The "Golden Thread": Fixing AEC’s Information Sprawl

Carl Veillette, Chief Product Officer at Newforma, joins Evan Troxel and Randall Stevens to talk about the data problem hiding underneath every project. Anchored by the new Confluence Tech Stack Survey, where the tool count per project jumped from about 15 a few years ago to 84, Veillette argues the real issue is not the number of tools but the broken connections between them. He makes the case that a single source of truth does not exist, and that the goal is a single view across systems like Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, ACC, ProjectWise, and Procore. They get concrete about the golden thread, governance and retention, and why Newforma's job is to free the data from the files rather than host it.This episode is especially relevant for CIOs, digital practice leaders, and project information managers wrestling with data sprawl, litigation risk, and AI adoption. Veillette walks through practical AI use cases, from mining the inbox for project records to agentic workflows for code compliance and lessons learned. The throughline is blunt and useful: AI is only as good as the data behind it, so the value lives in the record, not the model.Episode Links:Connect with the guestCarl Veillette, Chief Product Officer, Newforma; co-founder of BIM TrackThe surveyConfluence Tech Stack Survey (2025) — the report behind the 15-to-84 tool sprawl discussionTools and systems mentionedMicrosoft Teams, Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Bentley ProjectWise, Egnyte, Panzura, MiroAI and code complianceUpCodes, Archistar, Workorb AI, Knowledge ArchitectureStandards and regulationISO 19650, ISO 9001, UK Building Safety Act 2022Watch this episode on YouTube.-----The Confluence podcast is a collaboration between TRXL and AVAIL, and is produced by TRXL Media.Learn more about them at https://trxl.co/media and https://getavail.comLearn more about the Confluence podcast at https://confluence.getavail.com/podcastLearn about the Confluence events at https://confluence.getavail.com