AEC Magazine, the UK-based BIM technology publication for architecture, engineering and construction, features Kestrel Labs in the September/October 2026 issue (Vol. 145). The three-page feature, “Compliance software in AEC,” is written by Allister Lewis, an architect and BIM manager and the founder of ADDD, and it maps the compliance tools now available to AEC professionals. Kestrel appears in the category of tools that check inside the BIM authoring tool, and the feature’s one product screenshot is Kestrel running a check inside Autodesk Revit.
What the AEC Magazine feature covers
The premise of the piece is growth. Two years ago, Lewis writes, a handful of tools helped AEC professionals navigate building codes and regulations. Today he counts at least nineteen. The feature sets out what compliance actually means on a project, where the statutory requirement ends and guidance begins, who is doing the checking, what happens when a tool misses something, and how a practice should choose one.
Two arguments stand out. The first is the line between prescriptive and performance requirements. A dimension, a U-value or a specified product can be tested against a drawing or a schedule, and software can now do that well. Adequate means of egress for an intended occupancy still takes modelling, judgement and a competent person to sign it off. Every one of the nineteen tools, by Lewis’s reading, works the prescriptive side of that line. The second is the point about who finds the issue. Contractors, clients and even building control can run these tools on an architect’s package. The question for architects is whether to check their own work before issue or wait for someone else to do it for them.
The feature is also clear about the limits. None of these products carry professional liability, none will be named in a contract, and professional responsibility stays with the architect. It compares the discipline to clash detection: a long list of findings, each with an owner, a decision, a reason, and a sign-off. We make the same argument in Where AI does not belong: the software finds and cites, and the architect decides.
Four categories of compliance software
The centre spread sorts the nineteen tools into four groups, framed as a way to locate where a tool sits in your own process rather than a fixed classification:
- Inside the BIM authoring tool. Five tools, including Kestrel. These require a BIM-authored model of high enough quality to interrogate.
- Documents and specifications. Four tools aimed at the volume of information a project produces.
- Drawing sets and PDFs. Eight tools. No BIM required, which suits an industry that still demands PDF deliverables.
- Code research and reference. Two tools. No project data required, so more of a pre-compliance check on the requirements.
The split matches the map we drew in AI building code compliance tools, compared and in What tools exist for building code compliance in Revit?: code lookup, drawing-set review, and native BIM compliance during design. The difference between the groups is not the AI. It is what the tool reads and when it reads it. A PDF checker reads the drawing set after it exists. A model-native checker reads the model while the design is still changing.
How the feature describes Kestrel
The entry is one sentence: Kestrel Labs runs checks natively in Revit, “tying results to the model element and citing the code section.” That is the whole product in eleven words, and it is the description we would have written ourselves. Kestrel Compliance Analysis runs inside Revit against the codes adopted for the project’s jurisdiction, maps every violation to the model element involved, and gives the exact code citation from content licensed from the International Code Council.
The screenshot on page 50 shows what that looks like. The model is Autodesk’s Snowdon Towers sample project, not a client project, open on the fifth-floor life safety plan. The Kestrel panel reports 1,251 checks, 57 violations, 31 with insufficient information, 662 exempt and 501 passed. The open result is an accessible work surface height violation in a café, cited to ICC A117.1-2017 §902.4 as scoped by IBC 2021 §1110.12, with the explanation of what was measured and why it fails. The result has a Show button that takes you to the element in the model, a reference to the code text, and a dismiss action for the cases where the architect knows better than the check.
The feature ends with four questions to ask before choosing a tool: which regions, jurisdictions and editions are covered; how quickly coverage updates when an amendment is issued; whether the output is auditable by someone who was not in the room; and where your project data is stored. We think those are the right four. The screenshot answers the third one directly. A result that names the element, the section and the reason is a record someone else can check. We cover the first two in our entries on local amendments and machine-readable codes, and we will answer the fourth for any firm that asks.
Why a roundup of nineteen tools is good news
For too long, checking a design against building codes has been a largely manual process, and it has happened late. Someone with twenty years of experience reads a code sheet, a set of plans and a chapter of the IBC, and the first external check arrives at plan check, after the decisions that caused the issue are months old. A category with nineteen tools in it means the industry has stopped treating that as normal.
The feature’s own prediction is that there will not be nineteen options in two years. Some will be acquired, some absorbed into software firms already pay for, and some will run out of funding or users. Lewis’s advice for choosing between them is the test we would ask any firm to run on Kestrel: take a completed project where you already know the answers, ideally one where something was caught late, run the tool against it, and measure it by what it missed rather than what it found.
We are building Kestrel to make the check continuous, so architects can find and resolve issues while they are still designing, in the model where the decisions get made. That is the argument of How building code compliance is moving into the BIM model and of our guide Compliance isn’t a milestone. It is also why a Kestrel check inside the model keeps showing up in print: on the cover of Architectural Products in July, and now inside AEC Magazine’s survey of the category. A check running inside the model is the image that explains the idea.
Thanks to Allister Lewis and the AEC Magazine team for including us.
Read the feature on pages 48–50: AEC Magazine, September/October 2026 →
Want to see the check that made the page? Schedule a demo →