AECCafe Industry Predictions for 2023 – Ideate

By Richard Taylor

The demand for technology to support distributed and collaborative work environments plus increased BIM productivity will continue

Richard Taylor

Who could have predicted the events of the last 3 years? The global pandemic, stay-at-home orders, and continued desire by some people to work from home have dramatically changed many architecture, engineering, construction, and owner-operator (AECO) firms from traditional office environments to more distributed remote work situations. I believe that the changes launched during this difficult time will continue to evolve as companies plan for continued success in 2023 and beyond.

The AECO community is very collaborative and social; although I don’t expect the flexible work environment to go away, I do think there will be a continued trend towards collaborating within an office for most of the work week. To support employees while working from outside the office, I expect that AECO companies will implement software tools that allow the social interaction and collaboration of their extended teams from virtually anywhere.

This demand from AECO companies will lead to innovative solutions from the technology companies that support them. One example is the Cloud Network Licensing and other Cloud Solution options developed by Ideate Software at the beginning of the pandemic partly as a response to a vast increase in work performed remotely by our customers. We’ve seen the demand for the Cloud Network Licensing technology grow exponentially over the last 3 years.

Another example of the desire for increased collaboration of extended teams is embodied within Ideate Automation, which allows critical BIM data to be extracted and reviewed by ANY team member without the need for a complex centralized infrastructure. I expect this “democratization” of BIM data to continue being important to AECO companies as they seek ways to attract top talent and efficiently deliver outstanding results to customers. In the case of Ideate Software, we are continuing to develop software solutions that make BIM data easy to use and review, allowing any designer on the team, regardless of where they are located, to gain actionable insight into the BIM data. A good example is our work with Revit Model Health and Power BI using Ideate Automation.

This image shows Revit Model Health information that can be easily extracted using Ideate Automation

The desire for increased decentralization of extended teams will also be balanced with the need for increased BIM productivity.  Autodesk has announced relatively few significant changes to Revit software in 2023, so users will continue to look to Revit add-ins, such as Ideate Software, to increase productivity for all Revit users.

I believe that the continued development of decentralized software solutions and increased BIM productivity will be critical in helping AECO companies remain flexible and thrive while accommodating traditional in-office work processes as well as remote or virtual work processes. As software developers create more powerful and flexible solutions, the rich and powerful BIM data will continue to be more easily accessed and reviewed by all team members, so they can make better decisions on every project.

About the Author

Richard W. Taylor, Associate AIA – Technical Evangelist| Ideate Software
email: richard.taylor@ideatesoftware.com
Richard has more than 34 years of experience working for companies that develop architectural and engineering software solutions, such as Intergraph, Bentley, and Autodesk. He has over 22 years of Revit experience, and he was part of the original development of Revit while at Revit Technology Corporation. He worked for 12 years at Autodesk, where he presented, taught, and worked to improve features in Revit. Richard holds both a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies and Master of Architecture from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. As Technical Evangelist, Richard works with AECO clients worldwide, developing and consulting on BIM solutions. Find Richard on Twitter and LinkedIn

Category: Industry Predictions

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2023 at 6:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.