How David Baker Architects Turned Content Into Competitive Advantage

About DBA

David Baker Architects (DBA) is known for its human-centered, community-driven architecture that balances design excellence with social impact. With offices in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Birmingham, DBA’s collaborative culture thrives on open feedback, shared ownership, and distributed expertise. Every team member, from junior designers to senior architects, is empowered to contribute ideas and improve firm operations.

This “level hierarchy” approach extends beyond design. It influences how DBA evaluates and adopts technology. As Orrin Goldsby, Architect at DBA, puts it:

“We’ve always steered toward tools that allow a lot of input and feedback. Everyone should be able to have their hands on it.”

‍

The Challenge: Finding, Reusing, and Trusting Details

Like most architecture firms, DBA struggled with the inefficiency of managing Revit details. Their teams relied on a Revit container file to standardize details from dozens of projects into a shared library, but it was difficult to open, slow to load, and cumbersome to search.

Even with careful organization, locating a single correct detail was time-consuming and required multiple back-and-forths to verify quality. DBA knew they were losing time and potential, but tools that offered alternatives to Revit container files came with steep learning curves. And DBA didn’t have the time or bandwidth to dedicate non-billable hours to building and maintaining this library.

‍

The Turning Point: A Low-Barrier Entry

When DBA discovered Pirros, the appeal was immediate.

“The trigger point was the low barrier to entry,” Orrin recalled. “You upload a few projects to Pirros and you’re up and running. The amount of work it took to get started with Pirros was almost nothing.”

Starting with a small group initially using Pirros to help standardize and vet their details, DBA quickly expanded to 50 users as adoption spread organically across teams. The collaborative onboarding, as well as no manual tagging or naming required of their content, made it a no-brainer.

‍

How DBA Uses Pirros

DBA began by uploading a diverse range of Revit projects into Pirros. The platform automatically extracted and organized details, instantly giving the team visibility into years of accumulated design knowledge.

Whereas other content search tools searched only the name of the details and pre-defined tags, Pirros searched that and everything else: metadata, text within the detail, tags, linework, geometry and more. For DBA, this meant that their hard-earned and well-drafted details across time and across projects were truly accessible.

DBA also established an internal process leveraging Pirros to flag, vet, and approve details, creating a feedback loop between project work and firmwide standards. QA/QC staff who didn’t use Revit could even create a PDF markup of the detail within Pirros for others to review.

“We also use Pirros as a tool to vet details,” Orrin explained. “Vetted details filter into our Revit template, and then back into Pirros. It’s a feedback loop that keeps everything organized and current.”

This loop not only strengthened consistency, it helped DBA create a dynamic, self-maintaining standards library.

‍

How DBA Built and Sustained a Robust Library with Pirros

Immediate Search and Standards Process Training:
DBA began by uploading a diverse range of Revit models into Pirros, immediately leveraging Pirros’s intelligent search to find project-based details. In parallel, and with hands-on support from Pirros, DBA conducted a comprehensive vetting of their initial typical content and trained users on how to flag and review new details for inclusion in the library, all within Pirros.

Ongoing Usage:
Once this foundation was in place, users began incorporating both project-based and typical details into their daily workflows. They also started flagging additional details for review—each was vetted, approved, or denied according to the process DBA had defined during training.

Initial Trends and Results:
The firm saw a trend: Downloads and views of vetted standard details steadily increased month-over-month, while at the same time a controlled process for referencing project-specific details was established. This reflected a healthy balance of ongoing standardization through newly vetted standard details, combined with streamlined reference and reuse of project-based details. Within less than a year, DBA’s standards library had grown by 700%.

Behind the Scenes:
DBA thoughtfully managed this change of systems and workflows. They appointed a clear internal champion, Orrin, to lead the rollout alongside the Pirros customer success team and a dedicated customer success manager, who provided hands-on partnership. They defined workflows and delivered consistent trainings. And strong leadership buy-in ensured the initiative had lasting traction across the firm.

“The commitment from the Pirros team when we were first onboarded really showed me where they stood,” he said. “They’ve followed through ever since. It’s just a good product—and the more people use it, the better it gets.”

‍

Partnership Beyond the Product

Pirros and DBA share the belief that the built environment should advance human well-being. Bringing that belief to life requires not only exceptional technology, but also the people who stand behind it. The dedicated humans behind Pirros partnered closely with Orrin and DBA from day one, and Orrin credits this hands-on partnership as a key success factor.

Through shared Slack channels, responsive support, and continuous collaboration, Pirros and DBA evolved the daily habits of users. Pirros has become more than software, it’s become a trusted extension of DBA’s team.

700% growth in vetted library content. Within a year, DBA’s typical detail library grew from 20 to over 160 details.
15 to 20 hours saved per project. Designers saved an average of 10 minutes per detail in search and recreation time after Pirros was implemented.
$180,000 in annual time savings. With 60 projects per year at roughly 200 details per project and a healthy average billable rate, DBA recovers $180,000 annually with Pirros.
Instant visibility and confidence. Teams can now search, compare, and reuse a variety of high quality details without waiting on a BIM manager or senior architect’s review.

‍

Driving a Paradigm Shift

Pirros helped DBA modernize how their teams think about BIM management.

“The paradigm shift is realizing that having someone manage this process supports everyone,” said Orrin. “Before, we’d say, ‘We just need more architects.’ Now, with Pirros, we see that investing in better content management actually makes every architect more effective.”

By making content management self-sustaining, intelligent and participatory, Pirros freed DBA’s teams to focus on what they do best: Designing buildings that serve communities.

‍

Why It Matters

For DBA, Pirros wasn’t just a new tool, it was an evolution in how design knowledge is shared, trusted, and reused. By turning a previously siloed, time-draining process into a living intelligence system, DBA strengthened its standards, reduced risk, and reclaimed thousands of hours. These hours went back into the higher order design work that drives DBA’s reputation for excellence, transforming detailing from obstacle to competitive advantage.

‍