2026 LCI Lean in Design Forum Keynote Speaker Spotlight: An Interview with Amy Marks

We were thrilled to speak with Amy Marks, a globally recognized innovation leader known as “The Queen of Prefab” and one of our 2026 LCI Lean in Design Forum keynote speakers, sponsored by Stantec. Stan Chiu, AIA, DBIA, LEED AP, Director of Integrated Project Delivery for HDR, and this year’s Lean in Design Forum Co-Chair, facilitated the conversation, which offered insights into the transformative opportunities of using AI to support validation in design—not to diminish the role of architects and designers, but to empower and magnify them.

Enjoy this sneak peek of Amy’s thought-provoking, bold insights, and don’t miss her exciting keynote address at the 2026 LCI Lean in Design Forum, April 28-29 in Chicago. Register today.

Harnessing the power of AI in validation by breaking things.

The conversation began with a discussion about Amy’s use of Lean and AI in her role at Compass. She offered, “AI is like a playbook of Lean.” Her company uses it to make sure they are “creating value, not just busy work, and aligning the work with things you like to do…We use AI as much as possible until we are breaking things. You can code with it. It’s unreal.”

She continued, “AI is an aggregator of knowledge in a way that’s useful to drive performance, and isn’t that kind of what Lean is?”

AI prompts for front-end validation.

Stan asked Amy, “Thinking about validation and its role in a Lean project on the front-end, what would you ask AI?”

Amy shared, “I would focus on the Lean concept of Criteria – Voice of the Customer – load up all of our contracts first, and could even do some video interviews with my customers, and go back into public documentation and see what they’ve done successfully, where their soul is, what their core convictions are, and then load all that into the AI model. I talk to AI like it’s my partner. I ask:

• What else should I load that I’m missing?
• What do people need to know?
• What are the top five things that will make us successful on this project that we should focus on?

I also ask it to benchmark other projects I’ve done and consider that. You are the one who will be the architect of the parameters. You are the prompt master. It doesn’t work without you.”

With AI, you don’t need to start with a blank sheet every time. It’s truly Knowledge-Based Design.

In discussing how to use AI in determining prefab elements during validation for a specific project, Amy shared some strategies:

“I’ll ask AI to scan the internet for me for every prefab company out there, before I start a project. What are the top five components that can be prefabricated in the concept drawing? I can tell you the last time I put together a one-sheeter, it was a 300% improvement over what I could do, and took me 10 minutes instead of five days. It’s easy to accomplish during validation if team or time are limited. It’s astounding.”

You can be the Architect 3000.

Amy continued, “We are at a crossroads. Are you the architect of your own destiny and parameters? Are you going to be a part of that? Are you going to take advantage of it or stay in a closed-loop learning system and not get the benefit of something that takes 10 minutes instead of hours?

And you don’t have to use it for the whole thing. It’s not that you aren’t going to draw anything. You should use it in combination with what you are doing. That’s where architects get so held up. It’s not a zero-sum game.”

“You can be the Architect 3000, like a superhuman. It will know you and magnify your artistry.”

Continuously improving the AI model.

“The shackles are broken. Enabling the right people to interact with it in a very free way is going to get you where you want to go.”

Amy discussed training the AI model for scalability and customizing it for users’ projects. She honed in on areas including:

Error-Proofing Building Codes

Amy noted, “We’re in a place where building codes are digitized and accessible. You can load up the building code and say, ‘As I make choices, alert me if it’s not to code.’ And I’m still trying to get green certifications. It’s all in my prompt—the way I’m teaching the model. Before I was shackled to my project and dependent on who came to me. I’m not anymore. My model is still there. I still own that model from the last thing I did, and I’m building on it. I can say, ‘It’s a little different from last time, but make as many of the same choices that make sense under these parameters.’ ”

Planning Tools

“I use the Hoylu design planning tool and love it, and I’m on their board now. I have an innovation framework I use with it. It does quick reports. I wanted it to do something it didn’t do, and instead, I snapped a picture of it and fed it to AI, and AI did it. I don’t even need to know how to program it,” shared Amy.

She continued, “I kept track of stakeholder questions and uploaded them to the model, took a snapshot of the board, and asked AI to validate that I had all the points covered. And it said you are missing three cards, and you have to adjust these other two cards to measure this and that.”

Scheduling and Improving Reliability

The promise of AI-assisted scheduling to maximize efficiency was covered. Amy noted that the opportunities exist now: “Using Foresight’s AI-assisted predictive scheduling, you can get information like ‘based on what I saw over the past six weeks, you are predicting this, but you are more likely to get this done.’ You can tie it into Evercam for site monitoring and get feedback based on the pictures that says you’re deficient here. That’s right now. It’s not even expensive. You can buy it out of a box.

Contract Portfolio Analysis

Amy noted that she is in charge of sustainability in her role, and that she can have AI do contract analysis to support her: “Based on our portfolio of contracts, I said I want to understand sustainability requirements, and it spit out this is what you need to know based on these contracts. I didn’t have to read one contract.”

Billing

Stan and Amy noted that blockchain billing allows for getting credited as work gets into place, and Amy noted that these are some AI prompts that could be used to help with billing: “I want you to look across my drawings, cross-reference them with my contracts, and tell me where I should be in my billing. What am I missing? What is the quickest thing I could do to get the biggest financial gain? If I only have three hours, tell me where I have an opportunity.” She added, “It’s work that is already out there.”

Final thoughts.

Amy summed up the nearly limitless opportunities of AI in design:

“Architects, it will make you a better business person. It won’t take away your artistry. It will magnify your artistry. It will make your soul better, and make you more popular and prolific.”

Learn more from Amy in person at the 2026 Lean in Design Forum.

We hope you’re excited to hear more from Amy during her keynote, which is sure to spark powerful conversations, change, and inspiration for the future in our Lean design community.

Make sure you’re there for it all. Register today for the 2026 LCI Lean in Design Forum.