Why Creativity Matters More as AI Takes Routine Work

AI will take more and more routine work from us, especially in engineering. I do not see that as a threat, but it does change what makes a team valuable. When software handles the repetitive part, creativity, curiosity, and the ability to generate new ideas become the scarce part of any modern team. I believe this human part of our work will remain difficult to outsource for a long time.

Which engineering work is AI already taking over?

The first work to go is the work that follows rules. On a large building project that means thousands of repetitive actions: model checks, parameter reviews, schedule updates, drawing registers, quantity exports, issue reports, and document comparisons. At TEBIN we already build tools for exactly this: Revit and Dynamo scripts, automated BIM (Building Information Modeling) quality checks, structured quantity extraction, and reports generated from live project data. Artificial intelligence is joining that list for document review, requirement extraction, comment classification, and structuring meeting notes.

None of this removes engineering responsibility. Every automated output still has to be checked against the design intent, the standards, the calculations, and the interfaces between disciplines, and an engineer still makes the final decision. What shrinks is the time spent producing the output. The time that remains is the time that needs judgement.

Why do creativity and curiosity become the scarce part?

Because what remains after automation is everything that has no rule yet. A script can check whether a parameter is filled in. It cannot decide that a plant room should move, that a brief is solving the wrong problem, or that two disciplines keep fighting over the same space because the concept itself needs rethinking.

Those moments decide the quality of a project, and they depend on people who ask “why?” before they ask “how?”. Curiosity finds the question. Creativity finds an answer nobody has written down yet. As routine work gets cheaper, these two qualities make up a growing share of what a client actually relies on a design and engineering company for.

Creativity is a skill you can train

Creativity is often treated as a talent: you either have it or you do not. I do not believe that. Creativity needs to be trained, like endurance or technical knowledge, and the training does not have to happen at a desk.

Play guitar. Drums. Piano. Write music. Sing. Build something. Try something completely outside your profession. Each of these makes you start without a template, make mistakes in front of other people, and keep going until something works. That is exactly the muscle an engineer needs when a project hits a problem that no standard detail covers.

I see many of my colleagues at TEBIN doing exactly that. Some of them play, some write music, some build things, some follow interests far away from engineering. I do not see this as a distraction from the work. I see it as part of what makes them good at it.

What should a modern office be for?

A modern office should be more than desks, meeting rooms, and monitors. It should give people space to experiment, to communicate, and to turn ideas into something real, together and in person.

At TEBIN this is not a metaphor. One room in our office holds guitars, a bass, a drum kit, and a keyboard, and it gets used.

At first glance, playing music together has little to do with engineering. In reality, the same curiosity, the same confidence, and the same freedom to experiment eventually come back into our projects. People who have made music together have practised listening, knowing when to lead and when to leave space for someone else. That shows up in a coordination meeting just as clearly as it does in a song.

Why value people who are not easy to work with?

At TEBIN, we value creative people. Different people. Strong personalities. They are not always the easiest people to work with.

Good.

Strong personalities bring friction, and friction is uncomfortable. It is also where weak ideas get challenged before they reach a client. A team in which everyone thinks alike agrees quickly and misses the same things. A team of different people argues more, and the argument usually makes the solution better.

We have learned to work with that. It takes clear roles, honest communication, and enough trust that a disagreement about a solution never turns into a disagreement about a person. More importantly, we have learned to value it. The engineer who questions the brief and the one who insists on checking the detail once more are often not the most comfortable colleagues in the meeting. They are frequently the reason the project is better at the end.

The part that stays human

AI will keep getting better at routine work, and we will keep using it wherever it makes our work faster, more consistent, and easier to control. That part of the future is easy to predict. The harder and more interesting part is building teams that know what to do with the time it gives back.

My answer is simple. Invest in people who are curious. Give them room to experiment. Do not try to make everyone the same. The routine can be automated. The ideas cannot.