Can I go back to tech work?

tittybiscuits

Hi all I hope this isn't outside the rules of this forum, obviously mods can remove if it is. I worked as an architectural technician until the recession in late 2008 when I lost my job. I took the opportunity to go down a different career path and happily worked away as a photographer for over a decade. A while back I came to the conclusion that photography wasn't for me, I wasn't happy, and more importantly I was often skint, and I thought that in the current climate it might be an idea to go back to working as a tech.

My question is - do you think this is possible? I spoke to a friend who is also working in a different field now but he suggested I could jump back in. I could get up to speed on Autocad and Microstation pretty quickly; are they still the standard software packages or would I need to learn Revit or something else? I also doubt I have much of a portfolio, I might be able to cobble some drawings together from old computers but would the lack of a portfolio be a big disadvantage?

Any help on this matter would be really appreciated, and thanks!

BryanF

How many year experience did you have before you left the industry?

Do you have revit for experience?

do you have a knowledge and interest construction? Have you say built an extension or somehow kept your construction mind set since 08?

beng out of the industry for so long, you’ll have a steep learning curve in terms of 100’s of pages of building regs.

Also just cause you of a certain age, your experience won’t match others of similar age, so be prepared to do the mundane grunt work :)

CreadanLady

You will have to know Revit and Civil3D. Basic AutoCAD is not used for much now, only odd bits of detailing and such.

woody1

yes you absolutely can, i had the same situation, office closed in 2009, worked almost 6 years in an accountancy office, got back into it in 2015 and had no major hassle with it, i had almost 15 years experience at that stage though, so as brian says it could be different if you had a lot less, in terms of where you slot back in,

i would learn revit, we dont use it here ( yet, smaller offices like ours get it hard to justify it for the scale of work we are doing ), but its the way things are going / have gone , so if your job hunting youl need to know it ,

Mellor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118575307#Comment_118575307

Curious why you said Civil3D (an engineering rather an architectural software) is needed.

woody1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118609170#Comment_118609170

yeah i thought the same thing