Virtual Work in Architecture Design

 “Virtual work in architecture design”

One of the characteristic features of Aconex platform is that not only it involves people of different professions, but also a relatively large range of stakeholder organizations, such as real estate developers, general contractors, EPC contractors, subcontractors, architects and consultants. The complex nature of relations between these stakeholders makes it is very difficult to identify which of the professions benefit from Aconex the most.

The very first stage after acquisition of a building site is design of the concept. Real estate developers hire teams of architects to deal with this task. In recent years, it became a common practice of many real estate developers to outsource the design services to low cost countries, such as Eastern Europe or India. Since there is no need for physical presence of team of architects on the site, offshoring offers a great cost-saving opportunity.

However, at the same time the benefits come with certain risks. The aim of this report is to analyze the necessary conditions, which at least partially address these risks. The secondary aim of the report is to assess the virtual work of designer teams in the context of changing nature of workforce and generational issues.

Necessary conditions

Effective management:

While not quite tangible and somewhat vague, effective management remains the key success factor for business activity offshoring across many industries. There are several significant risks, which must be addressed for design offshoring to work seamlessly:

1. Language & cultural differences
   

While most skilled professionals are fluent enough to work in their industry, the cultural differences can cause delays.

For example, attitudes towards colleagues higher in the corporate hierarchy vary significantly from one culture to another. While in most forward-thinking Western offices critical thinking and challenging manager’s ideas is encouraged, there is enough anecdotal evidence that it is not the case in many Asian countries. In fact, during my work in a real estate development company, the IT department outsourced some of the work connected with development of cost categorization software to India. The specifications of the required work were communicated via videoconference. The manager of the team in India agreed with everything said, and assured us that the requirements are clear; the first red flag was raised when no questions were asked. Two weeks later the news was that no work had been done, and that the task at hand is, in fact, not clear at all, and the time was wasted.