A regulatory question that once took six hours of research now returns a cited, defensible answer in five minutes. That ratio is not a productivity gain. It is a different kind of architectural practice, built on compounding knowledge rather than billable time, and it is rewriting how serious firms work.

An architectural brief, developed properly, takes four to eight weeks and produces a fifteen to thirty page document. Most projects spend ten days on it. The cost of that compression does not show up at handover. It shows up in year five, when no one remembers who decided what. The brief is the highest-leverage stage in the entire process, and almost always the most rushed.

A parking stall costs $12,000 to $25,000 to build underground in Phnom Penh, and most ratios in this market are set by reflex. Underbuild and the spillover lands on the street. Overbuild and the capital sits in concrete for forty years. A working framework by unit type, transit context, and the conversion and EV-readiness questions most briefs do not ask.