One of my New Year’s resolutions has been to get back to blogging. I thought I’d begin making good on that resolution by looking back at what’s kept me away from writing since my last post.
It’s been pretty busy. We’ve been fortunate to work with several of the nicest and smartest clients anyone could ask for. We worked with Tyler Pipe to launch a full series of Revit families for their cast iron pipe fittings, and with Autodesk to launch over 500 valves for Revit subscription customers (which followed a previous release of AWWA pipe fittings for the US market). Our work in piping content continued in the UK with Pegler Yorkshire, who recently released a large set of valve families. And we created rooftop units, heat pumps, air conditioning units and AHUs for Carrier — perhaps some of the best Revit content for large mechanical equipment that’s out there.
Last year, we also established Andekan Ltd., our UK based subsidiary. I have personally always been based in the UK, but we had no official business presence here. Our decision to form Andekan Ltd. is a testament to the growth of Revit in the UK market, which is in no small part due to the loosely organized, yet knowledgeable and influential, #UKBIMcrew.
On a personal level, I had the opportunity to carry out some Revit MEP consulting work for Autodesk. Even more interestingly, I started working with Buro Happold, a global engineering services company, from their office here in London. Thanks to Michael Bartyzel, I’ve been able to work with their team on large Revit projects, touching on all different areas of Revit content and project design. I’ve been coordinating services, creating content, training engineers, further developing templates, BEPs, scheduling, calculations and more. I’m still in that role to this day, while continuing to juggle everything else, and I couldn’t be more excited. The people at Buro Happold are phenomenal, from modelers to engineers to management, and I might add that management has been extremely supportive of the uptake of Revit and related BIM tools.
I’ve also been busy participating in more industry conferences. A little over a year ago, I spoke at the inaugural RTC Europe in Delft, where I was voted 1st and 4th best speaker for my two sessions. RTC, for those who don’t know, is a conference about BIM in general and Revit in particular. It’s been running for 10 years since it started in Australia. A conference by users and for users, it has grown over time, and now does three events yearly — in Australasia, North America, and Europe — and with a fourth one in Asia starting this year.
Shortly after the conference in Delft, I was asked to be part of the RTC Europe Committee and to serve as Marketing Manager — a pro-bono position that allows me to attend more RTC events. The second RTC Europe took place in Dublin at the end of October. The event maxed out, with over 300 attendees, and the feedback was extremely positive. I can’t wait for the next RTC Europe event taking place this October in Budapest.
In Dublin, I also presented twice, first on flows and pressure drop calculations (together with Lucas Mory and Thomas Cosker, both from Buro Happold) and second on MEP standards. On MEP standards, I talked about the CIBSE PDTs, which is a product information standard that I’ve helped spearhead together with Paddy Connaghan and Richard Vincent from Hoare Lea and Carl Collins from Arup Associates. CIBSE is the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers and is akin to ASHRAE in the U.S. The term PDT stands for Product Data Template. The CIBSE PDT standard has been long in the making — over three years since I first proposed the idea — and deserves a post of its own. Coming soon!
I was also invited to Autodesk’s Gunslinger events, attending the one in Boston a year ago and one in Shanghai this year. Autodesk Gunslinger is an invitation-only event where you get to play with the latest developments in Revit, providing feedback while testing and trying to break the software. It’s a small group of people, between 15 and 25, so we get the opportunity to have extended discussions with the QA team as well as some of the development teams. I got to know some of the people from the Autodesk content team, and talk to them about all kinds of things related to Revit content. And the hospitality of the entire Autodesk team in Shanghai was extraordinary. It was my first time in China and I definitely left with a wish to return, both to attend another Gunslinger and to explore more of China.
Finally, with what is becoming a tradition for us here at Andekan, we used the last event of the calendar year, Autodesk University, as an excuse for our team to meet and do some travelling together. This year we took a two-day road trip from San Francisco to Las Vegas, travelling down the California coast through Big Sur and then across the state and through Death Valley.
As always, Autodesk University itself was a great place to meet some of our American customers and friends, as well as to make new ones. The developer sessions were the most interesting for us, and the opening keynote was truly inspiring. We showed our future plans to some people, and used the time together as a team to plan for this year. I’m really excited about what we have been working on over the last several months, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you soon.
With that, we wish you a happy 2015!
