Automation You Steer: Augmenta 2.0, Customer-Driven Development, and the Expanding Role of VDC Teams
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What were contractors telling you that made the direction of ACP 2.0 clear? What did you keep hearing that you knew would be beneficial to VDC teams at electrical contracting firms?
Aaron: What we kept seeing was that teams were using ACP (Augmenta Construction Platform) to get to a populated model quickly, and then the moment they needed to make a change, they were back in Revit and Navisworks doing everything by hand. A design change that came in two weeks before a coordination meeting could cost a team days of rebuilding. We realized we weren't solving enough of the problem. Getting to a first pass quickly is incredibly valuable, but what contractors really needed was to work in the model through the entire coordination process, react to changes fast, and not lose ground every time something shifted.
Care to share any feedback you've gotten from initial users?
Aaron: The early reactions have honestly been the best validation. A Director of VDC put it well after seeing the new release: "You're always making improvements, but this was the biggest jump yet. The week before, we ran our model through ACP to prep for day one, so we walked in with all the geometry already in there.” And then a Director of Construction Technology said her team was "wiping away tears of joy," which is about as good as it gets.
Underground routing is a meaningful part of ACP 2.0. Where did it come from, and what does it say about how you approach building the product?
Aaron: Underground requests came in consistently, from small firms to large ones across every project type. We had some underground capability before V2, but what contractors needed was the ability to specifically direct routes point-to-point across a site, with control over pitch and slope and how a run navigates real site conditions like routing around footings, civil, plumbing and finding the optimal stub-up locations. V2 delivers that, and it reflects how we approach the roadmap generally; we pay close attention to where teams might be looking for more flexibility and we build toward it.
BIM coordination has traditionally been the domain of a pretty specialized group of people. How does ACP 2.0 change who can participate in that process?
Aaron: Revit has always been the bottleneck. It takes a long time to learn, which means the BIM process has stayed with a small group of specialists even when broader input would make the output better. ACP runs in the browser; if you can use Bluebeam or read a single line diagram, you can contribute to the model. V2 opens the process up to foremen, project managers, and other team members who have relevant knowledge but have traditionally been locked out. When the field has a voice in the design earlier, the output is more constructible and there are fewer surprises on site.
This new approach feels like as much of a statement about how BIM teams work as it is about what the technology does. How do you think about the balance between what the AI handles and what the human brings to it?
Aaron: There's actually a reason we named the company Augmenta. Our philosophy from the start has been to build tools that complement the expertise of our customers, not compete with it. The AI handles geometry and routing logic; the team brings the project knowledge and constructibility judgment that makes the output actually buildable. We refer to it as automation you steer, and the people using ACP are making the decisions that require real expertise and using it to move faster through the preconstruction process.
There's a case to be made that this isn't just about efficiency but about giving electrical contractors the capacity to take on more work. How central is that to the vision?
Aaron: It's central to everything we're building. Every customer we work with sees ACP as a growth investment, not just a short term way to reduce costs, and that shows up in how they talk about it internally. When you remove the manual modeling bottleneck, your team can handle more projects which translates to growing your business. Beyond that, teams who get to a coordination-ready model faster show up to those early coordination meetings with more leverage, more influence over routing decisions, and fewer concessions to other trades.
When you look at what a VDC team can produce with ACP 2.0 versus doing it manually, the difference is significant. What does that mean for a contractor's business, and where do you see the role of VDC teams going over the next two to three years?
Aaron: The output numbers are significant, and what they mean in practice is that time recaptured from manual modeling goes back into higher-value work: plan review, submittal prep, and catching constructibility issues while they're still cheap to resolve. Beyond efficiency, we see VDC teams taking on a much broader scope; more of the project modeled up front to reduce risk downstream, more scope going into prefabrication, and modeling getting pulled into early estimation where there's typically not enough time for it today. The role of a VDC team two or three years from now looks meaningfully different from where most teams sit right now.
How does ACP 2.0 fit into the bigger picture of what Augmenta is building? What does this release make possible that shapes where you go from here?
Aaron: V2 is a critical step toward the environment we're ultimately building: a single place where the entire design process; from early-stage layout decisions through full coordination happens in one place, accessible to everyone on the team.
We built the foundation with V1 in 2025, and now V2 lays the foundation for what comes next; tighter integration with coordination workflows, and eventually a unified workflow where preconstruction and field teams are working together in the model from the very start of a project.
Electrical is where we started because it's the hardest coordination problem in a building; the most constrained, the most spatially complex, the most dependent on real constructibility judgment. What we've proven on electrical transfers directly to mechanical, and plumbing.
The long-term vision is full building design automation: from design intent to a fully coordinated, costed, construction-ready model across every trade. We're not there yet, but V2 gets us exponentially closer.
Learn more about ACP 2.0.
