The model is current.
Everyone is
still waiting.
A practice already owns the most valuable asset on the project — a coordinated model. Then a client asks what the kitchen will feel like, a contractor asks what changed since Tuesday, and a consenting officer asks for a schedule. Each answer means someone opening authoring software and rebuilding an explanation by hand. This is a concept for the waits around the model, not a replacement for the model.
“The model already knows. The people waiting cannot see it.”
The gap this concept addressesThe wait between asking and seeing
A client emails: “can we see the living space with the bifolds open?” The answer exists in the model. Getting it to them means someone with a licence, an hour, a render, and a resend — tomorrow, if the day allows. Meanwhile the contractor is waiting on a variation, and the QS is waiting on quantities that the same model could give.
Every practice exports IFC — it is the open format that Revit, ArchiCAD and Vectorworks all write. That file already contains the walls, levels, doors, windows and slabs. Turning it into something a client can walk, or an agent can answer questions from, does not need another licence: assembl converts a real IFC to a walkable web scene in well under a second, headlessly, and has done so on real files.
What happens now
Every question about the model becomes a manual task for the one person who can open it, and the answer arrives long after the question mattered.
What it costs
BIM and 4D work is priced as skilled hours. Most of those hours are spent re-explaining a model that is already correct.
What the concept does
Converts your IFC to something people can walk in a browser, answers questions from the model itself, and drafts the sequence — all held for the practice to approve.
Every project moment, one pattern.
Each of these is a moment your customer already spends with you. Each can carry what the phone above shows: watch the work, earn the wait, answer one thing.
Be relevant — right thing, right moment · Be respectful — short, skippable, quiet by design · Be measurable — real impact, on the record · Be Aotearoa — built here, for how Kiwis actually wait
Every wait between the brief and the keys
Six moments where a client, a contractor or a council is waiting, and what the model could already answer.
The client understands the design in the room, instead of nodding along to a floor plan.
The RFI comes back with the model evidence already gathered, not a fortnight later.
The client sees roughly where the money goes while the design can still be changed.
Everyone works off the same answer, and the clash is found on a screen rather than on site.
The question gets an answer the same day, and a person still signs it off before it reaches the crew.
The last stretch is visible to everyone, so the keys are not held up by one missing piece of paper.
Four steps, every time.
- The signalSomething in your own systems says a person is now waiting, and roughly how long for.
- The predictionHow long this one will really take — not the average, this one.
- The valueSomething worth their attention goes into that window: an answer, a credit, a thing prepared while they wait.
- The exchangeThey get value. You get a customer who stayed, and one optional answer you have always wanted.
This is the reward layer, running for real on this page. Drag to scratch it. Nothing is collected, nothing is sent — it is here so the idea is something you do, not something you read.
US retailers lose an estimated $37.7 billion a year to customers who abandon because of long queues, split roughly $15.8b to competitors and $21.9b abandoned outright (Adyen with 451 Research). The New York State Department of Labor reported a 48% reduction in hang-ups after introducing virtual queuing. Theme parks moving to virtual queues reported a 36% lift in per-capita spending, because guests spent the wait somewhere that sold something. A Seattle-Tacoma Airport study found 63% of passengers said they shopped or ate more because they saved time in the security queue.
Every figure on this page carries its source. Overseas figures are shown as overseas figures — we have not found a published New Zealand equivalent, and we will not invent one.
One model. Four people waiting on it.
The same coordinated model, answering four different questions. Nothing here issues a drawing, certifies a design, or replaces a producer statement — every output stops at the practice.
A template sends the same thing to everyone and changes the name. What matters here is the case that should get something different — or nothing at all.
The rules beside each draft are placeholders. A pilot replaces them with your actual policies. We have not seen those, and this concept does not guess at them.
The check that runs before anything reaches a client or a site
A model conversion is confident by nature — it will happily produce a number for something nobody modelled. These are the checks that catch that.
Drafts are held against the Building Act 2004 and its producer-statement regime, the Fair Trading Act 1986, and the precedence of the issued contract documentation.
Press run to see what it catches — and what it refuses to produce at all.
One room. Your people, your agents, every action on the record.
Every concept on this page would run inside a private room like this: your team and the agents in the same space, drafts appearing with receipts, a named person saying yes. It runs on infrastructure you approve — and what is said in the room stays in it.
receipt sources: your rate card · rules: yours · held for approval
Client information stays in your room. Six months later, “where did this come from?” is one line, not a search.
Yours
Runs where you approve — your own room, your own record. Nothing in it leaves it.
On the record
Every agent action lands as a line a person can read — not a log only a vendor can open.
People decide
Drafts wait for a named person. The room shows who said yes, and when.
This panel is a concept picture, not a live room — a pilot stands up the real one, on infrastructure you approve.
The project board, before anything issues
Illustrative and fictional. No production access is requested by this concept.
| Request | From | Prepared | Waiting on | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walk the living space | Client | Browser walkthrough · indicative finishes | Practice check | Awaiting approval |
| What changed since Tuesday | Site | Delta view · three elements | Project lead | Awaiting approval |
| Wall and slab quantities | QS | Counts with element traces | QS to measure | Prepared |
| Consent schedule | Consultant | Nothing drafted | A named person | Held — judgement required |
| 4D sequence from the programme | Contractor | Draft sequence · model + dates | Project lead | Awaiting approval |
Volumes are deliberately blank. This demonstrator has no practice data and does not estimate anyone’s workload.
Every draft carries its own working.
Not a log somebody has to go and find. The provenance travels with the work — what it read, which rules it held, who must approve it, and what it refused to do.
This matters most on the day someone asks why it said what it said.
- Artefact
- Client walkthrough — living space
- Read
- An IFC export (levels, walls, openings, slabs) · the practice’s own naming · nothing from a client system
- Rules held
- Building Act 2004 · Fair Trading Act 1986 · practice quality assurance · contract documentation precedence
- Refused
- No consent schedule was drafted. No total was produced for an incomplete set. Nothing was issued, certified or superseded.
- Approver
- A named person. Unsent until then.
- Prepared
- —
- Reference
- —
What this will never do
It does not send. It prepares, and a named person sends. It does not publish to any channel, commit spend, move money, or make a decision that belongs to a person. It does not pretend to be a person — every draft says it was prepared by a machine and approved by a human.
No production access is requested by this concept.
Scope
One live project, from IFC export to client walkthrough and a drafted 4D sequence. Six weeks. Not the authoring, not the consent, not the documentation.
Access
An IFC export and your programme dates. No client records, no contract documents, no consent files.
Scorecard
Hours not spent re-explaining the model. Client questions answered the same day. Coordination views a project lead agreed were correct. One principal’s honest answer to “would you send this?”
Fail any line of the scorecard and we change the design or stop.
What a pilot actually asks of you.
Written out in full, because the honest version of this is short and most of it is your time, not your money.
One named person
The approver. Every draft stops with them and nothing reaches a customer until they say so. Expect about two hours a week — reading drafts, not managing a project.
One situation, not the business
One live project, from IFC export to client walkthrough and a drafted 4D sequence. Six weeks. Not the authoring, not the consent, not the documentation.
Read-only access, nothing that writes
An IFC export and your programme dates. No client records, no contract documents, no consent files. No production credentials, no write permissions, no access to anything the pilot does not need.
Your actual rules
The policies, limits and words the drafts must be held against. Every rule on this page is a placeholder standing in for yours. An afternoon with whoever owns them is usually enough.
Six weeks, then a real decision
Scored on: Hours not spent re-explaining the model. Client questions answered the same day. Coordination views a project lead agreed were correct. One principal’s honest answer to “would you send this?” Fail any line of that and we change the design or stop. You keep everything drafted either way.
A fixed fee, agreed in writing first
No number is published on this page, because it depends on which situation you pick. Whatever it is, it is agreed before any work starts and it does not move.
Run the pilot.
Say yes to the six weeks above, and add anything you would change first. Nothing here is fixed — most pilots move a line or two before they start, and the notes below are how that happens.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz with your notes in it. Nothing is collected by this page.
- Six weeks, one situation, scored against a written line
- Read-only access, nothing production
- A named approver — nothing sends without them
- A fixed fee, agreed in writing before anything starts
- Stop any time. You keep what was drafted
Pick a verb.
Not “book a demo”. Any of these is a real next step, and the last one is a perfectly good answer.
What is the one constraint we have got wrong?
Every concept is built from the outside. There is always something about how Architecture & construction actually runs that we could not see. One line is enough.
Opens your mail app to assembl@assembl.co.nz. Nothing is collected by this page.