ARC acquires certain assets of RCMS Group and KP Reddy joins ARC as VP of BIM Services

On October 13th, 2009, ARC announced a new acquisition.

"American Reprographics Company, a provider of document management services, has acquired certain assets of RCMS Group, LLC, a technology services provider in the building information modeling (BIM) market."

This time, ARC's acquisition was NOT a reprographics company. This acquisition (and, certainly, this is simply my own personal opinion) firmly puts into motion ARC's "BIM Strategy." ARC is the first reprographics company, that I know of, to position its business to benefit from "BIM."

RCMS Group was founded by KP Reddy. For those of you who follow my blog posts, I wrote about KP Reddy and RCMS Group shortly after I attended the IRGA Convention in late April / early May.

In the blog post I did in early May, I said this........ KP Reddy (of RCMS Group) gave a thoroughly thought provoking presentation about BIM. In my opinion, KP’s presentation was “worth the price of admission” to this year’s IRgA convention. KP’s presentation was given at 4:00 pm on Friday, last day of the convention and last educational breakout session of the convention – in other words, not a great “time slot” for a presentation – and, because of that, there were probably only 20 or 25 attendees in the room. Given what KP talked about, EVERY REPROGRAPHER IN THE COUNTRY SHOULD HAVE ATTENDED THIS SESSION. The fact that only 20 or 25 people heard what KP said, when everyone at the convention should have heard what KP said, is, in itself, quite interesting to me. Do we in the reprographics business really know what the effects of BIM will be on the reprographics business and industry down the road? Do we not care? Or, is this simply a matter of, “if we don’t want to hear what’s coming down the pike, let’s bury our head in the sand so we don’t have to hear it?”

After the IRGA Convention, I made it a point to follow-up with KP. We had several phone discussion and e-mail exchanges over the course of May and June. In June, I met with KP in Tampa for dinner and talks, having invited him to Tampa to meet the CEO of a large engineering firm and to meet and get to know Martha Korman. (Martha was the primary shareholder of NGI, the company that I worked for prior to ARC buying it, and it was mainly she who I worked with in the trenches.)

After that dinner meeting in Tampa, KP and I continued to have discussions about his business and about "BIM". Getting to know KP was thoroughly delightful - he is a very nice guy, has a great personality and is extremely smart. Now, having completed a deal to move his business under ARC's umbrella, he is the VP of BIM Services for ARC. I've already congratulated KP on his deal with ARC. I wish KP continued success in everything he does; like I said, he is a very nice guy.

Question for my non-ARC reprographer friends. Have you been educating yourself about BIM and how it may affect our industry and your business in the future? Have you begun to research what your "BIM Strategy" should be? And, if not, what are you waiting for?