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?  

We operate in many markets at Voyansi, with clients in LATAM, North America, Australia, the middle east, and now the EU. This gives our team an opportunity to compare and contrast the maturity of BIM across the globe. Our observation, in many countries, even our home of Argentina, BIM remains an enigma. That is not terribly surprising. After all, the digital camera was invented in 1975, but only in the last decade or so has the technology become prevalent. If you are one of the key stakeholders, or even a decision-maker leading your companies digital strategy, you understand this better than most. If you are ready to get started implementing BIM, you are on the precipice of becoming a pioneer in your business.

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.

Continuing on our post from last week about the reuse of space & the NY high line, we stopped for lunch at the world-famous Chelsea Market: an exciting place for both tourists and locals. Situated in Chelsea, a New York neighborhood in Manhattan with a rich cultural history dating back to the 1800s. The Chelsea Market offers various interesting cultural, culinary, and social activities for both tourists and locals. After a long walk on the High Line, it was time for lunch, and also to check out one of NYC’s most expensive real estate transactions in history.

It’s critically important to be able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes when having a conversation. A few years back when I was young in my career, I remember responding in a way I felt was extremely polite: “Yes Sir.” The dour look on my colleague’s face suggested I had made an error. Turns out, while this is pretty common where I’m from in Texas, it's less so in central England. The true implication of my statement was that he was old. A grave mistake coming from a 23-year-old recent college graduate just getting started in life. 

Today, we will talk about everything. Everything in the context of the Highgate Elementary School in California. We’ll start with some basic statistics. This Elementary School is made up of 6 buildings, a total of 58,335 square feet. Maybe that sounds small, maybe it sounds large. It’s all relative afterall. There is more to it than that. If I asked you to picture a school in your mind, it’s not just the buildings, it’s experiential. The laughter, recess, warm afternoons in the sun swinging carefree on a swingset with your friends. No cares in the world, other than how soon recess is ending.

Every week, new platforms emerge to help manage every aspect of the business. There never seems like the right time to hop into something new. However, this week we'll discuss the other side. Understanding where your current software ecosystem is hurting your business. These areas can be hard to detect, especially when you've been running the same systems for years. Technical debt builds up beneath the surface, and before you know it, more agile competitors are producing things at a pace that seems like magic.

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 our last few posts, we introduced you to our ecosystem design principles and the platforms we chose. Implementation can always be more perfect, and just as we changed a lot internally in the last 5 months, the next year will hold even more surprises for us. We know you are going through similar changes, so this is  of how we formed an architecture for our data ecosystem.

2020 was a life-changing year, and while some things may go back to normal, we took this opportunity to have a chance to return to better than normal. The change from AEC Lab and AEC Resource to Voyansi was more than just a brand change, we fundamentally changed the way we work.

At the end of the day, we deliver data. Over the next few weeks, I'll write about how we transformed our digital ecosystem to take our first steps as a data-driven company, from end to end. We believe this is possible for any company where information work is the primary medium. Evermore so, we believe being data-driven is a requirement to survive in the incoming competitive environment. 

Leading with a Limerick

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!