The COVID-19 pandemic is not all bad when it comes to connecting people at different geographical offices and regions. However, before the pandemic, it will be costly to bring people together to a face-to-face meeting, especially with a large number of attendees. With the pandemic, we can do it virtually easily.
SAAN has been conducting virtual meetings between offices within our company way before the pandemic started. We find it easy to do proposal meetings for JV teaming, especially when the JV is international and across several time zones. We feel that in some way, this pandemic has pushed for technological progress in terms of virtual communication, using technology to maintain human contact through the time and space divide. The drawback is within ourselves in that we are still not completely used to virtual communication. We are still quite passive in looking for effective ways of thought-sharing and idea-sharing in our design profession. Like how we accepted using CAD, BIM, and other design tools, we should actively take up virtual communication and be good at it.