Embracing New Technologies

What tools does 2KM use to collaborate with our clients, consultants and contractors? Our principal architects started out with drafting tables, pencils and telephones. Tools we still use, but then came CADD and the Internet. But AutoCAD was introduced in 1982 and things have changed a lot since then. Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) recently said that computers would evolve in the next 10 years more rapidly than they did in the last 40! At 2KM we intend to implement as many of those advances as we can to make our work better and more efficient. We have supplemented AutoCAD with Building Information Modeling (BIM) greatly increasing our productivity, efficiency, and our ability to foresee coordination issues faster than we ever could with CADD.

We’ve changed the way we communicate with our clients; construction drawings are great to communicate with the design and construction team but clients need more visual alternatives. Artist renderings are impressive to communicate a “look” but they cannot be easily reproduced to respond to design changes. Years ago 2KM started using software, used in the film making industry, to create astonishing renderings that left the clients without any doubts about how the final project would look. Today, we are experimenting with tools used in video games allowing us to create a realistic virtual world where one can navigate in real-time. We are no longer limited by “walk throughs” where we can’t “walk” to the parts the clients are most interested in. Above is our first implementation of this technology. We modeled a PACU Suite for Georgia Regents Medical Center to show what the suite would look like after construction. With this real time presentation, we are able to walk freely without having a pre-recorded video. Our clients can now control their virtual tour as if they were conducting a final inspection.