After resigning from a small country practice someone asked me to draw up a new garage while I was preparing to relocate back to the city and I found myself in private practice pretty much by accident, running an office out of a bedroom, baby on my lap, operating Datacad version 4 on a DOS based PC with 8 Mb of hard disk space and 256k of Ram. I also had a modem. The World Wide Web was just an idea in some guy’s head, but even then we could send email and use chat rooms. Soon after, I employed an experienced builder with 30+ years on the tools to assist me to prepare very buildable documents, who lived 40 minutes away. We managed to zip drawing files and send them back and forth over night to one another. Telecommuting was to become part of my practice by necessity in those days and now as type of green, retro, urban, hippy kind of choice. 

Having employed numerous people over the years I’ve recognised that most professionals are really efficient at some aspects of professional architectural practice and highly professional in other aspects... When we, as Principal Architects employ people, we try to allocate them to do more of those aspects of practice that they are particularly efficient at and perform less of the stuff some of their qualified peers are really efficient at. In that way we do the best work the firm is capable of in the most efficient way. Sole practitioners develop honed skills across a broad area of practice by necessity. We do it all, however some of us are still better equipped than others at some aspects of practice. That’s the truth of it and as sole practitioners we frequently find ourselves competing for the same projects against one another... perhaps attempting to highlight those skills as a point of difference. The reality is that, price aside, sometimes it just comes down to whether the client is more comfortable working with you in particular in preference to some other architect. 

Over the years, my practice has changed upwards in staff numbers and then by choice, back down again. However, 20 years on, the same person I started out with still works with me. We have seen a lot of changes in telecommuting in that time. The physical distances have varied and zipped files are a thing of the past but the virtual distance is now just as if he sits in the private office next to mine.

ArchiCAD’s advancement in BIM changed the way I looked at the usefulness of Archicad as a tool for production drawings. With most CAD tools these days, we can divvy up a project into separable sections and reference those sections into a larger file at one location. It takes co-ordination. That’s a typical collaborative model and has been done for many years. Now however, as a quantum leap in collaboration, with ArchiCAD BIM modelling we need only send across the internet so much of the data within a drawing file that has been modified. Many people actually can work on the same drawing file concurrently. You know how it works. With one co-ordinated location for access by as many participants as required, many can work on different aspects of the same building, or work independently on groups of co-ordinated buildings as if we were one office of many. But those participants can be comfortably located where they choose, in a cabana on Daydream Island perhaps... or wherever a broadband internet signal is reasonable. Their individual choice applies.

A large firm running an Archicad BIM server now has less commercial leverage merely by accommodating everyone in the team in the same real estate unless it is for the purpose of controlling the work of the less experienced minions. True, across the world large firms are gobbling up smaller ones like there is no tomorrow for the mid sized office. That is definitely not the case for small firms. 

If you are a sole trader Architect and like me, you use Archicad BIM modelling as one of your design and documentation production tools, but you also do not want to “grow” your small practice having been there and done that... nor do you wish to merge, and you would like to maintain your independence but value the highly experienced resources of your peers and enjoy collaborating on some aspect of your current commissions, then let’s connect to explore some possibilities. 

Kind regards

Gary Finn

Sydney Access Consultants

02 95863111