dwp.perspectives | Building dwp. as an AI-Enabled Design Practice

By Natapon Akomsoontorn, CEO, dwp.

How AI is changing the way we design, work, and collaborate at dwp.

AI is often discussed as a technology story. At dwp., I believe it is more useful to think about it as a business transformation.

The question is not simply what AI can generate, automate, or accelerate. The bigger question is, how will dwp. operate differently when intelligence can be built into the way the business works?

For an international design practice, this has implications well beyond image generation or individual productivity. It affects how we manage information, deliver projects, share knowledge, allocate resources, maintain quality, develop people, support clients, and ultimately scale the business. That is where we are focusing our efforts.

We are not building an AI strategy alongside the business. We are building AI into the business.

From technology projects to business infrastructure

The first wave of AI adoption within the industry has largely been about individual tools. People have used AI to help write, search, summarize, generate images, analyse information, or automate individual tasks. These applications can be useful, but they are largely disconnected from the wider way a business operates.

At dwp. we are working toward an environment where intelligence is embedded into the systems and workflows that run the practice.

That means connecting information rather than repeatedly recreating it. Connecting knowledge rather than leaving it distributed across files, people, and studios. Connecting project delivery with commercial and operational information, and connecting AI capabilities directly to the workflows where decisions are actually made.

This is the role of dwp.intelligence.

dwp.intelligence is being developed as the broader intelligence layer of the business, bringing together our knowledge, project information, standards, workflows, and experience so they can become more accessible and useful across the practice.

dwp.studioai is a core part of dwp.intelligence.

It takes that intelligence into the actual work, applying AI within our design and project workflows through capabilities including visualization, design review, BIM, and quality.

dwp.intelligence is about making the business more intelligent. dwp.studioai is about putting that intelligence to work.

The real opportunity is workflow

The value of AI is not created simply by having access to better tools. It is created when the workflow itself becomes better.

Consider a typical project. Information is generated during the brief. Decisions are made during concept design. Requirements change during design development. Drawings and models are produced. Reviews take place. Consultants coordinate. Documentation is issued. The project is delivered. New knowledge is created.

If those stages operate as disconnected activities, information is repeatedly transferred, reformatted, searched for, checked, and recreated. If they operate as part of a connected system, information can move through the project with much less friction. That is the direction we are building toward at dwp.

We are not asking where we can add AI. We are asking where the business can work better because intelligence is available. This changes the starting point.

Instead of asking, what can this AI tool do?, we ask, what information is being created? Who needs it next? What decisions depend on it? What should happen automatically? What requires human judgment? What should the business learn from it?

Those questions are much more important than the technology itself.

Building a more scalable business

For a growing international practice, scalability is not simply about winning more projects. It is about being able to take on more work without increasing complexity at the same rate.That means improving how we use our people, information, systems, and knowledge.

AI has the potential to reduce the amount of administrative and repetitive work that sits between people and the decisions they need to make. It can help teams process more information, identify patterns, prepare outputs, perform predictable checks, and retrieve knowledge more quickly.

Over time, this can create operating leverage. The ability for the practice to handle greater complexity and volume without requiring every additional project to generate a proportional increase in internal effort. That is strategically more important to us than simply making an individual task five minutes faster.

The objective is not AI productivity. The objective is organizational leverage.

Turning dwp.'s knowledge into a business asset

One of the biggest opportunities is already inside the business. We have accumulated decades of project experience across studios, sectors, markets, clients, design disciplines, and delivery environments. That knowledge exists in projects, presentations, drawings, specifications, BIM models, proposals, reports, design reviews, standards, processes, and, most importantly, in the experience of our people.

The challenge is access.

Today, useful knowledge can depend on knowing where something is stored, who worked on it, or who to ask. dwp.intelligence is being developed to change that. The longer-term opportunity is to make the collective knowledge of dwp. significantly easier to access and apply. Not as a replacement for professional expertise, but as an extension of it.

A team should be able to find relevant precedents without knowing which folder contains them. A project leader should be able to access information from comparable projects without starting a new search from zero. A designer should be able to understand how the practice has previously approached a similar problem. A business leader should be able to see patterns across projects and markets that would otherwise remain hidden inside individual systems.

When knowledge becomes easier to access, experience becomes more scalable.

A lesson learned in one studio should have the potential to benefit another. A process developed for one project should not disappear when the project closes. Experience should accumulate rather than repeatedly being rediscovered.

That is what we mean by building institutional intelligence.

Connecting the business

Design businesses generate enormous amounts of information, but that information is often separated by function. Projects sit in project-management systems. Financial information sits somewhere else. Proposals follow another process. Resourcing is managed separately.  Knowledge is stored across files and platforms. Design information lives inside project environments. The consequence is friction. Information has to be transferred between systems, people have to reconcile different sources, and decisions can be made without the full context being readily available. We are therefore working toward a more connected digital environment at dwp. Our business and project systems are being developed around the same principle. 

Information should move with the work.

That means connecting project information with delivery. Connecting resources with projects. Connecting commercial information with business decisions. Connecting quality processes with project milestones. Connecting knowledge with the people who need it. And, connecting what we learn from completed work back into the practice.

This is where AI becomes much more powerful than a standalone application. Intelligence becomes useful when it is connected to the flow of the business.

Better decisions, not just faster decisions

AI can help us do things faster, but speed alone is not the objective.

A faster process that produces the wrong outcome is not an improvement. The greater opportunity is to give people better information, better visibility, and more options at the point where decisions are being made. This applies across the business.

A project manager can have better visibility of delivery issues. A business leader can identify patterns across project performance. A business development team can access relevant project knowledge and precedents more quickly. A designer can explore more options. A technical team can identify predictable issues earlier. A client-facing team can respond with greater context.

The common factor is not the particular AI capability. It is better decision-making.

What this means for design

Design remains at the center of what dwp. does, but design is part of a much larger business process.

A designer does not work in isolation. The designer operates within a project, with a brief, a budget, a programme, consultants, technical requirements, client expectations, commercial constraints, and a delivery process. Improving the surrounding system therefore improves the environment in which design happens.  As a core part of dwp.intelligence, dwp.studioai is being developed around the actual design workflow, supporting visualization, design review, BIM, and quality.

The intention is not simply to generate more content. It is to reduce friction throughout the process.

From brief to concept. From concept to development. From development to documentation. From documentation to delivery. And, from delivery back into the knowledge of the practice.

Giving designers more leverage

The most valuable thing AI can give a designer is not an image. It is leverage.

If visualization becomes faster, designers can explore more directions. If information can be retrieved more easily, designers spend less time searching. If predictable quality checks can be supported by AI, teams can identify issues earlier. If BIM information can be processed more intelligently, technical teams can focus more of their attention on meaningful problems. If previous project knowledge can be surfaced through dwp.intelligence, designers can build on the experience of the practice rather than repeatedly starting from zero.

The cumulative effect is more important than any individual automation.

We are trying to create more capacity for thinking. That is the real connection between our business strategy and our design strategy.

From production to higher-value work

Architecture and interior design will always involve production. Drawings need to be produced. Models need to be coordinated. Documentation needs to be checked. Presentations need to be prepared. Information needs to be issued. But, these activities are not all equal in value. The higher-value contribution of our people is understanding the problem, establishing a point of view, developing a strategy, evaluating alternatives, making judgments, resolving complexity, and creating meaningful design outcomes.

AI should help protect time for those activities. Automate what does not require judgment. Augment what does. Protect the time to think. That principle is shaping how we approach dwp.studioai.

We are not trying to remove the designer from the process. We are trying to remove unnecessary friction around the designer.

More exploration, better design

When the cost of exploring an idea falls, more ideas can be considered before a decision is made.

A designer may be able to test alternative spatial strategies earlier. Different material directions can be explored. Different visual languages can be compared. Different planning responses can be evaluated.

The benefit is not that AI chooses the answer. The benefit is that the team has more possibilities to evaluate.

AI can expand the field of possibilities. Human judgment determines which possibilities matter. That distinction will remain fundamental to how we use AI at dwp.

AI can propose. The business decides. The designer decides.

There is a principle behind what we are building. AI can propose. The business decides. The designer decides.

AI can process information, identify patterns, generate alternatives, and accelerate production, but it does not understand our business objectives in the way our leaders do. It does not understand a client relationship in the way an experienced team does. It does not understand the cultural and commercial context of a project in the way people working in that market do. And, it does not replace design judgment.

The responsibility for decisions remains with people.

As AI becomes more capable, that responsibility becomes more important, not less. The value of our people will increasingly come from knowing what questions to ask, what information matters, which options deserve consideration, what risks need to be challenged, and when an output is simply not good enough.

Technology can increase the volume of possibilities. People remain responsible for the choices.

Changing how dwp. operates

We are still building this. There is no finished playbook for an AI-enabled international design practice.

Some applications work extremely well. Others do not. Some workflows can be automated. Others require significant redesign before automation makes sense.

That is why we are not pursuing AI as a collection of disconnected experiments. We are building around the problems we actually have. We are developing dwp.intelligence as the intelligence layer of the practice. We are developing dwp.studioai as a core application of that intelligence within design and project workflows.

We are connecting our project, resource, commercial, knowledge, and business systems. We are identifying repetitive work that can be automated or accelerated. We are building better ways to capture and reuse knowledge. And, we are continuing to test where AI can improve the quality and speed of decision-making.

These are not separate technology initiatives. They are pieces of the same operating model.

What we are building toward

The ambition is not to have the most AI tools. It is to have a better business.

A business where information is easier to access. Where knowledge accumulates. Where workflows are more connected. Where project teams have better visibility. Where repetitive work takes less time. Where decisions are supported by better information. Where our global studios can collaborate more effectively. Where our people have more leverage. And, where the capacity created by technology can be redirected toward higher-value work.

Design is the reason we exist.

But the quality of our design is influenced by everything around it. Tthe information we have, the way we collaborate, the systems we use, the knowledge we can access, the time available to think, and the quality of the decisions we make.

That is why our AI strategy starts with the business.

Because better systems create better conditions for better design. And if we get this right, the outcome will not simply be a faster design practice. It will be a more connected, more intelligent, more scalable, and more capable dwp.