Leveling Up as Learning Organizations

We’re about ten weeks into the private beta for Synthesis LMS and the biggest lessons we’ve learned so far aren’t really about technology at all.

At first, there was a flurry of activity in the LMS. Firms jumped in, created content, uploaded videos, and built out their first courses. It was exciting to watch. But what happened next was just as important. Across both beta cohorts, people paused and said, “Oh, I see — if we really want to take advantage of this new technology, if we really want to maximize the opportunity here, it’s going to take more than just building content. We’re going to need to level up as learning organizations.”

And by that I don’t mean throwing away what firms have already been doing. Quite the opposite. These are some of the smartest firms in our community, and they’ve been investing in knowledge sharing and informal learning for years. They have lunch & learns, peer-to-peer mentoring, recorded talks from subject-matter experts, even entire libraries with hundreds of videos. 

Those are strengths, and they’ve served firms well. But what we’re realizing together is this moment calls for something more. It’s not just about uploading content into a new tool. It’s about taking the next step, rising to the next level, and moving toward becoming modern AEC learning organizations.

That means going beyond volunteer-driven knowledge sharing into something more curated, something built around adult learning principles and intentional knowledge transfer. Because while serendipitous learning is valuable, firms are starting to recognize that it won’t be enough — not on its own — to prepare people for the challenges in front of them.

Why Level Up Now?

Here are just a few reasons:

• Retirements. Baby Boomers are leaving the workforce and there aren’t enough Gen Xers to backfill the gap.

• Acceleration. Projects are moving faster and layering in more technical, contractual, regulatory, and interpersonal complexity.

• The half-life of knowledge is shrinking. What we know today doesn’t hold as long as it used to. Codes, tools, and best practices are evolving more quickly than ever.

• Emerging professionals. Designers and project managers are stepping into big responsibilities sooner than ever before. In the past, they might have had years to learn by osmosis. One project at a time. Now, the timeline is compressed.

Of course, project-based learning and serendipitous knowledge sharing will always matter. Those things aren’t going away. But there’s a growing sense across the community that we also need ways to accelerate people into new roles — not just new hires, but new project managers, new market and building type specialists, and new team leaders.

The question is — What can AEC firms do, intentionally and systematically, to support them?

When Less is More: The Leap to Knowledge Transfer

The abundance of content that many AEC firms already have can be a double-edged sword.

For example, one firm in our beta has 80 separate recordings on project management. Those are incredible assets, but they can also be overwhelming. What’s a new project manager supposed to do with 80 hour-long project management recordings? How do they know which best practices are still current and which are outdated? What if there is conflicting information?

Levelling up as a learning organization isn’t just about producing more. It’s also about curation. It’s about turning hundreds of recordings into a handful of structured courses. It’s about designing learning paths that actually guide someone forward, instead of leaving them with a mountain of options and no map. Sometimes less really is more.

One of the big differences between knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer is governance.

Knowledge sharing tends to be organic. Anyone with something interesting to contribute is invited to share. It’s ad hoc, volunteer-driven, and generous. And that’s a good thing — it builds community, it sparks serendipity, and it keeps ideas flowing.

Knowledge transfer, on the other hand, raises a whole different set of questions. It’s not just what gets shared, but how. Is this the right topic? Is it presented in a way that actually works as an on-demand learning asset for future employees?

Take an hour-long live presentation. Live and in person, it can be great — the audience is in the room, following the energy, and connecting with the speaker. But watching the recording after the fact might not be as effective or enjoyable. The recording of the live session might be filled with side stories and digressions as well as announcements and logistics. 

That’s why leveling up as a learning organization means taking curation seriously. It means ensuring the knowledge we capture is packaged in ways that follow adult learning principles, so it’s just as effective on-demand as it was in the room. It means setting standards, building review processes, and investing in quality.

And the opportunity doesn’t stop there. Courses in an LMS aren’t one-and-done. They can evolve. Learners can give feedback so instructors can update and improve their courses over time. That continuous loop turns a single course into a living knowledge asset — one that not only captures expertise but teaches, consistently, “the [Your Firm Name] way.”

The Cultural Challenges of Curation

“Curation” is the nice word we use, but in practice it means drawing lines. It means saying no to an individual who wants to add a course to your LMS, or at least saying not yet, or not this way. That’s a new muscle for many firms — and it can feel uncomfortable at first.

The firms in our beta program have all emphasized that their approach to knowledge sharing is open to all. Anyone with something valuable to say is welcome to say it, without any reviews or guardrails.

Yet, as these same firms have begun building out their LMS strategy and content, they have expressed a desire to take a more intentional, structured, and yes, curated approach to knowledge transfer. Reviewing which ideas get turned into courses and which don’t. Setting guidelines for what good looks like when it comes to learning content. Prioritizing which topics to invest limited resources in developing.

One of the companies in our beta has tackled this transition head-on by creating a course on how to build courses using adult learning principles. They’re not just setting a bar — they’re teaching people how to clear it. What’s interesting is that this hasn’t only improved the learner experience — it’s also made the instructors more engaged. Most of these subject matter experts don’t come from a teaching background and may feel imposter syndrome when asked to “be a teacher.” But when given the right tools and guidance, they’re able to build confidence and fully enjoy the process of teaching.

So this leap we’re making as a community isn’t only organizational. It’s personal. It’s about leveling up not just as firms, but as teachers, facilitators, and learning professionals. And it’s a leap we’re making together.

The Staffing Question

All of this also raises an organizational question — Who does this work?

Volunteer committees have done a remarkable job building a culture of knowledge sharing. But can those same groups level up to create knowledge-transfer–ready assets? Can they take what’s organic and ad hoc and evolve it into curated, on-demand learning resources?

Or will firms need new roles — learning managers, instructional designers, even outside consultants — to help bridge the gap? Will they invest in upskilling their existing committees and champions, giving them the tools to become better learning and development professionals?

In other words — Is the team that got us here the team that’s going to take us there?

That’s not an abstract question. It’s a practical one in an industry where margins can be tight and resources limited. What does a sustainable model for L&D look like in AEC? How do we honor the volunteer spirit while also ensuring the quality, consistency, and intentionality needed for knowledge transfer?

At this point, we don’t know. We’re early in this journey with our community and will be exploring these questions and more in the coming months and years and will report our findings along the way. 

The Challenge of Delivering the Right Knowledge to the Right Person at the Right Time

Becoming a modern AEC learning organization isn’t only about creating the best content. It’s also about delivering it to the right person at the right time.

Great content delivered at the wrong moment is only marginally useful. Unless you can apply it directly to a project or a role you’re stepping into, it doesn’t stick. At best, it plants a seed — a sense that something is possible, that the knowledge exists somewhere. But without immediate application, that knowledge tends to drift away.

This is one of the biggest challenges AEC firms face as they scale learning. You might run an excellent training session on construction administration or bathroom detailing, but unless someone happens to be taking on those responsibilities right then, they’re unlikely to retain much. Six months later, when the situation does arise, the training is a faint memory — and the person is back to searching, asking around, or reinventing the wheel.

That’s why knowledge transfer requires more than just producing great content. It demands timely delivery — ideally, just-in-time, aligned with someone’s role, project type, or current challenge.

Sometimes automation can help. In Synthesis LMS, that might mean automatically assigning a learning path when someone gets promoted, or recommending a course as a project moves into a new phase. Other times, it takes human judgment — a project manager pointing a junior architect to exactly the right course or courses as they step into new responsibilities.

Without that kind of intentionality, even the best-designed courses risk becoming just another layer in the archive: more content, but not necessarily more capability.

L&D + AI = 🔥

Most of our learning and development practices were designed long before AI came into the picture. But now, with tools like Synthesis AI Search (and soon Synthesis Knowledge Agents) AEC firms have an entirely new dimension to work with.

Knowledge can be surfaced in at least three ways:

• Serendipitous sharing — Lunch & Learns, intranet posts, hallway conversations, project work.

• Structured transfer — courses, learning paths, curated recordings.

• AI-driven discovery — search and agents that connect people to exactly what they need, when they need it.

That last category is new — and it’s powerful. Synthesis AI search and agents can cut across silos and content types: intranet posts, best practices, project pages, lessons within courses, and video libraries. They can link someone directly to the specific piece of knowledge required to solve a problem in the flow of work, including sending them to the exact minute of a relevant video.

And often, that pinpoint moment of discovery does something else: it opens a door. In solving one problem, a learner may stumble into a whole new area of knowledge they didn’t know existed. AI can spark curiosity as much as it satisfies immediate needs.

This is why discovery is just as important as sharing and transfer. Together, they form a three-part system: the openness of sharing, the structure of transfer, and the personalization of discovery.

But — and this is crucial — AI only amplifies what’s already there. If the underlying knowledge base is overwhelming or inconsistent, AI magnifies the noise. If it’s curated and intentional, AI magnifies the value. Which is why the work of governance, curation, and timing is so central right now: it sets the stage for discovery to actually deliver on the promise of AI.

What’s Next?

So what we’re seeing, ten weeks into this beta, is that firms aren’t just implementing a new tool. They’re taking a leap. It’s a leap in people, process, culture, and governance — a leap in how AEC firms think about building and sharing knowledge. And it’s not something any one firm, or even Knowledge Architecture, can figure out alone. It’s something we’re working on out loud, together, as a community.

For me, that’s what makes this work exciting. We’re not just experimenting with a new LMS. We’re exploring, with our community, what it means to become modern AEC learning organizations. And that’s the journey I’ll continue writing about in the months ahead.

Looking forward to the conversation!