The Hidden Challenge Beyond Regulations
Building regulations might be relatively stable, but project-specific communications are constantly changing. Design meeting notes, client instructions, internal QA guidelines, consultant feedback – all of these can change at a moment’s notice.
A client might introduce a new preference mid-project, or an engineer might revise a specification via email. Without careful tracking, it’s easy to miss when a meeting decision quietly changes a previously agreed requirement. Keeping on top of this information has become a major challenge for design teams.
Scattered Notes Can Lead to Inefficiencies
When requirements and feedback are spread across many documents, crucial context gets lost. Team members can struggle to remember who decided what, when, and why as the project evolves. One industry report based on RIBA Plan of Work guidelines noted that information often remains stuck in email threads and never makes it into an official record:
“Too often on projects information is communicated but not documented, or it is documented in emails which are then not recorded properly.” – Dr Stephen Hamil, NBS.
In short, there’s no single source of truth, making it hard to pull up the latest client instruction or consultant comment on demand.
Common problems include:
- Scattered feedback: Valuable input from clients or consultants often ends up buried in emails or meeting minutes, often not property documented, making it a chore to find later.
- No traceability: Without a clear change log, it’s hard to see how a decision was made or who approved it. New team members have no quick way to learn the reasoning behind past decisions, hampering continuity.
These issues often result in delays, rework, or requirement compliance problems.
This is exactly where AI in architecture can play a huge role to support architects.
AI and ReqManager to the Rescue: Centralise, Summarise, and Track
AI-powered requirement management tools can now tackle these challenges. They act as a project’s single source of truth for all requirements and decisions. Tektome’s ReqManager uses AI to unify all your documents in one place.
Here’s how a tool like this helps architects regain control:
- Centralise everything: Instead of information sitting in separate folders and inboxes, all project documents live in one hub. You can upload everything from meeting notes and internal checklists to client briefs and official codes, making them searchable together (new features, such as email inbox connection is coming soon too).
- AI search and summaries: Advanced AI lets you query the entire project knowledge base in plain language and instantly find answers. The system will sift through your files and even generate a summary or checklist of the requirements on a given topic. You get a concise list of key points instead of wading through pages of text.
- Real-time collaboration: With a central platform, everyone from junior architects to project leads works off the same up-to-date information. When a new directive comes in or a spec is updated, it’s instantly visible to the whole team. Instead of long email chains, team members can comment on items directly in the system, and all feedback and approvals are shared openly – keeping everyone up to date.
- Full traceability: Every change in a requirement is logged with a timestamp and the name of who made it (this feature is coming soon) so you can always trace a decision back to its source, clarifying accountability.
These capabilities ensure requirement management keeps pace from project start to finish. At the outset, each department’s input (client needs, regulatory must-dos, key quality notes) can be captured right after the kick-off meeting, and as design progresses, new requirements or changes are logged as they arise – for example, correcting a misunderstanding flagged during a review.
In later stages, any final adjustments from site meetings or authority feedback are recorded with full context and the summaries updated accordingly. The entire evolution of every requirement stays documented and accessible, so nothing falls through the cracks.
Take Control of Your Project Notes
If you’re an architect or designer tired of chasing down scattered notes and emails, it might be time to give an AI tool like ReqManager a try. By centralising your project’s knowledge and letting AI handle the heavy lifting of organisation and tracking, you can focus on designing – confident that no requirement will slip through the cracks.
Tektome offers a free two-week trial of ReqManager so you can see the benefits. Don’t let crucial information stay lost in meeting minutes or inboxes – take control of your requirements and let AI keep everything on track.
