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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:
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
The more I learn about nature, the more coincidences I find with my work at Voyansi.
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.
This is the first of many announcements we will be making this year. Our mantra here has been: Nothing is sacred. Go try something new. We know that BIM will change the world. More people should be using it. The only way to make that happen is to help everyone know BIM better. There’s no better way to start building awareness than a limerick, but first, we hope this has intrigued you enough to sign up for our blog!
Recap: This post is the 1st installation of our series of blog posts covering the Barrio 31 Project. Villa 31, one of the largest poverty stricken neighborhoods in Argentina is undergoing a massive renewal into an official city neighborhood: "Barrio 31". Key project challenges include a lack of as-built documentation; the scope and size of measurements needed; short project timeline; and need for quality and consistency of data during hand-off. Our post today covers the development of custom applications to reduce manual effort in measurement & design.
