Overview
JacobsWyper Architects is an award-winning architecture, planning, and interior design firm based in Philadelphia with offices in Raleigh, N.C and Austin, TX. The firm specializes in complex projects across sectors: from pharmaceutical R&D facilities and advanced manufacturing plants to university campuses, museums, and corporate workplaces. With a staff of over 50 design professionals, JacobsWyper has delivered landmark projects for clients like Amtrak, Wawa, and global biotech companies, building a reputation for innovation and long-term client partnerships.
JacobsWyper Architects run many project meetings each week: client reviews, coordination huddles, and quick 10–15 minute check-ins where big decisions are made. Capturing minutes used to pull architects out of the dialogue. With Cogram, the team now gets dependable notes and action items, without anyone acting as secretary.
The Challenge
For about a year and a half, the firm used another AI note-taking product that wasn’t built for architects: the output was hard to shape to JacobsWyper’s reporting style, the tool was costly, and did things they did not need. Quick coordination meetings often went undocumented even though they carried important decisions.
As Principal for Technical Services, Phil Hartzell AIA, LEED AP, looked for a tool that would create a reliable project record without splitting attention. He explains:
"If we have a ten-minute quick coordination meeting… those are also the meetings that… you often don’t pull together meeting minutes. Having software that can sit in there for us, keep a record—a transcript—and then output notes, is helpful."
Important insights were not always captured in a structured or consistent way, which occasionally affected the clarity of project documentation and client communications.
What changed with Cogram
Cogram is an AI platform built specifically for architects, engineers, and builders. Cogram’s notetaking product captures the conversation in virtual (Teams, Google, Zoom, Webex) or in-person meetings and produces structured minutes and action items. The emphasis is on high-quality written minutes that are required for architectural projects, not a raw transcript, audio recording, or short notes. Cogram can use a firm’s Word template for meeting minutes and the level of detail, style, and format of meeting minutes can be customized deeply.
At JacobsWyper, staff typically invite Cogram to project-related meetings so a record exists even if someone can’t attend. Anne Niedrach, AIA, Project Architect at JacobsWyper notes that she also invites Cogram because the searchable history of Cogram’s meeting minutes makes it easy to trace how a topic evolved across meetings.
After each meeting, Cogram emails draft meeting minutes so they can be easily reviewed, edited, and filed to the project directory. The full meeting record is also available in the Cogram dashboard.
Internally, Cogram’s output during an initial trial phase spoke for itself. Phil shared Cogram’s minutes with partners who weren’t part of the pilot and recalls:
"They were pretty blown away by the accuracy, the assigning of notes to the correct individuals and action item accuracy."
Cassidy notes that with Cogram “the quality of the minutes and making sure to not miss anything is a lot better.” Phil echoes the engagement benefit: rather than “feverishly taking notes,” people can “absorb the meeting content” and actually participate. Cassidy is often double-booked; with Cogram she can promptly receive notes for meetings that she misses. Phil uses the summaries as a quick refresher before monthly check-ins: skimming the major items “gets you back to where you were pretty quickly prior to the next meeting.”
In-person meetings and field reports
Cassidy Vuono, AIA, Associate at JacobsWyper Architects appreciates that for meetings that are held in-person in meeting rooms, Cogram distinguishes between speakers, and though speaker recognition can be error-prone, Cogram’s minutes are “very helpful for recalling the content that was covered.”
The team is also piloting Cogram’s dedicated mobile app for Field Reports: on-site photos and dictated observations are rapidly compiled into a structured field report with AI, that uses the firm’s custom templates for reports. Photos are timestamped, and observations can be pinned on site plans and drawings.
Client context and controls
Built for the compliance requirements on architectural and engineering projects, Cogram does not store audio recordings after meetings, and offers fine-grained controls over which meetings can be automatically documented. Notably, no aggressive joining of all meetings and dissemination of minutes to all meeting participants takes place. That way, meeting minutes can be reviewed and approved first, and staff can get client buy-in before using an AI notetaker. In many settings, clients now bring their own AI notetakers; as Phil observes, seeing multiple notetakers in a single meeting is becoming common.
What’s next
Looking ahead, the firm is considering Cogram’s Deltek integration to automate project provisioning: projects from Deltek are synced into the Cogram platform where meeting minutes are automatically filed into projects and Cogram’s AI Assistant can rapidly retrieve insights across projects.
Cogram helps JacobsWyper capture what matters in every meeting so architects can stay present in the conversation. With reliable meeting minutes that meet the custom requirements of the firm, staff are able to focus on meetings and have a searchable record the team can trust, when time is tight and stakes are high.
