Every day, on every project, lessons are happening inside AEC firms. But without the right infrastructure, those insights often remain tucked away in meeting notes or siloed with project teams—making it likely that future teams will repeat the same mistakes on their projects.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With the right infrastructure in place, AEC firms can learn faster than one project at a time and turn individual insights into organizational knowledge.
At Affiliated Engineers, Inc. (AEI), Company Wide Teams (CWTs) provide that infrastructure. For more than 25 years, these peer-led, cross-office teams have served as the scaffolding for firmwide learning, continuous improvement, and leadership development. The idea is simple but powerful: Don’t just share lessons, learn from them—and not just as a project team, as an organization.
The structure is clear and repeatable. Project lessons are identified and prioritized during monthly CWT meetings. From there, lessons are shared across the firm through a variety of lightweight formats: curated presentations, short-form write-ups, and open technical forums. When a lesson points to a deeper need, it’s operationalized—transformed into templates, toolkits, or shared guidelines—improving how the whole firm works.
Of course, none of that happens without trust. AEI has also invested deeply in building a culture where people feel safe naming their mistakes, confident their insights will help others grow.
What follows is a look at one of the most durable and dynamic knowledge-sharing programs in the AEC industry—what it looks like in action, and what other firms can learn from it.
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