AVAIL Founder and CEO Randall Stevens has been working to strengthen the connection between design firms and building product manufacturers (BPMs) since before AVAIL’s product launch in 2017. That work led to the AVAIL Select Channels in 2021, making trusted manufacturer Revit content more accessible to AVAIL users, and continued with AVAIL’s acquisition of gridBPM in 2026. Below, Randall explores the AEC industry’s content problem, the role building product information plays in it, and how AVAIL is working to create a better path forward.
Jump to:
- AEC Industry’s Ever-Growing Content Problem
- More Than a Decade of Listening
- Designers Need Information Before They Need Marketing
- Take the 2026 Building Product Manufacturer Content Survey
- The Firm’s Own Knowledge Still Comes First
- What is AVAIL Select?
- Why This Problem Requires A Different Approach
- Trust Requires Boundaries
- What We Are Working Toward
AEC Industry’s Ever-Growing Content Problem
For nearly a decade, AVAIL has focused on a problem our customers know well: design firms possess an extraordinary amount of valuable knowledge, but finding, governing, and reusing that knowledge is far harder than it should be.
That problem is not getting smaller. Firms continue to create more content, work across more applications, manage more project information, and wrestle with the accumulated knowledge of years — often decades — of practice. Helping architects and engineers organize, trust, and apply that knowledge remains at the center of what we do.
But there is another part of the content problem that sits just outside the firm’s walls: the information created by building product manufacturers.
It may not be the first challenge that comes to mind when a firm thinks about content management. Yet when we ask architects, engineers, interior designers, specification writers, and BIM managers about it, the frustration is immediate and familiar.
The content is too complicated. The parameters do not reflect the way the firm works. It is difficult to know which file is current. Technical information is scattered across websites and PDFs. A simple download can trigger a sales call before the designer is ready to have one.
Building product information is not the whole content problem. But it is undeniably part of it, and we believe it belongs within the broader work AVAIL is already doing for our customers.
About the Author
Randall Stevens, AVAIL CEO and Founder
A software entrepreneur, Randall is passionate about creating solutions for the AEC industry. He graduated in 1991 with a Bachelor of Architecture and shortly after founded the Rich Photorealistic Content (RPC)-focused company ArchVision. Leveraging his industry expertise further in 2017, Randall launched content management system (CMS) AVAIL.
More Than a Decade of Listening
Our interest in this problem did not begin with a product launch or a recent business decision. I began asking why manufacturer content was not working as expected in 2014. That inquiry led to the first Building Content Summit in 2015 and years of conversations among designers, manufacturers, BIM managers, software developers, and content creators.
Those conversations shaped AVAIL from the beginning. They are also why our Marketplace architecture existed in the earliest versions of the platform: we believed firms would eventually need persistent, trusted connections to external sources of knowledge, including building product manufacturers. Around 2021, that belief became a more focused investment in what is now AVAIL Select.
More recently, we surveyed AVAIL customers to ask how building product information is working for them today. Their responses confirmed that many of the problems raised through those earlier conversations remain unresolved. Customers described difficulty finding information they can trust, determining whether content is current, adapting manufacturer content to firm standards, and locating the technical and performance information needed to evaluate a product. They also reinforced a point we have heard repeatedly: product research should help a designer make a decision without automatically turning that activity into a sales lead.
Our acquisition of gridBPM in 2026 and the addition of Mike Collins and David Bandi to our team deepen that work. Mike helped pioneer digital building product content through BIMWorld, whose technology later became part of Autodesk Seek. David went on to lead the Seek initiative. Their experience with manufacturers complements what AVAIL has learned by working every day with architecture and engineering firms.
AVAIL’s newest additions, David Bandi and Mike Collins, pictured with AVAIL CEO and Founder Randall Stevens.
This is not the beginning of a new direction. It is the convergence of people who have spent years looking at the same problem from different sides and arriving at a shared conclusion: the next advancement will not come from creating larger libraries. It will come from making manufacturer information more trustworthy, more useful, and better aligned with the design process.
Designers Need Information Before They Need Marketing
Every project begins with questions.
Is this the right product? Will it perform as expected? Does it fit the design intent? Is it appropriate for this client, building type, budget, or sustainability objective? Is there a better alternative?
Those are design questions, not purchasing questions.
At that stage, a designer is not asking to enter a manufacturer’s sales process. They are trying to make a well-informed decision and keep the project moving. They need authoritative information, presented clearly and in context, without creating another interruption in an already demanding workflow.
For years, much of the building product content ecosystem has been optimized around publishing, downloads, and lead generation. Those systems solved real problems and dramatically increased the availability of digital content. But availability alone does not create confidence. A large library is not the same thing as a useful design experience.
We believe building product information should first be a design-support strategy. Marketing value can follow, but it should be earned by helping the designer, not extracted from the designer’s research activity.
2026 Building Product Manufacturer Content Survey
In an effort to improve digital content for the AEC industry, AVAIL is conducting the 2026 Building Product Manufacturer Content Survey. All architects, designers, and engineers who are using BPM content on a regular basis are invited to contribute. The resulting report will be shared for free with the broader AEC community to support continued learning and discussion.
The Firm’s Own Knowledge Still Comes First
When AVAIL launched in 2017, we deliberately began inside the design firm. Before connecting firms to more external information, we believed they needed a trusted foundation for their own standards, project knowledge, and institutional memory.
That sequence still matters.
A manufacturer understands its products better than anyone. A design firm understands its practice, projects, clients, and standards better than anyone. Neither source of knowledge replaces the other. The opportunity is to connect them while respecting the distinct authority of each.
Manufacturer-authorized content should not automatically become firm-approved content. Making a product available for discovery is not the same as endorsing it, adopting it as a standard, or deciding that it belongs in a project. Firms must remain in control of those decisions and of the governance processes surrounding them.
That is why our work on AVAIL Select is an extension of AVAIL’s core mission rather than a departure from it. We are applying the same principles — trust, context, governance, and usability — to an external source of information that project teams already encounter every day.
We will continue working on the broader challenges our customers depend on us to solve: helping firms find and govern their own content, preserve institutional knowledge, improve project workflows, and make trusted information available when and where it is needed. Building product information becomes one connected part of that environment.
What is AVAIL Select?
AVAIL Select Channels give AEC industry firms access to trusted architectural and MEP manufacturer Revit families within the AVAIL platform. Select Verified Brands include Kalwall, LiftMaster, Legrand, among many others.
Why This Problem Requires A Different Approach
The industry does not suffer from a lack of manufacturer content. Millions of BIM objects and product documents have been created over the past two decades. Manufacturers have invested heavily, often with the genuine intention of making life easier for design professionals.
The harder problem is alignment.
Manufacturers understandably want digital representations that accurately communicate and present their products. Designers need efficient resources that support documentation, coordination, scheduling, analysis, and project performance. Both objectives are legitimate, but they are not always the same.
Trying to satisfy every purpose with a single Revit family has often produced content that looks impressive in isolation but becomes cumbersome in a real project. Meanwhile, the information needed to confidently evaluate the product — performance data, certifications, sustainability documentation, technical literature, configuration choices, and other supporting material — may live somewhere else entirely.
We believe the answer is not simply to author more files. It is to create a better connection between manufacturer expertise and the context in which designers make decisions: the right information, in the right form, at the right time.
Trust Requires Boundaries
For more than a decade, firms have trusted AVAIL with standards, project knowledge, institutional memory, and the digital assets that help define how they practice. We do not take that trust lightly.
A firm’s projects, research, and design intent are part of its intellectual capital. We do not believe that activity should become a manufacturer’s project-level lead database. Designers should be able to investigate products without wondering whether a search or download will place them into an unsolicited sales sequence.
At the same time, manufacturers need meaningful feedback if they are going to create better products, better content, and better supporting information. Those needs are not incompatible.
Aggregated and anonymized patterns can help manufacturers understand what information designers value and where friction remains — without exposing the activity of an individual, firm, or project.
That boundary is not a limitation of the model. It is what makes a more trusted model possible.
What We Are Working Toward
AVAIL customers include architecture and engineering firms working on many of the world’s most important commercial design and construction projects. That gives us both an opportunity and a responsibility.
We want product teams to spend less time searching across disconnected sources, determining which information is current, rebuilding external content, and separating useful technical knowledge from marketing friction. We want firms to retain control over what they approve and how it conforms to their standards. And we want manufacturers to participate by helping earlier - when designers are exploring possibilities and developing the Basis of Design - rather than simply reaching out sooner.
We expect to learn as we go, just as we have with every significant part of AVAIL. We will listen closely to our customers because success must be measured by the quality of the designer’s experience, not by the quantity of content published.
The work at the center of AVAIL remains the same: helping architects and engineers turn scattered content and information into trusted, usable knowledge.
Building product information is one important part of that challenge. We believe it is time to solve it in a way that respects the design process.
ABOUT AVAIL
Founded in 2016 as a solution for architecture and engineering firms to find the information they need faster, AVAIL creates software for the global architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. AVAIL’s content management system (CMS) platform and Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D application tools help designers and engineers take control of their intricate network of files in one visual, streamlined solution. AVAIL’s customers include industry leaders Gensler, Perkins&Will, IMEG, LEO A DALY, and Populous.
