I don't know exactly when it happened. One day I was buying software. The next day I was renting my entire existence. Every company seems to have arrived at the same brilliant idea: "What if customers gave us money every month forever?"
Want to watch a movie? Subscription.
Listen to music? Subscription.
Store photos? Subscription.
Protect your identity? Subscription.
Track your fitness? Subscription.
Read the news? Subscription.
The modern world has become a giant recurring charge. Unfortunately, this trend didn't stop at home. It followed us into the office. First, it started with Adobe, and we said nothing. Then it came for AutoDesk, and we said nothing. Now we end up paying a monthly or yearly recurring cost for nearly every piece of software we use.
- Autodesk
- Bluebeam Revu
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Trimble Business Center
- ArcGIS
- Microsoft 365
- HydroCAD
- Cloud Storage Services
- Backup Solutions
- Cybersecurity Platforms
- Project Management Software
Individually, most of these tools are excellent. They help us work faster, collaborate better, produce more accurate results and ultimately deliver a better product for our clients. The challenge is that modern projects rarely require just one of these tools. They require nearly all of them. One software package creates the plans. Another reviews and marks them up. Another processes survey data. Another performs stormwater calculations. Another manages project files. Another secures, backs up and stores everything we've created. Before long, simply opening a project feels like taking attendance at a subscription convention. And software is only part of the equation.
The powerful applications used by today's engineers, surveyors, landscape architects and designers don't exactly run on a six-year-old laptop that's hanging on for dear life.
To work efficiently with large CAD drawings, GIS datasets, point clouds, aerial imagery, rendering software and complex calculations, many professionals require workstations that can easily cost $3,000 or more before a single software license is installed.
- Dual monitors
- Docking stations
- Battery backups
- Servers
- Cloud storage
- Networking equipment
- Cybersecurity tools
- Backup systems
And enough cables under every desk that they now qualify as existing infrastructure. Most clients never see this side of the business, and that's perfectly understandable. They see the final survey, drainage study, site plan, subdivision design, permit package or the finished deliverable.
What they don't see is the enormous technology ecosystem operating behind the scenes to make it all possible. Ironically, technology was supposed to make everything cheaper. Tasks that once took weeks can now be completed in days. Calculations that once required hours of manual effort can now be completed in seconds. Teams can collaborate instantly between offices, job sites and even from home.
But those efficiencies come with a growing cost. The tools get more powerful every year, and the subscriptions keep piling up.
Sometimes it's enough to make you wonder if that old pencil and clipboard might not have been such a bad system after all.
Of course, that thought usually lasts about five minutes before someone asks you to perform a stormwater analysis, process a drone survey, generate a 3D surface model, share twenty gigabytes of data and deliver the results by the end of the week.
So no, we're probably not going back to pen and paper anytime soon.
The pen may still be mightier than the sword. It's just becoming increasingly expensive to sharpen.
