Introducing the IT Solutions Team

As you may have noticed, the SymetriUK website has had a bit of a restructure with many new offerings added due to our recent acquisition of Excitech; one of them being IT Solutions. In this blog post, we introduce you to this new offering and the people behind the SymetriIT Solutions team.

What is Symetri IT Solutions?

As one of the first Autodesk partners in the UK, we have over 30 years' experience working with architects, engineers, construction and product design professionals. In that time, we have helped design professionals transition from paper-based-draughting to 2D CAD, grasp the complexities of today’s complex 3D modeling platforms, and adopt revolutionary concepts such as generative design.

This experience has given us a unique perspective on the demands these applications place on CAD workstations and IT infrastructure which generic IT companies may not have sight of.

As a result, we partner with best of breed IT technology vendors such as Dell, HP, Microsoft, and more, to bring our customers the right solutions to meet their business needs. Underpinned by our comprehensive range of support services to give you peace of mind that your core IT infrastructure and critical business applications will be available when you need them. 

We support four key areas in relation to IT: products, solutions, services & support.

Products

Hardware and software to help you run your everyday operations

As an experienced accredited partner for some of the most respected names in hardware and software including Dell, HP, Adobe, and Microsoft, we can supply a wide range of industry-specific solutions out-of-the-box, or specially configured for the way you work.

We offer:

·       CAD Workstations

·       Laptops

·       Monitors

·       Accessories

·       Software

·       Virtual Reality (VR)

Find out more at https://www.symetri.co.uk/it-solutions/it-products

Solutions

Tailored solutions to help you work smarter and solve a number of industry issues

 

As the pace of technology development in the architecture, engineering, construction, and product design sectors continue to accelerate, the challenges multiply vast file sizes, bandwidth concerns, back-up procedures, inter-office communication, collaboration, remote working, virtualisation, access to data, and file-sharing to name a few.

 

We offer solutions for:

·       Business Continuity

·       Cloud

·       Collaboration

·       Desktop Virtualisation

·       IT Infrastructure

·       PC as a Service (PCaaS)

·       Remote Working

·       Software

·       Virtual Reality (VR)

 

Find out more at https://www.symetri.co.uk/it-solutions/it-solutions

Services

Helping you identify the present and future IT needs of your business

We provide IT services focused on the key priorities any architecture, engineering, construction, and product design business has. Our consultants can help you identify your present and future IT needs, guide you in building a strategic roadmap to drive greater operational efficiencies, and present vendor-agnostic hardware and systems recommendations.

Our services include:

·       Consultancy

·       Cyber Essentials

·       IT Audit

·       Licence Management

Find out more at https://www.symetri.co.uk/it-solutions/it-services

Support

Our support services are here to help

We do more than just supply the IT equipment and software you need. If something has gone wrong and you need to speak to our expert support team, or you’d like to monitor and prevent issues from occurring, our support services are here to help. We make it easy for you to contact our helpdesk engineers, who come from the core industries they support, whenever the need arises.

 

We offer four IT support packages to keep your infrastructure all running smoothly with optimum performance and minimum downtime.

 

Find out more at https://www.symetri.co.uk/it-solutions/it-support

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Real-World Expertise

Our team is built up of experts who come from the core industries they support; they share and understand the challenges of the Buildings & Infrastructure and Product Design & Lifecycle industries and have the passion to explore, assess and evaluate the many new and varied developments in products and processes taking place in our industry today. So, let's meet the faces behind the expertise...

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Meet the Symetri IT Solutions Team

Alan Stone - IT Solutions Business Area Director 

Alan joined as a member of the IT team delivering services to design and engineering specialists, and was appointed Head of IT Solutions in the summer of 2016. He has helped numerous companies design and implements cutting edge IT infrastructures, ensuring they have the right IT strategy in place to meet their business objectives. Possessing a unique blend of CAD, IT, and commercial expertise, Alan can provide a well-rounded perspective on the technical demands facing the Buildings & Infrastructure and Product Design & Lifecycle industries today.

I am a big sports fan. In my spare time, you'll find me playing golf or watching football.

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Jim Bailey - IT Solutions Consultant

Jim joined in 1996, previously working in the communications industry with British Telecom and the burgeoning IT industry with Granada. He has worked within the IT industry for the past 25 years and his knowledge of IT technologies is broad. He's worked on many projects incorporating technologies such as virtualisation (Hyper-V, VMWare, Nutanix), security (Dell, HP, and Cisco), storage (Panzura, SAN, NAS, Cloud Providers Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure), and cloud (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure Office 365 Nutanix XiFrame).

Outside of work, I'm a keen cyclist and enjoy outdoor life including birdwatching.

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Jeremy Vessey - IT Solutions Consultant

Jeremy joined the business in 1998 as a Hardware Engineer and has now progressed to an IT Solutions Consultant. His knowledge varies across a broad range of technologies including virtualisation, storage and cloud solutions. Jeremy also has a great deal of knowledge around the Autodesk suite of products regarding licencing and deployments. IT installations, pre-sales and fully supporting the Helpdesk for escalated calls are his main responsibilities.

 I'm a big fan of motor racing & snooker

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Lee Emery - IT Solutions Specialist

Lee joined in 1999 and has over 20 years' experience in IT support. He received a BTEC in computing in 1998 and is always on the other end of the phone to help customers with any IT related issues they may have. 

My interests are cars, the outdoors and food!

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Barrie Elliott - IT Solutions Specialist

Barrie Joined the business in 2007 as a Helpdesk Engineer and has now progressed to an IT Solutions Specialist. Prior to joining Symetri, he used to manage an Automotive Business as an Engineer and was a senior Electronic Engineer repairing mobile phones before that. He is a Qualified Electronics Engineer holding a City and Guilds 224 in Electronic Servicing and also an NVQ in Engineering. Engineering and IT has always been his passion since he was a child and with this enthusiasm and keenness, he continues to enhance his knowledge in new technologies. His knowledge varies across the board including Virtualisation, Storage, Cloud solutions and much more. He also delivers client training, installations, pre-sales and consultancy for various products, along with fully supporting the Helpdesk for escalated calls. 

I have a keen interest in photography outside of work.

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Josh Timmins - IT Solutions Specialist

Josh joined in 2013 as a trainee IT Engineer with no previous IT experience. While learning on the job, and with in-house training, Josh has quickly progressed to become an IT Solutions Specialist. Josh assists with all aspects of IT Solutions, from pre-sales and installations to supporting the end-user directly via the helpdesk. 

I enjoy fishing, football and going to the pub.

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Andy Evangeli - IT Solutions Support Engineer

Andy Joined in 2014 as a Technical Support Engineer having previously worked in the corporate industry with Sainsburys at their head office in Holborn. Andy has over 15 Years’ experience in the IT industry and is skilled in various platforms including VMware, Hyper-V, Windows Server, Office 365, In-house Exchange, Windows 7, 8 and 10, Software-Hardware Installations and experience with in-house and cloud backup solutions. He is always happy to help customers with a smile with any IT related issues they may have. 

In my spare time, I enjoy being with my family and am an avid supporter of Newcastle United FC.

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Clive Dancey - IT Solutions Support Engineer

Clive has been in engineering most of his life, starting off at GEC Avionics, moving to work in a field service role with MFS group and then support at Santander. He has since worked in several IT support roles, supporting high-level bankers and traders, to home users before joining Symetri to support our customer base. 

Outside of work, you can find me acting at a local theatre around the Hertfordshire area.

 

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Attarpal Bhamra - IT Solutions Support Engineer

Attarpal joined the business in 2018 as an IT Solutions Support Engineer and has over 5 years' experience in the Managed Service Provider sector. Having completed an apprenticeship in IT, he is perfectly suited to helping customers work through any IT systems difficulties they may come across.

My hobbies include football & gym.

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Fabian John - IT Solutions Support Engineer

Fabian joined in 2019 but has spent over 16 years in IT. Before joining Symetri, Fabian spent over 10 years in the Education sector helping schools with bespoke technology needs from consulting on solutions to day-to-day problems. Fabian has always enjoyed taking things apart and seeing if he can fix them again which has translated into a rewarding career in IT. Seeing complex problems resolved always brings great satisfaction to him. 

Outside of work, I’m a Dad to 3 boisterous boys, I play the drums, cycle, and like a good build in Minecraft from time to time.

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Homayoun Ahmed - IT Solutions Support Engineer

Homayoun has over 13 years of experience working in the Managed Service Provider sector. He has experience in implementing, diagnosing, and maintaining different technologies and is able to provide solutions for our customers' expanding service solutions. Homayoun is customer focused and strives to ensure our customers are not just given quick fixes to temporarily solve their problems, but to implement solutions and services that add value to their organisations. 

In my spare time I l play badminton, and to de-stress we have a family movie marathon!

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Jennifer Curtis - IT Solutions Support Administrator

Jennifer joined the business in 2011 as a Support Services Administrator, raising renewal quotes for IT Solutions and CAD Support. Jennifer sets up and maintains contracts and updates customer support and subscription licences. She supports the sales team, Engineers & customers with their contract & general support issues. 

I enjoy football, reading, going to the pub and theatre.

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Jonathan Glass - IT Solutions Sales Support Assistant

Jon joined the IT Solutions team back in 2015 as the Installation Coordinator, ensuring that IT projects were booked in and running smoothly. A year later he took on the additional duty of IT Solutions presales which involves providing quotes for our sales team and hunting out the best prices possible.

He takes pride in getting things right and enjoys the challenges the role brings him daily. He is constantly learning about new technology and matching it to our customers’ requirements. He has a vast knowledge of Dell and HP CAD workstation ranges and his established relationship with suppliers and vendors have allowed him to source the best IT solutions to offer our customers.

I have a degree in Audio Technology, enjoy collecting vinyls, DJing, and all things music. I live on the south coast with my girlfriend and cat Chewie and enjoy walks on the beach and going to the arcades (not with the cat, that would be weird).

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Daniel Gonzalez - IT Solutions Internal Presales

Daniel joined in early 2020 following a career in the Telecoms industry working with BT and many other companies. From a young age, he has been passionate about IT systems; he is continually embracing new technologies to enhance his knowledge in order to provide for customers' ever-changing needs and ensure end-users get the best out of their equipment.

Prior to joining Symetri, he worked alongside senior engineers doing on-site visits with clients and provided sales support during client negotiations for bespoke proposals. His experiences have given him a good insight into every step of customer onboarding from the quotation stage, right through to end-to-end installations and aftercare. He has learned the importance of forming good customer relationships, and moreover to gain an understanding of their individual requirements.

In my spare time, I enjoy playing and composing music on the piano, working on techie projects like repairs/upgrades on CAD workstations and laptops, gardening, and playing with my little one spending quality dad time whenever I can.

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Nita Hoffmann - IT Solutions Service Delivery Manager

Nita joined the business in early 2020 and has been in the IT industry for 20 years. She started her career teaching IT to adults and children which included supporting students through GCSE and A level computing, before becoming an IT Support Engineer. She then moved onto become a Service Delivery Manager which she has now been doing for over 10 years, having supported a variety of different industries including medical insurance, educational and entertainment.

In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, sailing, camping and cycling.

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Nicole Breeden - Marketing Executive

Nicole first joined the business as a Marketing Assistant in 2017 after graduating from university with a degree in English Language & Communications with Journalism. Shortly after she became a Marketing Executive which now involves planning and executing campaigns for different business units within the company; one of them being IT Solutions. 

Outside of work, I enjoy all things food, fashion, and makeup.

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To learn more about Symetri IT Solutions and how our team of experts can help you, get in touch with us or visit our webpage here. 

 

Keys, Wallet, Phone – What Have I Forgotten?

 When I leave the house, I always check for these three things:

• Keys

• Wallet

• Phone

Although in the current climate, you probably want to add ‘mask’ to your list too.

We all have favourite places where we leave them so that we can easily find them later; whether it may be on a bedside table, in the kitchen drawer or a coat pocket, etc. Wherever it is, we know where to start looking, but what about office equipment and assets? Where are they?

Office Assets

An office asset could be almost anything, it might be electrical equipment like laptops, mobile phones, photocopiers, etc, but might also be valuable artwork or sculptures. It might also be things like software licences.

In each case, you will ask questions such as who has this asset and where is it now. In other cases you may need to find information relating to the asset or be reminded of:

• 3 months advanced reminder of when the photocopier contract needs to be renegotiated

• When the warranty on the laptop expires

• When the software licences expire

• When the last insurance valuation on the artwork was and what the value was

• In which building and which room the painting is in

Anyone with a little database knowledge can knock up a simple asset register to hold this type of information. It can have serial numbers of equipment, key dates, and the names of staff that they are allocated to. As anyone who has tried this will know, the problem is that staff forget where the system is, how to log on, and how to use it.

The ideal is that this type of asset management isn’t a separate toolset but instead an extension of your existing environment so that you can:

1. Click on a building and see what photocopiers are on each floor, their contract dates, and user manuals

2. Click on a person and see which laptop, phone, and desk space is allocated to them

3. See when the laptop warranty is due to expire, the software installed on it, and licensing data

4. Search for equipment, filter for phones, and find who has the outdated phone that needs replacing

Customers of our drawing management software Excitech DOCS benefit from not just having a CAD document management system, they also gain from the underlying foundations of M-Files as its vast range of capabilities opens a wealth of opportunities to become more integrated, efficient, and organised by taking control of all your assets.

To find out more about our document and drawing management software Excitech DOCS, click here.

ISO 19650 | Changes around Fire Regulations and what it may mean for our industry

 Something happened in the fire safety sector last year, which largely went unnoticed. In July 2020, the government published a new draft bill titled the “Building Safety Bill”. In this bill the government:

Proposed regulatory reform on the back of the report produced by Dame Judith Hackitt

Introduces new requirements in the building fire safety sector, potentially affecting owner-operators, contractors, architects, and specialists in fire engineering

Ensures the safety of people who occupy our buildings by improving the transparency of information.

Introduces accountability, making responsibility for managing safety risk throughout the design, construction, and occupation process of buildings clear. This includes the responsibility to provide information in a manner that can be reviewed and understood consistently.

This of course is the basis of good Information Management.   

The bill requires a “golden thread” of building information to be digitally created, stored and updated, and critically this needs to occur throughout the building life-cycle process, not just on completion. It is not the role of the bill to provide us with the configuration to meet this requirement, however, we expect we will see the development of British standards over the next year or two to provide this key missing piece of the jigsaw. Indeed, there is a notable standard in development, BS 8644, the “Digital Management of Fire Safety Information for Design, Construction, Handover, and Emergency Response. Code of practice”. We have not seen this standard yet, but we expect it to outline the way digital information should be collated and handled. We also expect it to reference the information management and exchange standards we have got used to with “BIM Level 2” or “BIM Certification” as defined within the ISO 19650 standard. I am expecting the standard to become available to us in the latter part of 2021, so it is a good one to keep an eye out for.

ISO 19650 already provides us with a structured business framework for digital information management, and a lot of organisations have already changed their internal configuration to align with it. This includes quality management procedures to meet the requirements that are now regularly deployed on projects that utilise this standard to form the information handover requirements. Symetrioffers a gap analysis services which help you identify areas of improvement, allowing organisations to put task plans together with the aim of improving their business practices to meet ISO 19650 needs. Organisations have also started to look at technologies to deliver the information digitally including using Building Information Models (BIM) as their source of data for the production of fire protection systems drawings, specification, and performance analysis. We have been working closely with solution providers such Briab over in Sweden, who provide very innovative tools that allow architects and fire safety engineers to start producing their documentation in this way. We are already running several exciting proofs of concept with our customer base.

While of course, we cannot make a statement to say this will make organisations compliant without fully documented future requirements, improving business processes and technical solutions in this way can only be a step in the right direction in my opinion. While the Building Safety Bill may well be the push that is needed, there is plenty of opportunities for organisations to improve beyond simply meeting regulatory requirements. By producing information within the BIM process, a well-established and understood technique elsewhere in the construction industry, we can of course take advantage of the capability to coordinate and analyse much more efficiently using connected data than we have been able to previously. This makes us more competitive in our marketplace.

I want flexibility but I also want controls, is that possible?

It’s a problem that all organisations face. They don’t want to constrain the creativity of staff but at the same time, they need them to follow policies and adhere to certain rules.

Whether your business is a major corporation or a small business with a handful of staff, your reputation hinges on the quality of your work. You personally can’t check everything that leaves the office, so your business has certain procedures and rules in place to ensure that things run smoothly. It may simply be that all formal issues go via Joanne for instance and she checks the quality of the material and that the correct versions are being sent. Or it may be much more involved with separate people checking for technical content and documentation standards before a director sign it off as fit for release.

Both have structure and yet both need a degree of flexibility too. Joanne may be off sick and someone else needs to step in, or the process in the corporate business needs additional steps and multiple people to approve the work for a particularly sensitive project.

Creativity is also a concern. Creative people work best when they have fewer constraints; designers rarely develop their initial ideas in a 3D modeling tool because the tool can inhibit them. So they will favor more traditional methods like paper and pen, or simpler tools like sketching programs.

As a result, when it comes to ensuring the best management of documentation, there is tension between the creative need to be uninhibited by the system, and the management needs to have some structure and procedures.

This has often been the undoing of document and drawing management software, especially in the Buildings & Infrastructure market where the need to maintain creativity has almost ruled out the use of such systems. Organisations that have invested in more strict document and drawing management software have found that adoption has been a problem as the staff does all they can to avoid using it. Others have tried CAD document management systems that either manage their email, which at least provides some control, or ones that additionally index their folder and hence provide a fast search service.

These systems can be expensive, yet they fail to address the full need which typically includes:

1. Project-specific:

    • File naming

    • Checking and approval

    • Extranet upload

2. Transmittal:

    • Content assembly

    • Transmittal document creation

3. Mobile:

    • Search

    • Approval

    • Editing

    • Mark-up

4. Legacy projects:

    • Leave where they are but the search finds them

5. Efficiencies

    • Less time spent on mundane tasks

It is possible

While some CAD document management systems just provide a search facility with a few peripheral capabilities and others provide rigid control, our document and drawing management software Excitech DOCS gives you the flexibility to not only vary the level of control from project to project but also to leave your legacy data where it is. All the while gaining the incredible deep-content Search across all your documents and from any device; imagine via your phone searching for a document that could be on one of the company file systems servers or in the CAD document management system and finding it instantly, editing it, and saving it back.

Learn more about our document and drawing management software Excitech DOCS here.

Building Services Consulting - Model Health Check: Looking after the health and well-being of your project

 As a fan of motorsport, particularly anything with two wheels and an engine, I will start this article by comparing a motorcycle race to Excitech’s Building Services Consulting services.

Some of Excitech’s services provide a more integrated approach to supporting you and the delivery of your project, with Excitech perhaps providing that pit crew to support, advise and maintain your effort for the duration of the race. However, if you are looking for a lighter touch then you could think of a model health check as something more aligned to an interim service that gives you the confidence that you are on track, or that may be a few areas are in need of attention before you continue on your journey.

I will now focus on the Revit MEPModel Health Checkandconsiders how a planned snapshot of your Revit MEP project can put your delivery team in a strong and confident position to continue moving forward.

As the building services industry changes and adapts to keep in step with the requirements of Building Information Modelling and the use of Revit MEP, it is becoming increasingly important to be confident of the condition of your project model and the associated data. A model health check can be arranged at any time, can occur multiple times during a project, and can be aligned with specific project stages.

Projects can sometimes overrun and miss deadlines due to underestimating the time needed to complete specific tasks. A model health check will identify potential issues that in turn can help with resourcing and scheduling due to a stronger understanding of the scale of any work required to align your model with project requirements.

Timely checking of areas such as readiness of models for submission to project partners, suitability for clash detection, submission of data, and robust modeling techniques will give you the tools to make informed choices and measured responses to any issues discovered.

To make sure the model health check meets your specific requirements and the results used to the best effect we will:

• Gain a thorough understanding of your project model and your requirements

• Provide an agreed scope of works

• Report on any issues discovered

• Identify any skill gaps or other problems preventing resolution of issues

• Discuss and present options for overcoming such issues

For more information about our Building Services Consulting services, visit our website.

 https://www.symetri.co.uk/buildings-infrastructure/building-services