One of the more famous urban legends holds that the head of the patent office quit in 1875 declaring in his letter of resignation “there is nothing left to invent!” What makes this tickle our fancy is the irony: with the advantage of more than a century we marvel at his shortsightedness.
Yet let’s look at some current urban realities. New York has one of the largest construction markets in the country and although Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been around for a couple of decades, for far too many owners, architects, and builders it remains a novelty. Never mind that it’s evolved into the next Big Thing and there is an entire workforce that knows how to use it. This is not the next generation of CAD drawings, this is the next generation of construction. We should recognize how (not when) it’s changing the industry.