Reimagining AEC
By Sepehr Abrishami
Categories: Education, Courses, Technology
Reimagining AEC is Dr Sepehr Abrishami's independent podcast on how the built environment handles information. Each episode takes one subject from digital construction, from the ISO 19650 series and the common data environment to the golden thread, soft landings and the arrival of artificial intelligence in design and surveying practice, and tells it as a single argument built on the published standards, guidance and evidence. Sepehr is a researcher and former architect who leads the Centre for AI in Construction and teaches building information modelling at master's level. The episodes are written for postgraduate students and practitioners who want the reasoning behind the rules, not a summary of them.
40 episodes indexed on PodSearch.
Recent episodes
- Roles and the Responsibility Matrix
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks which organisation has failed when an information management task on a project goes undone, and how anyone could prove it in writing. A hypothetical council building a community hub, whose consultant's delegated scope stops at…
- The Delivery Plans
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how many task team plans become one master plan whose dates hold, and what a lead appointed party must do when they cannot. A hypothetical community hub, whose three task plans each look sound until they are combined, carries the…
- The BIM Execution Plan
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how one BIM execution plan can serve both the tender and the appointment. A hypothetical community hub for a district council, whose tender cites a withdrawn standard, carries the argument from the six areas of clause 5.3.2 of ISO…
- The UK BIM Framework and the Move from PAS 1192
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what the UK BIM Framework is and is not, and how a legacy document set maps onto the standards in force today. A hypothetical council's information pack, inherited from a 2016 project and about to go out with a tender, carries the…
- Management Systems for Information
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks where information management should sit inside an organisation's quality, risk and safety systems, and what changes when it sits there. A hypothetical design and build contractor, certified to two standards and missing a health and…
- Information Delivery Manuals in ISO 29481
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how an information exchange can be specified precisely enough that every party can agree to it and software can check it. A hypothetical college teaching block, where a cost consultant receives room data it cannot trust, carries the…
- Classification and Structured Data
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what it takes for information to be machine readable rather than merely digital. A hypothetical council school campus, whose appointment asks only for information classified to Uniclass, carries the argument through the three jobs of…
- Information Exchange in ISO 19650 Part 4
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what decides whether information may move from one party to another, and what the party receiving it may check. A hypothetical transport interchange whose asset data schedule arrives corrupted at the last gate carries the argument…
- Health and Safety Information in ISO 19650 Part 6
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how health and safety information stops failing at the handovers where it is most needed. Two buildings in a hypothetical regeneration area, delivered by two teams side by side, one a tall residential block and one a partly occupied…
- Security-Minded Information Management in ISO 19650 Part 5
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how an organisation decides whether a project needs a security-minded approach to information management, and what has to follow if it does. A hypothetical water treatment works beside a third party's substation, with a regional office…
- Level of Information Need in ISO 7817-1
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks why a single number such as LOD 300 specifies nothing, and what ISO 7817-1 puts in its place. A hypothetical two-storey community health centre, with its external wall, fire door and air handling unit, carries the argument through the…
- The Common Data Environment: Process Before Platform
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what ISO 19650 requires of a common data environment as a process, as distinct from the platform someone bought. A hypothetical school extension, Northgate Academy, where a coordinator could fix a subcontractor's facade model in ten…
- The Operational Phase in ISO 19650 Part 3
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how an owner keeps an asset information model true to the asset across years of use. A hypothetical campus estate, whose failed chiller is replaced with information that cannot be linked to the register, carries the argument through the…
- The Delivery Phase in ISO 19650 Part 2
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what has to happen, in what order and by whom, for each appointment to deliver the information a client asked for. A hypothetical leisure centre, where a contractor passes a client's date straight down to its pool water specialist and…
- Information Management in ISO 19650 Part 1: Concepts and Principles
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what a client has to put in writing before the information about its buildings can be managed at all. A hypothetical council that asks only for a BIM project carries the argument through the vocabulary and four principles of ISO…
- The ISO Standards: A Map of the Season
The trailer for the ISO standards season of Reimagining AEC, Dr Sepehr Abrishami's own podcast. It sets out the question the season asks of every standard, what a shall clause asks you to do and how anyone would check it, and maps the fifteen episodes in three groups: the core of the ISO 19650…
- AI in Architectural Practice: Reading the RIBA AI Report 2026
In Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami reads the RIBA AI Report 2026 through one routine task, the door schedule, which architects in the report see both as work AI could take on and as work through which junior staff learn. He sets out who answered the 2026 survey and where its…
- AI in Construction and Commercial Property: From Pilot to Responsible Practice
In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami tests a claim from the RICS AI in commercial property and construction report 2026, that adoption of artificial intelligence has crossed an inflection point, against the survey evidence behind it. He sets out who answered the…
- Reading the NBS Digital Construction Report 2025: What a Survey Can Carry as Evidence
In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami reads the NBS Digital Construction Report 2025 through one sentence from a client board paper, written for teaching, that turns a survey figure into a requirement for every bidder. He sets out who answered the survey and what…
- The Single Construction Regulator: Who Would Answer for a Building, and What Has Been Decided
In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami follows a twenty-storey residential tower in England, invented for the purpose, through the government's proposals for a single construction regulator, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's first recommendation. He sets out why the…
- The Golden Thread for Higher-Risk Buildings: What Must Be Kept, by Whom, and How
As host of Reimagining AEC, a show that belongs to him rather than to an employer, Dr Sepehr Abrishami charts one fire door through the life of a residential tower invented for the purpose, to explain the golden thread, the information and processes that English law requires for higher-risk…
- Digitising CDM: Carrying Health and Safety Information into the Information Model
Reimagining AEC is Dr Sepehr Abrishami's own podcast on information in the built environment, and here he follows one pane of glass high on an illustrative tall building from a client's first project meeting to the information kept once the building is in use. Along the way he sets out the…
- The Information Management Initiative: From a Board Commitment to Rules for Every Role
Speaking on Reimagining AEC, a podcast he owns and makes himself, Dr Sepehr Abrishami walks a hypothetical engineering consultancy, invented for teaching, through the Information Management Initiative, the industry programme led by nima and the Construction Leadership Council, and sets it beside…
- Government Soft Landings: From Business Case to Aftercare
On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami follows a plant room with two cramped boilers, the worked example in the 2019 Government Soft Landings guidance, from the business case through design review to aftercare. He sets the guidance against BS 8536:2022, the code that has replaced…
- Information Management in the Operational Phase: Keeping the Asset Information Model Current under ISO 19650-3
Dr Sepehr Abrishami, host and producer of Reimagining AEC, which no university owns, leads an invented owner of office buildings through a roof inspection, a lightning repair and the purchase of a further building to explain how ISO 19650-3 keeps an asset information model accurate while an asset…
PodSearch is a free, independent podcast search engine. Read about PodSearch, the privacy policy or contact us.