I was lucky to be one of the chosen students to take part in the RIBA Architecture Mentoring Scheme, I was assigned to UMC Architects who are one of the UK’s leading Industrial Architects. My mentors are Gary Hauton and Luke Dallison who have taken part in this mentoring scheme for about 3 years and have years of professional practice experience within the Architecture field and have offered to help us with our Professional Practice Module.
The mentoring scheme focusses on:
1. Life after University
2. Exposure to different work sectors including a Site Visit
3. Help on Portfolio and Interviews
Garry Hauton, the director of UMC Architects took us on a tour around their practice, where all the different sectors and teams work to complete the projects they have undertaken, all these sectors work together to balance their work loads and be as flexible as possible with the tasks they complete predominantly working as one team.
After the tour we went on to discuss UMC’s Three-year business plan, their predictions on how the future factors could affect the business as a whole. Their main headlines for this were as follows:
Growth / Financial Review
IT
PlansOnline
Marketing / BrandingSector
ReviewOverview
The BIM manager explained his role within the business. This includes:
· Corrections on CAD or Revit models:
o Clash Detections
o Steel work/ Concrete
o Soft and Hard Clashes
o Priorities
o Renders
o Fly Throughs
· Creating a visual guide for the clients and for the contractors
VIRTUAL REALITY
The BIM Manager also deals with the 3D Visualisations, including Virtual Reality. They use the Oculus Rift to view their Revit Models on Escape in 3-Dimentions with high-end VR Ready Computers using the leading brand of Graphics Cards. Using VR means they can:
· Render live
· Clash detection for big Models, where the human eye couldn’t see
· Visualise the space before it is even made
· Fly through the site, as they have very big buildings, this is very useful for their business.
I was able to use their Virtual Reality equipment and fly through one of their major designs to experience the space in VR. I used the Oculus Rift, which we will be using for our 3-Dimentional visualisations in Visual Rise Architects.
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
UMC architects also insisted in giving us assistance on the Website our Website Manager has generated. The things they advised us to do to make the website more cohesive:
· Complete the "Who we are page", focusing on the important aspects, and the history of the Company. Also include the Portfolio of our work, it’s about demonstrating what we do
· Create Social Media as a form of marketing and add on News Page
· Be unique on the Mission Statement
· Create a welcoming front page, as this is the first thing clients will see
· Slow down images that show what our company is
In terms of marketing, we discussed ways in creating the Banners and Brochures for the presentation. Visuals is very important in getting across who we are as a company, so adding images in the marketing materials is critical. Including important words that explain who we are and what we do should also be included, with links to our Social media and most importantly the Visual Rise Website.
To see what the website is like now, please visit the Visual Rise Website by pressing the logo below.
Edited by Froilan Palacio
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