Coronavirus/Corvid-19 Statement
Dear clients, consultant team members and colleagues;
I hope this message finds you safe and well, and as I start my day working at the kitchen table, and other team members log in from their studies/bedrooms/living rooms/kitchens/greenhouses or sheds at home, I wanted to share with you our plans for keeping AST* moving, and more importantly, serving our clients and their project needs the way we always have.
Personally, professionally, and precisely.
The world faces a complex set of circumstances over the next few months, and the duration of this period is as yet unclear. While the long-term impact on how we work may actually be positive, right now we need to all get used to doing this whole creative, collaborative clever process 100% remotely.
Given this context, AST* will focus on controlling the things we can and mitigating the impact of those we cannot, whilst being mindful of the need for all of us to look after the health and wellbeing of ourselves and others.
Our offices are both closed, however as we have always has a practice wide policy of working from home, with everyone in our London, and Manchester offices able to get on with designing regardless of location, we have smoothly transitioned, and frankly you might not even notice.
We are trialling a new platform called The Wild which in the next few weeks will allow us to create a VR avatar for any colleague or client to enter our model space and join us for reviews and meetings in their project spatial model. The ability to inhabit the geometry of a model as it is built will allow for an even greater level of client input to the process, check it out here:
Face to face contact for most day to day tasks between project teams has been replaced by communication via Microsoft Teams, whether by voice or video conferencing, allowing for screens to be shared with clients and colleagues alike. This allows remote access to comment or edit with a team member. We will now expand this to cover all other consultant team members, and create virtual meeting spaces for major projects here and in The Wild;
If you do not have teams, it can be downloaded here for free:
https://teams.microsoft.com/start
Where we are appointed on a major project and where it is critical to client input we will lease and issue the client with a VR headset called Oculus Quest for the next 3 - 6 months initially*, you can of course use your own Rift, HTC or other device, and if you don’t have one I suggest you consider it as then we can also team up on a quest for a magic ring, zombie hunt or whatever else happens in the “other world” – you can check out the Quest here:
https://www.oculus.com/quest/?locale=en_US
We also simply use WhatsApp for a lot of our internal conversations and will be setting up WhatsApp groups for some projects and clients, it just handy
Finally there is also the Postal system! Remember letters? They were cool. As long as it is safe for Royal Mail, DHL, and other couriers (and it’s legally permitted) to collect and drop off, we might even print you a model, do you a doodle on paper, and courier it to your door…you can disinfect it at your end as we will at ours.
While we are small, we come from a BIG background, so the practice’s business operations remain fully functional, and have already adapted to suit these new circumstances. This includes Finance, IT, Practice Operations, HR, Legal & Appointments, Communications, and Technical.
Despite the challenging context we remain committed to, and fully capable of, working together to serve the needs of our clients and collaborating effectively, while also minimising the risks to our talented team and the wider community.
We continue to monitor the global situation and, in the meantime, we send our best wishes to all of our many friends and collaborators.
Stay well, stay healthy and stay positive…but stay home.
Chris
*subject to market availability as they are running out fast…