to do it. 

I always remember the rich dad, poor dad author, can't remember his name. You remember his name? Anyway. Yeah, I'll figure it out one of these days. 

But he always said, rich dad, poor dad. Oh, it's Robert T. Kiyosaki. Yeah. 

So that's why I didn't remember it. Anyway, he said, you know, there's product, there's sales and marketing. There's your internal process. 

There's your CEO, CFO, you know, all these different things. But he said, don't forget about risk. He told a story where he did.

I can't remember. He started making something, but he forgot to patent it. And somebody then took his invention and started making millions off of it and put him out of business.

And he's like, I didn't listen to my business coaches. I had the product. I had the sales and marketing. 

I had to know how we were able to manufacture it. I didn't get a patent and they and I'm out of business. Right. 

So you have to have all the aspects. So great message. I hope everybody's able to put this into place. 

And on we go. Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. 

We really appreciate it. We'll catch you next time on the Elevate Construction Podcast. Thank you.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)