Working as one

With eight staff across three offices, MVL Architects and Surveyors has implemented practice management software from Synergy to make sure its whole team knows what’s going on, with every project, at any time

As director of MVL Architects with one another on model-based proand Surveyors, Chris Lelliott jects inside BIM and [understanding] takes a keen interest in mak- how we can share information.” ing sure that the multidisci- What’s been missing, however, was plinary design and surveying practice technology to organise the day-to-day deploys exactly the right mix of technol- running of projects, communicating with ogies it needs to deliver real value for clients, invoicing and keeping track of the customer. expenses and timesheets.

With the business now looking to expand its com- Changes ahead mercial portfolio, diversify- That has to change as the ing from its established track business expands its focus, record in domestic residen- according to Lelliott. “With tial projects, practice man- the commercial side of agement software will be an things, there are a lot more increasingly important part stakeholders in each project, of that picture. It’s not some- at which point, communicathing that the business, tion becomes much more which employs eight people important,” he says. in offices in Surrey, Hampshire and Cardiff, has invested in before, Lelliott ‘‘ “It’s not just us Being able to localise that in one place is going to be extremely important. “It is says: involved in a something that we’ve found

“We have been working project. We with just our standard with old-fashioned spreadsheets to sort out what has been going on in the practice, have to communicate domestic residential work as well – it’s still a headache to try and collate everything who is doing what, and we with a broad together and make sure evehave many meetings to keep set of people ryone knows what’s going track of what is happening.” The goal now, however, is to move away from this sceand businesses to remain on.” “There are often two or three people working on the nario and establish an envi- accountable same project at the same ronment in which key busi- for the project time, and they still need to be ness software applications – including practice manage- and to keep the able to talk to one another separately with regards to ment and accounting appli- client informed time, costs and expenses on cations – are able to ‘talk’ to each other and create similar efficiencies to those seen in BIM pro’’ the project. Our BIM software doesn’t deal with time, cost and expenses.” jects. At the same time, MVL is moving its

Here, MVL has some experience, hav- accounting to software-as-a-service proing moved from CAD to BIM when vider Xero – a good fit with its choice of Lelliott joined the practice in 2002. Synergy for practice management, as the “We’ve been working in BIM with two programs are tightly integrated. Says Archicad ever since,” he says. “We’re Lelliott: “It was easy to say, ‘Well, great: already of the mindset of communicating these two programs are going to talk to one another and we’re not going to have this hassle of double entering and bookkeeping between two separate systems. That was really important.”

Client communications So how will these choices help the practice overcome the new challenges it will face as it expands and, hopefully, grows as a business? One of the most significant challenges, according to Lelliott, is communicating with clients – keeping them involved and up-to-date on exactly what’s happening at various stages of a project. Synergy’s project portals and document sharing features will be a big help in this respect.

“It’s not just us involved in a project,” he says. “It’s structural engineers, mechanical and electrical consultants and everybody else. We have to communicate with a broad set of people and businesses to remain accountable for the project and to keep the client informed.”

It’s important, too, to communicate MVL’s ethos of sustainable design. Technology helps here as well. It’s about enabling the delivery of zero-energy buildings and adding value where sustainability is increasingly built into the psyche of clients, apparently. The decentralised practice, spread over three offices, shares resources and employees can access what they need, wherever they are.

“Synergy and Xero is the next part that was missing in terms of running the practice,” says Lelliott. The cloud-based set-up works well for him, as he splits his time between the Surrey, Hampshire and Cardiff offices, but can access information whenever and wherever he needs it.

Decisions for small practices If, as Lelliott suspects, most small architecture practices continue to use spreadsheets and emails to run projects, it may be because it can seem easier to continue

with something familiar than invest time and effort in doing something different and unfamiliar, regardless of the efficiencies that a new approach might bring.

Sometimes, however, it’s better to bite the bullet. “The point is that if it takes you ten times as long to do something, even though it is familiar to you, is it not worth spending a week or two working out how you can do something much better to save yourself all that time?” asks Lelliott. “That’s the process we’ve been going through. It takes time, but it’s going to pay dividends.”

But firms should choose carefully and only after some thorough road-testing, he cautions. “We’ve been through several trials where we’ve looked at the software and thought, ‘It just doesn’t work for us’.”

“For example, we tried some other workflow-maximising software that claimed it was for architects. It also linked with Xero, but it didn’t suit how we work in terms of multiple fee types on a single job. We sometimes work on percentage contracts, sometimes on lump sums, hourly rates or combinations within one project. It just couldn’t cope with it at all. We tried different workarounds to get it to work, but decided it just wasn’t for us.”

With Synergy, he says, “there’s a lot of information you have to put in, but it’s evident that taking the time to get that right means you’ll get the best information out the other end.”

The introduction of Synergy and Xero will be key to keeping MVL ‘working as one’, he says. Cardiff and Hampshire aren’t ‘satellite offices’ of Surrey, he says, but offices in their own right. “We are MVL as a whole and we all work together on exactly the same projects. Because of that, we need to talk to one another constantly, as though we are sitting next to one another. That’s very much how I try to get the practice to work, so that we do know what’s going on all the time.”

Going off-premise

Moving 3D CAD and BIM software to a hosted or remote environment can be a complex business. Adam Jull from graphics virtualisation specialist IMSCAD Global walks you through your options

When a business has always relied on traditional workstations, understanding newer, off-premise options can be confusing at best and a minefield at worst. The noise coming from a crowd of vendors keen for your business probably won’t help.

Nvidia GRID, Intel, AMD Citrix, VMware, HPE, Dell, Cisco and many more offer various solutions for moving your 3D CAD/BIM and other graphical applications and desktops to hosted or remote environments.

Then there’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM and others, who will say they can run your graphical workflows in the cloud.

And even once you’ve made your choice, you’ve still got to get your software deployed successfully. In this article, we hope to demystify the decisionmaking process and explore why customers choose one option over another.

Performance is everything Users of graphical software are a demanding bunch, who expect design applications to perform in the cloud just as well as they do on a local workstation. It’s not an unreasonable request.

More and more customers want to try the public cloud (AWS, Azure, IBM) over setting up a private cloud (buying servers), but renting infrastructure can be expensive in the long run.

Recently, IMSCAD Global has seen an uplift in more project-based cloud deployments. This is where customers set up a six-month design project for 30 users, for example, utilising the cloud to rent servers and infrastructure over this period, and then at the end, tear it all down. Customers can then make this an operational expense and account for it still stuck in the workstation world. within the cost of a project. Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, Siemens

Nvidia GRID, AMD, Intel, Citrix and and so on are making good progress, but VMware can all have their place in the issues still remain, adding to the complexsolution offered, but the skill is around ity for customers. They may opt for priunderstanding the customer workflow. vate clouds for safety, but of course, that is Experience does count in understanding just a halfway house to going ‘full public how the applications are cloud’. Even today, many used. AutoCAD, Revit, ISVs still state that you canMicroStation, ArcGIS, not run your license server in Inventor, SolidWorks, the cloud or outside of your Siemens NX and Catia are domain. It’s crazy, but true. just some of the key applica- There are always ways tions, plus there are multi- around this. They typically ple other plug-ins and tools involve speaking to your that are needed by design ISV, so they can understand groups to do their work how you would like to do it. effectively. Then you need to But let’s not forget designers know how maybe 100-plus may need at least ten differdesign applications will run in a virtual environment. The answer should be the same, but as always with ‘‘ “IMSCAD Global has ent tools from different providers, so these discussions can become complex. You can always buy a direct VPN deployments of this size, a seen an uplift link into your cloud providcertain amount of tweaking in more er of choice, which can solve of Citrix and OS policies, along with distributing project-based the issue, as your licensing server can then stay within resources properly, should cloud your own network. deliver the right result. deployments, Normally, you may want a A good example is an IMSCAD Global customer that deployed a Citrix with where customers set single sign-on process for users (meaning only one login on their device/workstaNvidia GRID solution with- up a six-month tion), plus Active Directory in IBM Cloud. The customer design project access, which would require stated that the performance was better than its current local workstations in over for 30 users, for example a physical link to the cloud provider. Ultimately, this will just add to the cost and ten sites across the US. The customer now runs over 300 AutoCAD and Revit users in IBM Cloud , time to deployment. We tend to always deploy a Netscaler SSL VPN for remote access to any graph’’ doing BIM and running with Revit mod- ical-based remote environment. els over 3GB in size. It can be done – but it needs to be properly planned. GPU resources

The elephant in the room here, of Current GPU-based cloud offerings can course, is ISV licensing policies. These are vary in terms of what resource you get.

The reality is that AWS and Azure offer shared resource solutions, which can be great for certain use cases and users, but if you want to work on it eight hours a day with heavy design applications, the jury is still out.

It’s quite hard to scale up and be certain of how many users you can get working effectively. In a private cloud, of course, you can do what you want with the resources you have, but there is a significant upfront investment required. In IMSCAD Global’s view, these heavy users need resources to be guaranteed and here, VDI with XenDesktop really will work. Dedicated CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD will deliver the right level of performance. This approach works best with bare metal servers (as you would have in a private cloud). Dedicated resources built especially for your users’ workflows and requirements are available from a few public cloud providers.

The balance is always cost versus performance and what is ‘good enough’ for your design teams. The cloud offers many options and benefits, but costs can be prohibitive. It is still more cost-effective to buy your own servers and infrastructure than to run on a cloud provider.

IMSCAD Global has a rule when talking to customers: if you need it for over 12 months, buy your own kit. If you want it for a shorter period, use the cloud. We all hope costs will reduce over time, but as always, it is the peripheral products and services that cost the most.

The market today GPUs are becoming more and more important for everyday users. Even Windows 10 relies on some level of graphics processing to function properly and can be enhanced further with a graphics card.

Nvidia GRID rules this market and offers the best solution in many ways. Its vGPU technology can deliver AECOsim Building Designer work in the same industry great density (32x VDIs run- is one of many BIM or market. It takes a consulning Revit per server with tools that can be moved to hosted or remote tative approach, followed by two GPUs) and great perfor- environments the question: ‘What are you mance (Nvidia Tesla M60 looking to achieve from this and, more recently, the Nvidia Tesla P40). solution?’ Only then can you accurately These are the flagship products that most plan and assess the best offering. public clouds utilise. The Tesla M60 is Obviously, costs are important, but deployed more than any other GPU. ultimately, customers want success and

But let’s be honest: who really cares great performance. Without this, they which GPU you use or even which type may as well wait a while. We are certain of cloud you go for, as long as you give the public providers will get there, in your users the level of performance they terms of offering the appropriate are happy with? After all, if you don’t, resources, but you will always have the they simply won’t use it. deployment part to consider. There is,

In our view, you can currently expect after all, so much tweaking that can be just 80% of the performance of a local done within the applications and virtuworkstation from any public cloud pro- alisation platforms. vider. A private cloud set-up givesthe I’d say at least 85% of our customers best performance, as you can really still choose the private or hybrid cloud work out your resource requirements. route, with the rest wanting public cloud.

A hybrid cloud is where you keep ■ imscadglobal.com your workstations and either go with public cloud or even set up a private IMSCAD Global currently offers a ‘POC in a (own servers) cloud to compliment your week’ trial, using Nvidia GRID, Intel or AMD local workstation environment. GPUs. The trial can be done from anywhere,

One size does not fit all, and every using both private or Nvidia-based public company is different, even where they cloud options.

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