Several years ago, PIK Group, a major Russian construction company that accounts for half of the country’s residential construction market, started to actively expand its IT resources. Among other things, the company has focused on designing buildings using BIM. It was then when BIMTeam appeared as a division of PIK Projekt to become the think tank of PIK Group.
People and their emotions have always been a priority for PIK. The company wants its customers to live in the most comfortable conditions possible while allowing their employees to work from anywhere in the world. So PIK concentrated on finding software technologies that can help achieve these goals.
With BIM software in place and its newly expanded remote work capabilities, the company started an extensive search for candidates in provincial Russia. Unsurprisingly, one can now find many qualified professionals outside Moscow who would love to be part of a big company but never imagined that it might be possible while working from home.
The BIMTeam’s transition to remote work was not forced upon it by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a deliberate strategy that has been in place since 2018. At that time, the company decided to transfer 80% of its staff to remote work. The aim was to upgrade the team with professionals from different regions while allowing them to work from anywhere they want.
The pandemic only sped up the transition to remote work; the entire staff is now working from home. the customer chose VMware Horizon as its software solution to enable remote work, which allowed the creation of virtual work stations supporting 3D graphics.
With VMware Horizon, an employee can now remotely connect to the company’s office network, use complex software, and have access to all internal folders and data within the corporate network. VMware Horizon has also helped the BIMTeam double their cloud storage within a month, providing a total of 1,000 virtual workstations. By using virtual workstations the company has achieved “digital equality” among its staff, wherein every employee has access to all the software and productivity tools they need from their personal computer.
“We were one of the first companies to start transitioning its employees to remote work. So we were, in many ways, prepared for the unexpected April lockdown. Of course, due to the pandemic, we had to sharply increase the pace of our work, and 100% of the staff had to switch to working remotely. But that turned out to be easy for us. This was in no small part thanks to VMware Horizon, which helped us increase cloud storage and provide everyone with virtual workstations,” says Vsevolod Nechitaylenko, Head of the BIMTeam.
Initially, all remote work solutions were powered by the BIMTeam’s data center. But the success of the pilot project and the urge to implement the principle of digital equality drove the company to increase its computing powers. They were now in search of a provider that could offer flexibility and not require the excessive use of resources. This is when Selectel came to help.
“If it were not for VMware Horizon, our employees would have to install and update the software package on their personal computers by themselves, and the team would have had difficulty managing the huge number of devices. But now, all the necessary resources are available from the cloud. All you need is a medium-quality computer and a stable Internet connection,” says Ivan Kollegov, product manager for VMware, Selectel.
