ATELIER ALLIONE
Architect
30 min
To validate the switch
2 reports
To master this tool
5 types
Of documents
Switch
October 2025
Previous tools
Word · Excel · Handwritten notes · Admin support
Usage
12 projects: meeting reports, owner updates, photo reports
Outcomes
80–95% written in the meeting
Sent same day or next
Owner updates, photo reports, punch lists: one tool
No template. No legacy model.
Nothing to inherit.
Yann Brasseur — Director of Architecture & Construction, Atelier Allione Architectes
From schematic design through project closeout, Atelier Allione Architectes brings the same attention to detail to every part of a project.
Their meeting reports deserved the same standard.
Starting from scratch
When you're building a team, the meeting report is never just a document. It's the first work standard you set.
At Atelier Allione, Yann Brasseur wasn't inheriting an existing department. He was building an architecture and construction administration practice from the ground up. New team. New projects. No starting point: no template, no tool, no shared habits.
He knew this world well. At his previous firm, in Monaco, everyone had their own template, their own layout, their own way of doing things. You took notes in the meeting, then handed them off to an admin. "It was totally old school." The system held because it had been in place for years. Not because it was good.
"Inserting photos, managing the attendance list — basically all of it. That little table in Word or Excel tracking who showed up: just awful."
Yann Brasseur
When you're starting from zero, that kind of workflow isn't a legacy. It's a trap.
“Inserting photos, managing the attendance list — basically all of it. That little table in Word or Excel tracking who showed up: just awful.”
Yann Brasseur
Atelier Allione Architectes
there, trust has a history
Yann had been following there on LinkedIn for a while. But the decision to test it doesn't come from an article or a demo. It comes from something older.
Back in Monaco, whether working at an architecture firm or a general contractor, Yann already used Finalcad. Fifteen years separate the two products. What carries over is the same read on how job sites actually work.
“People who build something right once, build it right twice”
That's not nostalgia. It's common sense: behind there is a real understanding of construction, not just of interface design.
there, thirty minutes is enough to decide
Validation is almost immediate. "On the first report. Within the first half hour. Instantly."
What wins him over isn't the AI, at least not first. It's the navigation logic. The slash command. The blocks. The little "+" buttons. The feeling that everything is already where you'd expect to find it.
"I'm 45. I'm not a tech person. I like Apple because it's easy. You're the same. It's as intuitive as it gets."
Yann Brasseur
Before: two to three hours of writing, thirty to sixty minutes on the admin side, three to four days before sending. With there, he's walked out of a meeting with 95% of the document already written. Sent that evening, or the next morning. "That's something I'd never seen before."
there, two reports to train an entire team
Building a department is a double challenge: assembling the team and setting up the tools at the same time. Yann puts it plainly: "As a manager, the hardest part is getting people to buy into your ideas, your processes, your new tools. For me, it was a double challenge: building a team and rolling out new tools simultaneously."
Florian is 27. Elisa is 45. Yann is 45. The adoption curve is the same for all of them. "You do one report with them. The second one, just a quick review. And that's it."
"I don't waste time explaining things to people either."
Yann Brasseur
there, PowerPoint hasn't been opened since
there didn't stay confined to the job site meeting report. Within a short time, five types of documents coexist in the same tool: meeting reports across 12 active projects, monthly owner updates projected live during meetings, weekly photo reports for remote clients, pre-punch walkthroughs, and punch lists built directly from voice notes.
On that last use case, there was no punch list template in the office. Yann takes notes on site, then asks the AI to structure the document.
“I barely had to correct anything. The AI placed the photos, turned the punch items into tasks, added the required documentation at the bottom, and a signature block.”
Yann Brasseur
Atelier Allione Architectes
"Even when you're talking about PowerPoint or Word for monthly reports — you've already won." In meetings and during monthly owner updates, the document projected on screen holds the room. "People are captivated. It's clean and fluid." On private residential projects where the client is just as demanding about the document as they are about the house itself, that matters. Clients open the link, they read the report. The feedback that keeps coming back: "It's clear and visual — really nice to receive."
The secondary benefit: everything is in one place. No files scattered across local folders, cloud drives, and email threads. "I find them with a ease that's almost unsettling. I don't have to dig through my documents folder or the server. They're just there."
there, you can get into the document without breaking anything
When Yann shadows Florian on a job site, he captures voice notes and photos directly in there, then shares them back with the team. Florian has access instantly. No manual syncing. No photos lost in a camera roll. "That way, he already has the photos from the specific points I want to highlight."
Same logic when he edits a team member's document: he can add photos, turn a block into a table, fix a section — without reopening the whole cycle of "I'll take your Word file, rework it, and send it back." "The shared access is great too, because I can go in without making a mess, without corrupting the Word file, without knocking out the formatting."
"Right-click, AI, the table appears, done. I never want to go back."
there, co-building is real
Yann sends specific feedback: on task archiving, on note sorting, on wasted space in the distribution bar on small screens. "It doesn't look polished — it feels like a micro-bug." Every time, he gets a response within 48 hours. Usually less. "Every single time, I heard back either immediately or very quickly. Never waited a week."
This isn't just responsiveness. It's a tool that keeps adjusting to the people who actually use it. He's already thinking about expanding: monthly owner reports across all projects, site visit summaries, condition reports. The department is young. The list of document types in there keeps growing.
Yann Brasseur, if there disappeared tomorrow?
"I'm changing careers. I'm going to the bank, taking out a loan, and copying everything you've built."
Yann Brasseur
For Yann, the real change is having been able to set, right from the start, a work standard his team can carry forward — without ever going back to the old world.
About Atelier Allione Architectes
Atelier Allione Architectes is a firm founded thirty years ago on the French Riviera, specializing in high-end residential projects: villas, interior architecture, and construction administration, with two offices in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and Beaulieu-sur-Mer.
