SERA is an employee-owned architecture, interior, and urban design firm specializing in sustainable place-making at all scales.

As buildings have become more complex and BIM has changed demands, AECO projects now generate far more design information. Here are four tips on how BIM Managers can prepare for what's coming up.

Remote BIM teams provide some unique challenges for BIM Managers: lack of in-person communication, a workspace that is often less production-friendly than the office, and amplified pressure from clients to name a few.  Luckily, the tech industry has stepped up to meet the evolving needs of at-home designers with a host of BIM collaboration tools.  Here are some tips for using technology to keep your remote design teams engaged, cheerful, and adaptive while working from home.

Content management systems, and ultimately the initiatives they enable, fail over time.  But why?  In a word…Trust.  Once someone loses trust in the system, they begin to work “around” the system or revert to old behaviors, such as using old content buried on their local drive, raiding past projects for content or searching and downloading content from the internet.  A root cause analysis will often lead to two inherent problems.  First, you begin losing trust if the information you’re looking for in the content management system isn’t there, but you know (or suspect) it exists.  Second, when you use a system (or process) infrequently you become frustrated with each interaction as you’re basically having to re-learn each time you use the system.  AVAIL is strategically addressing both of these issues.

Context Matters (Redux) I wrote a blog post titled “Context Matters” in September 2015, prior to spinning AVAIL out of ArchVision, where I tried to describe the underpinnings of our approach to the

Founded in 1968, Cuningham Group has designed some of the most innovative and exciting architectural projects across the country. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the firm continues to do what it does best — create innovative, sustainable designs and nurture collaborative client and partner relationships.

We are ecstatic to get this latest release of the AVAIL Desktop (4.0) in your hands. It’s one of those releases that once you start using it you’ll find it hard to remember (or want to look back at) the old version. It’s ironic that we’ve added several new major features to AVAIL while managing to simplify the interface. It’s a testament to the design and engineering team (Brad, Donovan, Erika, Randall (me), Shelly, and Zach) and, I think, an indicator that we’ve done something right. After all, making software is fairly easy. Making great applications that people want to use is not.

WE BELIEVE AVAIL is fortunate to have inherited a deep history in the AEC market; we knew many key leaders, technologists, and even the competition before they were the competition. We find the

Design firm LPA is known for its innovation and sustainable work. Founded in 1965, LPA has built one of the largest portfolios of LEED Platinum- and Gold certified projects in the country.