The Talent Pipeline
Architecture is a professional vocation like law, accountancy or medical studies, which gives the license for professional practice. It is a ticket to a high growth career in professional firms, corporate business, or independent practice.  Thereforem, graduates look at well-rounded assignments that help them progress their career towards independent practice. Working with an offshore architecture services company is viewed as just one of the less attractive available options for new architecture graduates.
“Good opportunity, but I will not stick for long. Drafting for U.S.-based architectural firm and that too as per their guidelines is like wasting the knowledge I have learned in five years. I would rather work for less at a local architecture firm where I can use what I have learned”; “I will join if it pays good money. As it is, be it anywhere, I will be asked to do drafting. So why not do the same work and earn more”…. These are excerpts from conversations with a few architecture students about making a career choice with architecture services offshoring firms.

But the overall interest among students is high. The primary reason for the interest is that outsourcing is the “in” thing socially and it pays well at the start of the career. “If we are involved in direct customer interactions and in the design conceptualization, then it is definitely more interesting than working for an Indian architecture firm,” says Joel Roy, a student at the The Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies, Mumbai, India.

The Service Provider
The offshore service provider is more hopeful of handling the pain points for U.S.-based AEC firms. CADFORCE, a Los Angeles-based company, is an outsourced architectural services provider.  Their team of about 30 professionals — ranging from architects, technicians to engineers — interface directly with the customers and gather design requirements. They also set up the modalities of the project so that there is absolute transparency between the two parties involved in the contract. “A lot of architectural firms are used to looking at their projects in such a way that they can package it, and take chunks of the work and give it away. They are used to doing that in terms of structural and mechanical trades. But in terms of their own work, it is kind of difficult for them to understand what parts of the project they can give away. So we help them understand [as to what exactly needs to be done],” explains Cliff Moser, VP, Architecture, CADFORCE.

According to service providers, the benefits are two-fold: The dedicated offshore team can work across multiple projects and the time difference helps carry out a review-recommend-modify cycle in 24 hours. This gives the service provider’s QA team the time to handle any new issues, and deliver the drawings to the customers even before they expect.

The New Promise - Building Information Modeling
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a set of information generated and maintained throughout the lifecycle of the building. The AIA has further defined BIM as “a model-based technology linked with a database of project information” and this reflects the general reliance on database technology as the foundation. In the future, structured text documents such as specifications could be made available and linked to the regional, national, and international standards. It is somewhat similar to a product lifecycle management software in an engineering design.

According to AIA, the increasing adoption of BIM by architectural firms help them gain better control over the construction document phase. An excerpt from the 2006 AIA report: “Many industry observers acknowledge that BIM will change the traditional phase process by decreasing the time, costs, and resources, an architecture firm must spend on the construction document phase. As a result, a firm can devote more resources to the earlier phases, particularly schematic design and design development — requiring greater early-phase involvement by the principals or other experienced architects.”

Thus, the increased interest in adopting BIM may well become the tipping point for the rise of offshoring in the AEC industry.