Every firm has one. The associate who knows which structural engineer you used on the Halton school, what you charged on the last long-term-care fee proposal, and why the community centre bid went sideways in 2023. That person is your firm's memory. And the moment they're on vacation, on site, or at a competitor, that memory is gone.
It isn't that firms don't document. They document relentlessly — hundreds of proposals, project sheets, CVs, debriefs. The problem is that all of it lives in PDFs and folders that can't answer a question. So the question goes to a person, the person goes to the shared drive, and forty minutes later you have an answer you're only mostly sure is current.
Ask ArchFP is a chat assistant that answers questions from your firm's own knowledge — not from the internet, and not from a generic model's guess about what architecture firms usually do. It sits on every page of ArchFP, waiting for exactly the questions that used to walk across the office:
You ask in plain language. The answer streams back in seconds.
Ask ArchFP doesn't have a separate knowledge base you have to maintain. It draws on what your firm has already put into the platform:
Your answer library. Every past answer your firm has written or approved, searched by meaning rather than keyword — so "sustainability approach" finds the paragraph you titled "net-zero design methodology."
Your project portfolio. Clients, building types, values, services, certifications, sustainability features, and the team members and partners on each project — the same records that feed your proposals.
Your partners and subconsultants. The directory, with specialties and history, so teaming questions get answered from data instead of memory.
Your RFP documents, responses, and notes. Excerpts from the opportunity's documents, the answers you've drafted for it, and the off-the-record team notes you've captured about the pursuit.
Your own review findings. The executive summaries, evaluator-perspective weaknesses, and recommendations from past Submission Reviews — so "what do we keep getting dinged on?" has an actual answer.
This is the part that matters in this industry. Every response arrives with source chips underneath it — the specific answer, project, partner, or RFP document it drew from — and each chip is a link that opens the record. You can check the claim in one click, the same way you'd ask a colleague "where did you see that?"
An assistant you can't check is a rumour with good grammar. We've written before that verifiability is the price of admission for AI in AEC; Ask ArchFP pays it on every message.
If you're looking at an RFP when you ask, Ask ArchFP treats that RFP as the subject of the conversation — so "does our insurance meet the requirement here?" needs no preamble. It suggests sensible follow-ups after each answer, and conversations are saved so you and your team can pick one back up next week.
It also speaks your dialect. Canadian firms get Canadian English and Canadian references — CCDC, RAIC, OBC, NBC, LEED Canada, MERX and Bids&Tenders — while American firms get AIA, IBC, and imperial units. Small thing. Evaluators notice.
Your firm's institutional knowledge is one of its most valuable assets and, for most firms, the least accessible. It compounds every year and it walks out the door every time someone leaves. Ask ArchFP doesn't replace the associate who knows everything. It makes sure the firm still knows everything when they're not in the room.
If your firm's answers still live in one person's head, book a 15-minute demo and ask ArchFP a question about your own firm — we'll load a few of your past proposals and let you interrogate them.