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Asking the office archive: knowledge management in an architecture office

An office’s knowledge sits in old projects, permits and notes. Piloti makes that archive answerable: you ask as you would a colleague and get document and passage, kept apart from what the law requires.

In short

Piloti searches the office archive you upload, meaning drawings, permits, notes and checklists, and answers questions from it with citations, kept apart from what the law and the OIB guidelines require. No other office sees the archive, and no models are trained on the office’s data.

Try it with a real questionChecked: September 2026

What Piloti delivers

Answers with document and passage
Every citation from the archive can be opened, just like a citation from RIS.
Office and law kept apart
The answer says what comes from your archive and what from state law and the OIB guidelines.
A project memory
Settled facts and open points stay in the project, so nobody settles the same question twice.
Data that stays yours
No model training on office data; drawings remain the office’s property; optionally with your own key for the model provider.

Why office archives are rarely asked

Every office has a stock of answers: how the authority decided on a similar attic conversion, which condition was in the last permit, which checklist was introduced after a bad experience. The stock is spread across drives and folders, and whoever needs it asks the colleague who remembers. If she is on holiday or retired, the answer is gone too.

The problem is not only the search. An answer from the archive is a different kind of evidence than one from the law: it shows what this office did, not what applies. Mix the two and an old habit turns into a supposed rule, and an outdated rule into a habit nobody checks any more.

How the archive becomes answerable

  1. 01

    Upload

    PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, images or whole folders; IFC models with a preview. The archive is visible to no other office.

  2. 02

    Ask

    In conversation, the way you would ask a colleague: “How did we solve the second escape route in the Leopoldstadt attic conversion?”

  3. 03

    Answer with sources

    The answer names document and passage, kept apart from citations from law and guidelines. What the authority requires and what the office requires stand apart.

  4. 04

    Let the archive grow

    What Piloti writes in the project becomes a source once your office approves and publishes it. An answer marked unhelpful becomes an anonymised lesson that later answers read.

  5. 05

    Record your own ways of working

    In the skill editor you create your office’s own ways of working; standing instructions set the form and focus of answers.

What Piloti needs from you

  • The documents that should become answerable: finished projects, permits, notes, office checklists, detail collections.
  • A decision on which documents written by Piloti should count as office sources, through approval and publishing.
  • Who approves in the office.

Good to know

Piloti answers from what your office has uploaded, so what so far lives only in someone’s head is worth a file note. Piloti cites an older note as an office source, not as law in force, so your office sees what comes from where. How your data is processed is set out in the privacy policy.

Questions

How does an architecture office organise its knowledge?

Mostly in folders, templates and the heads of the experienced. A tool like Piloti makes the folders answerable: you ask a question and get the passage in your own archive, kept apart from what the law requires.

Can another office see my documents?

No. The office archive is visible to no other office, and Piloti does not train models on your office’s data. Drawings remain the office’s property.

Which files can I upload to the office archive?

PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV and images, individually or as whole folders. Piloti shows IFC models in a preview with a model area. It looks at drawings and photos as images when the drawing matters for the answer.

Is Piloti available yet?

Piloti is in its pilot phase with selected offices, built in Vienna. Pilot offices agree terms directly with us founders. If you want to try it, send us a question from a live project through “Try it with a real question”.

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