Voyansi Voices Blog

Hopefully, you got a chance to read our blog last week. My colleague Mike “the photographer” wrote a short piece on one of his favorite conference anecdotes: the Kodak Story and the dangers of not innovating. Long story short, if you think photography today, it’s not Kodak, but rather Apple, Sony, Samsung, or maybe Nikon. What happened? Lack of desire to be at the cutting edge of technology. 

If you’re reading this today, you are probably anxious to implement BIM but are wondering how you sell it to leadership. You know that a move to BIM is more than just an update to the “latest and greatest” CAD tools. Within an organization, capital expenditure approval involves not only calculating your overall project cost but also showing the justification for spending that money in the first place. Even if you believe the purchase is necessary and reasonable, you have to convince your other colleagues.  

If you’re reading this article, you probably already know that it’s essential to implement BIM, so I want you to reframe your mindset before making the business case. The starting point is a technological renovation that, far from being thought of as an expense, should be viewed as an investment in the future. You know you need to invest in your organization’s future, so the question really is: How do you prove it to skeptical stakeholders?  

A few months back, my wife and I moved to Spain from Argentina. Last week, my colleague Mike joined me here, as well as our two first local hires, new members of our software team. I was extremely excited, I’ve been working solo here in Spain now for several months, so it was nice to get a chance just to speak to my colleagues face to face for the first time in 18 months or so.

I'm going to keep this post short today. Over the last several months, I've been writing about taking ownership of your spaces. Starting with your internal standards and content, and culminating in the Holy Grail of unified dashboards. I wanted to take a minute to pull all of my thoughts together when it struck me:

By leveraging the power of data-driven design, your team will not only come to optimal
spatial layouts today but improve your design process for the future at the same time.
Once finalized designs are manually adjusted, the feedback is sent to the repository for
future design generation.

We’ve spoken alot about how paper based workflows are a bottleneck to your process. McKinsey suggests that there is up to a 25% productivity gain to be had by decreasing the burden of information and data transfer. Anecdotally, I’d agree that a good chunk of my time (probably 20-30% of my day personally) is taken up simply searching for and sharing information. 

I’m looking at a pile of paperwork on my desk this morning. I know that buried in that stack is a financial document I need to review later. I know who sent it, when it came in, and vaguely what it looks like. I’m still dreading having to physically sort through the mess to find the one piece I want. Sorry Michael Scott, but if I had one wish in life, it might be to eliminate all the paperwork. 

Personal feelings aside for the state of social media today, I realized there is some truth in the importance of creating content for exposure. No, I'm not suggesting you go purchase a pair of black skinny jeans, a go-pro, and quit your job to travel.

Implementing BIM. It sounds challenging, scary even. Maybe it's on your radar, but the budget is not yet approved and you are still planning. There is a vast unknown ocean you are about to dive into, what kind of monsters lie in wait? Rework, lost productivity, expense, or additional effort are all lurking out there in the depth. 

Before writing this post, I reached out to a few people in the AEC space to talk about strategic BIM planning. For me, it's a catharsis to talk about BIM. However, anecdotally, about 75% of space owners are reluctant to engage in strategic planning sessions and my colleagues in the software and data world echoed this.

The biggest shift in real estate usage history is occurring. As a business leader, I’ve recognized and made that call myself for Voyansi. In 2020, like many other companies, we realized a new way of working was here to stay and capitalized on the opportunity of our employees working remotely to renovate and consolidate office spaces.