Has the Workplace Changed Forever?

By Richard Brayshaw, Sales & Business Development Manager CAFM

COVID-19 has brought a great deal of change to many people’s lives around the world. Day-to-day these changes have seemed impossible, but in these extreme circumstances they have happen almost overnight.

What have we seen change during this time?

The environmental impact - travel has been drastically reduced, whether it’s locally or globally. Environmentalists have been pressing for this for years, fighting against those who have suggested the type of change requested is impossible in an evolving world. Well, the reductions have happened, and they have exceeded all expectation, unfortunately this beneficial side effect is unlikely to last forever, but it may make people think.

The panic – normally rational people being reduced to bulk buying - or even stealing - hand sanitizer and toilet rolls. 

Remote working – the one I want to focus on. 

In my experience working with organisations who have been trying to more efficiently and cost effectively manage their space and workforce, there have always been three major factors stopping wider adoption of home working: fear of change, cost and trust. COVID-19 has forced many organisations to face up to these fears and create an effective remote working environment. 

Most organisations where these challenges have applied, have stepped up. They have invested rapidly in equipment and infrastructure to allow employees to work remotely. There has been no choice but to trust, and I think employers have been pleasantly surprised. I know we are in the early stages; it is still novel and human spirit is driving everybody to deliver the best they can for their businesses in the circumstances we find ourselves in. Workloads across the board may adjust – but I think it has showcased what can be done and will get organisations thinking.

Post COVID-19 organisations must consider:

• Are employees gone for good, never to return, squirrelled away in home-offices?
• Is all that office space we pay so much for actually required?
• Should we adopt smarter working practices?
• Does the UK/Worldwide technology infrastructure allow for this method of working?
• What do we lose with remote working?
• Do we need to travel so much?

With the three limiting factors removed, I believe organisations will be able to respond to these space management questions in a different way to when they have considered them previously. I believe significant impacts will be seen:

• Smart working practices have been creeping in to organisations in certain sectors but will now be accelerated hugely across all sectors.
• Office space requirements will reduce, or usage will be changed to allow for better collaboration, employee engagement and office experience.
• Maintaining and improving a remote working infrastructure may require some ongoing investment, but the upfront cost will have been incurred, so these will be retained and improved.
• Having been tested and largely passed, I believe the UK/Worldwide technology infrastructure may begin to take more of the strain off the transport infrastructure.
• There will always be a place for company offices, for a wide range of reasons; security, brainstorming, meetings of a certain nature, training, control, community, etc.

Space management could change forever after this is all over. But make the right decisions with space management software to help you make informed decisions.

But in the meantime, I wish everybody, their families and their colleagues the best during these testing times.

Back to Basics – Creating Structural Content for Revit

By Lawrence Hooker, Technical Consultant at Excitech

Over time technology and techniques evolve and adjust, so it’s always useful to review even the basics of what we do on a daily basis – just in case we’re missing a trick. 

In this blog I’m going to look at some basic structural elements and consider how custom Revit content could be created to save time and make detailing more consistent and robust. 

I often think of Revit as a digital Lego set. You have a certain number of pieces to assemble a structure, but the limitation is the variety of ‘bricks’ that are provided. For example, the three bricks below can only build simple, box like structures.

The great thing with Revit is that we can create our own parametric families that are either bespoke to a project or for use in many projects. The custom families give Revit the flexibility needed to create any type of family with fast and efficient placement into projects.

The humble pile family

Let’s look at a simple example, in this case the humble pile family.

All too often, the default out of the box single pile, Pile-Steel Pipe.rfa is used for most projects. Whilst this is perfectly functional for most applications it may not deliver the best output and placement options. For example, the two images below show some typical ways of depicting piling in a plan view. The first image is perhaps appropriate when showing a piling layout, ideal for scales 1:100 where the pile may want to be displayed as a symbolic symbol. The second is useful for general arrangement plans and shows the pile in hidden detail under the pile cap. You can also see the pilling on the third image displaying the hidden detail for the embedment and the break symbol to curtail the full piling length. 

The default pile family, when opened in the family editor, shows us the default Reference Planes which only run through the centre of the pile. This means that you cannot dimension the pile in elevation in a project. The default method of placement is to place the pile on a plane which is quite 

slow when multiple levels are required. This means you can’t snap a spot coordinate to the centre of the pile. This is simply down to the default family’s behaviour.

Once you place the piles, you will also need to detail these manually in a section or elevation with the break symbol. If the pile moves, you will also need to move the details. 

How can we make this more efficient?

• You can create a face-based pile with all the relevant detailing built in. This means that if the pile cap, ground beam or foundation slab changed level, the piles will automatically move. The 2D details such as the symbolic view and pile break symbol are automatically added as the piles are modelled.

• You can also snap a spot coordinate onto the centre of the pile with confidence. 

You can start by creating a new family using the Metric Generic Model face-based Revit family template. As there are a number of steps when creating the family, I have provided a short video with step by step instructions for the creation of the pile family:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_VHHWWBBHM&t=95s

You can make improvements to many of the default families which will save you time, increase your detailing efficiency and improve drawing consistency.

Have you considered Revit courses to improve your skills?

I suggest starting with a fundamentals Revit course which focuses on structure to learn the basics:

https://www.excitech.co.uk/Services/Training/Training-Courses/Autodesk-Revit-Structure-Fundamentals

Then you’re set to progress to other Revit courses such as Revit Structure Content Creation:

https://www.excitech.co.uk/Services/Training/Training-Courses/Autodesk-Revit-Structure-Content-Creation

For more information on our full range of Revit courses, visit our website here:

https://www.excitech.co.uk/Services/Training/Revit-Training-Courses

Alternately, give us a call to discuss your businesses requirements on 01992 807 444