- The GSA has finally allowed the public announcement of the award of a pair of $30 million IDIQ contracts.
- Applied Software and Architectural Resource Consultants – ARC, plus their teams are the winners.
- This is an important vote of confidence in the emerging 3D imaging marketplace – a milestone perhaps.
Finally the news has been made public. It seems almost anti-climactic at this point, but of course for those directly involved it is hopefully a nice shot in the arm, and for the industry in general it is an important indicator of future direction. When one of the largest property owners in the world makes this kind of commitment to an emerging technology it can be an important catalyst.
The two companies awarded the contracts are ARC – Architectural Resource Consultants and Applied Software. The potential value of the deals is $30 million over 5 years, but from past experience, that can be revised. Both of the primes are supported by a team of sub-consultants. It appears that ARC was selected based in large part on their laser scanning expertise, while in the case of Applied Software it was for their track record of implementing BIM.
I noticed in one press release that it was stated that a building information model could be created from a point cloud. Of course this has elements of truth to it, or why even bother to link the two, but I can tell you that it is exactly this kind of oversimplification that is leading to misunderstandings. It is important that expectations be managed on the conservative side, especially in organizations the size of the GSA.
Congratulations to all involved, and I hope this is the just beginning of the good news.
I don’t know about the rest of the people in the field of lidar, but after a year in the wilderness in terms of the terrible economy, we are starting to see an uptick in business. I hope others are starting to experience the same thing. Perhaps this is just the beginning of really good things.