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.
Why? It’s a fundamental question we all learn at a young age. The drive to understand why we do what we do is as human as eating or breathing. Why do we work? Putting deep philosophy aside, most of us work to pay our bills. At work, there are different levels of participation. We all have additional drivers, various day-to-day responsibilities, and differing needs for our software, tools, and interaction levels with other employees.
Last year, at the beginning of the COVID crisis. Voyansi started experimenting with the latest version of Revit Server (2020) for smaller (>10 person) teams. Our conclusion was that it's a powerful tool and a viable alternate to BIM360, but does not offer the same overall functionality or ease of setup. Often, our work standards are dictated by our clients and end users, so BIM360 is our most commonly used collaboration tool, however there are instances when this may not make the most sense for a small number of users.
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.
Last we got a call from one of our long time customers. He had finally quit the grind of his corporate job after 20 years. After knowing them for several years both as one of Voyansi's production team members, then later in a commercial role, I knew this would not be retirement! There is an allure to architects to be able to pick and choose what you work on. As an architect myself, I know this feeling, it's experiential and almost indescribable. However, tempering that, the ability to pick and choose comes with the need for industry standard tools and workflows.
Imagine for a minute, you're doing laundry. Everything is dry, in a basket and ready to put away. Where do you start? In my case, following the Pareto Principle, I dump the basket on the bed and head for the towels first. Once the towels are finished, I typically start with pants, then shirts, finally folding up small things such as socks, underwear, or other accessories.
Especially in the last year, there seems to be no shortage of issues to solve in any organization. While we grapple with our internal challenges, we are also helping our customers transform their businesses. In all these experiences, a constant that we always return to is the problem definition. Understanding what we're trying to solve before we tackle it helps us prioritize and efficiently implement.
In recent years we have assimilated a lot of new ideas. Imagine yourself as a drafter in the 1950s, and how mind-blowing printing technology is today. How about a lot of the tedious calculation-based work that has been replaced with software tools: quantity take-offs, spatially organizing office space in a building, or even in creating models themselves. We work in an industry that is constantly evolving and changing. BIM, our chart and compass guiding us in the right direction.
Today is the first day in over a year that I will be working from somewhere other than my office. It's Monday, which means of course things are slower than normal and the urgency of a Tuesday or Wednesday has not arrived yet. Complicating matters is the fact that I haven’t had to fully dress myself in over a year.
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.
Imagine for a minute that you’re a plumber working on a building back in the paper age, maybe right around 1956. You have three, 12” storm pipes that need to run through an entire 30.000 sq.ft floor. To complicate matters, these pipes are going inside a Lab. They are sloped, and the piping needs to be as continuous and straight as possible along the way. Oh yea, remember, it’s a lab, so there is a ton of MEP equipment, and there are a handful of beams that you absolutely cannot clash with because they are structural.
