Winter Street Architects, Salem, MA – Biting the BIM Bullet

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Winter Street Architects, Salem, MA – Biting the BIM Bullet

David McFadden | architects, BIM, CAD, recession | August 20, 2009

I have said numerous times lately that the lessons of this prolonged recession and necessity to achieve efficiency’s to survive will be a game changer for BIM acceptance in AEC firms. Everyday I see evidence supporting that. Here is a post from a firm in Salem, MA that agrees that BIM is key in moving forward and competing:

Photo-realistic BIM Rendering of the Salem State College, Weir-Stanley Building Music Rehearsal Space

If you haven’t done it by now, you better get to it! Or fall so far behind you may never be able to catch up. Bite the BIM bullet. It’s the future of the building industry and the future is now or just around the corner. Our firm swallowed the BIM pill way back in 2003; a year after Revit was first introduced to the market by Autodesk. What we saw then was what other industries have been doing for years: virtually prototyping and testing designs prior to fabrication. Economics and compute power had the practice relegated to big business and complex industries, but now the industrial evolution has finally availed these tools to the AEC Industry that allow us to rise up and shed our Neanderthal trappings. Those who will not adapt and wait, or dismiss it as a passing fad, will surrender to Natural Selection ending up in their own version of the La Brea Tar Pits. What BIM allows us to do is create buildings in the same way that we think about them; as visualized complete projects. We don’t think in plans, elevations, sections and details. These methods deconstruct the total visualized idea into two dimensional components simply to communicate complexities of the idea to someone else or to allow us to coordinate others’ work into our complex idea.

Full article via Winter Street ArchitectsBlog

About the author

Drawing upon original ideas and extensive personal and professional experience in the field, David McFadden crafted this article to explore the latest trends in the fields of architecture and building design. After working at various design practices—both full-time and freelance—and launching his design firm, David identified a significant gap in the industry. In 1984, he founded Consulting For Architects Inc. Careers, an expansive hub designed to align architects with hiring firms for mutual benefit. This platform enables architects to find impactful design work and frees hiring firms from the time-consuming cycles of recruitment and layoffs. David’s innovative approach to employer-employee relations has brought much-needed flexibility and adaptation to the industry. As the Founder and CEO, David has successfully guided his clients and staff through the challenges of four recessions—the early ’80s, early ’90s, early 2000s, the Great Recession, the pandemic, and the current slowdown due to inflation and high-interest rates.

3 Responses to "Winter Street Architects, Salem, MA – Biting the BIM Bullet"

Robert Elfer August 22, 2009

I could not agree more. We have been a BIM based firm (Revit) since 2004. We are a smaller firm of 5 people, but the platform allows us the design freedom and production efficiency to tackle larger and more interesting projects, with fewer but more hands on designers. Our goal in establishing the firm was to create a true studio environment, and this software paradigm shift has enabled us to do exactly that, where designers and partners imagine and inhabit the design from the very earliest phases of a project through CA.
Shabbir August 29, 2009

This sounds really good, please tell me where can one get BIM training near Washington DC area that is affordable, thanks.
Maxim J. January 12, 2010

Nice. I’ll use that at my web-page