The Digitisation of Architecture as a Business

The transition from drawing board to computer was a leap into progress. However, the act of drawing, erasing & redrawing compelled designers to really consider what they were doing before they put ink to paper. Across BIM projects, a similar mind-set enables a similar quality in design.

The CAD process is; “ok, how do we draw this?”, however, BIM enables the “ok, how do we actually build this?” as the question. BIM is an opportunity to interrogate and improve building designs in a revolutionary way.

Technology across many industries has driven business revolution since the first industrial revolution and Architecture, Engineering and Construction will prove no different. With this in mind, the complete digitisation of the business of architecture is inevitable. BIM is only a portion of the industry shift that is currently growing in momentum.

The technicians, technologists and architects are no longer just drafting robots. They are virtual master-builders. 4D construction, cloud-collaboration & computational design are now a part of daily operations, with these digital capabilities enhancing architects’ workflows now a reality.

The customisation of our personal lives in how we absorb music, TV, film, news and social-media dominates the broader tech-industry. Individualism is driving this trend, which has exploded over the last 5-10 years. The evidence of these trends in AEC lies in the power to iterate and automate designs with ease. Through designing and connecting information from the built environment through API programming, visual-scripting & remote-collaboration, the digital shift will continue to surprise us in years to come.

Empowering the industry with knowledge in these key areas, is the key to digitising the business of Architecture, across both Engineering and Construction.

Jonathan Reinhardt