Grimshaw Architects was founded in London by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw in 1980. The practice became a partnership in 2007 and now operates worldwide with offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Dubai, Melbourne and Sydney, employing more than 650 staff. Today, Grimshaw is an international architecture firm, with a broad portfolio of awe-inspiring and iconic projects.

The company’s work is characterised by strong conceptual legibility, innovation and a rigorous approach to detailing, all underpinned by the principles of human-centred, enduring and sustainable design.

Grimshaw’s global portfolio covers all major sectors, though the most prominent and significant clients are from the transportation and commercial sectors. Among the most notable projects the company has completed for Australian clients are the revitalisation of the towers at 35 Collins Street, Melbourne; the Melbourne International T2 Arrivals Hall redevelopment; the expansion of Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station; and the Olderflower tower design, as well as the Harbour Mill Apartments, the UNSW Hilmer Building and the new Light Rail in Sydney. The firm is also behind major works in the UK, China, the Netherlands, the USA, Spain, France, Oman, South Korea and Russia.

Grimshaw prides itself on its involvement in every level of the design process, allowing the company to promise and deliver the highest standards of excellence. This has earned it more than 200 international design awards for its commitment to design excellence, including the AJ100 International Practice of the Year Award in 2016 and 2018, and the highest recognition at the Australian Institute of Architects Awards in 2021.

Revu helps to manage the constant adjustments to designs during the process by simultaneously updating all documents in real-time so everyone has access to up-to-date information. The implementation also helped the company slash their printing, along with the associated monetary and environmental costs.

Revu was quickly taken up company-wide, as it was the ideal platform for the work being done, but this swiftly put pressure on the Revu Open system. The limited number of licences available was creating hold-ups as engineers and designers had to shuffle access depending on who needed it at the time.

“The nature of Grimshaw projects is that we work with engineers a lot and we go back and forth a few times with our ideas using Revu,” said Wojciech. “With the limited Open licenses, not all of our team members were able to get access to Revu, and there were a lot of emails going around asking people to close Revu.”

Having to free up access before work could proceed was always slowing down the process, which was frustrating.
“We constantly ran out of licenses,” said Wojciech.

“People were forced to juggle the license pool, anyone who wasn’t using Bluebeam was asked to close and relinquish the license.”

The solution was simple – and the benefits were immediate. To ensure that most of the team members had access to Revu at any given time, Grimshaw decided to switch from a few Revu Open licenses to around 90 perpetual licenses.

“The main pain point was providing access to the license to all team members whenever they needed. This is where switching from limited Open licenses to a lot more perpetual licenses helped the team alleviate the stress,” added Wojciech. “This ensured that we were able to continue our communication with the engineers in a timely manner.

“Now, we have more people working simultaneously. We can do more in less time, people work under less pressure, and they have more time to pick the right decision.”