From its offices in The Boathouse in Putney, West London, bpr architects has focused its practice on family values since being founded by current director Paul Beaty-Pownall’s parents in 1975. He and fellow director Graham Wilson took over in 1994 and maintain a culture that he describes as a “family of architects all working toward the same goal.” But constraints from the recession and government mandates forced them to consider new ways of doing business.
Spurred by the requirement that all public sector designs be delivered with BIM Level 2 (the collaborative 3D environment comes with data separated by discipline) by 2016, bpr shifted from CAD-based work for their numerous university and rail projects. At the time, Beaty-Pownall tried to see how the firm could make the switch entirely to BIM, replicating every last detail of his drawings with Vectorworks® software’s 3D tools. “I wanted to prove that it was doable and then set about encouraging everybody in the office to switch over to 3D tools on all projects,” Beaty-Pownall says.
With that shift — combined with a team downsized by the recession — the firm needed to be more collaborative than ever before, ultimately leading to the 2014 decision to turn the company into an employee-owned enterprise. “I think there is a really good relationship between the employee-owned business and the approach you need to be a successful member of a team that’s working collaboratively on BIM,” Beaty-Pownall says.
bpr architects has collaborated extensively with London Overground to develop a new vision for station design. The concept of the West Hampstead Station as a continuation of “The Street” will create a more coherent link between pavement and platform. The new station has been carried out under the London Overground Stations Capacity Enhancement Programme (LOSTAT). Image courtesy of bpr architects ltd.
“To work effectively in BIM, you need to be open and honest, willing to share and not be protective about information. In an employee-owned business, there is very little that becomes confidential because everybody is a part of that company. Likewise in BIM, people have to trust each other because you’re all using the same data,” Beaty-Pownall says. The firm’s transition to BIM and a new business structure overlapped as team members took on new responsibilities and found new ways to engage both with their designs and one another.
Even as design meetings and ideas started to more efficiently flow, it was hard for the team to leave behind programs like SketchUp, which they had become experts at using. But the team members were won over by the additional tools in Vectorworks software, which have helped them explore even more appealing possibilities with BIM. “To me, the most important tool that Vectorworks Architect has to offer and that can really make a project shine is the Space Object tool,” Beaty-Pownall says.
“When I’m promoting BIM to clients that are skeptical, one of the questions I get asked is how I work with an existing building,” Beaty-Pownall says. “You get your 2D plan, you get your Space Object tool, you draw around every room and then you populate the data fields with information that tells you everything you need to know.” For bpr, this functionality provides clients with poignant data such as floor loading, ventilation and natural light throughout a building’s lifetime. It’s vital information that owners will want to know for long-term management or repurposing.
The Forum North building is a new, five-story center for Science and Technology departments that provides adaptable teaching space that can be reconfigured to suit the changing demands of this innovative school. This project is being prototyped on behalf of Middlesex University toward BIM Level 2.Image courtesy of bpr architects ltd.
Additional capabilities for renderings and remote access through Renderworks® software and the Vectorworks Nomad App have also encouraged new ways of collaborating with clients. The Renderworks add-on creates various visualizations of designs, from highly stylized photorealistic images to animations. “We initially purchased just four licenses of Renderworks,” Beaty-Pownall says. “It didn’t take us long to realize we needed it for everyone. It’s a fantastically useful tool to present models to our clients.”
The Vectorworks Nomad App even facilitates renderings on the go by enabling designers to share designs with clients on a smartphone or tablet. Viewers can fly around the form and shape of a building model that has been loaded into the cloud for retrieval on a smart device. Beaty-Pownall added, “Even informally, literally while having lunch with a client, you get your phone out and ask, ‘Well, what do you think of this?’”
These tools, bpr’s new business model and the use of BIM have come together for new projects that include Premiere Hotel at Industrial Yards, West Hampstead Station and a model station for the Department of Transport — all projects for which the new tools and Beaty-Pownall’s attitude of “we’re all in this together” have paid off.
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