[Eric Gilbey]

Nick, I would agree that any experience will help in boosting your starting salary, but the key change will be seen when you take on project management experience and registration. As you may suspect, entry level positions will be working on the projects that project managers are handing off to them to complete in production. The best way to quicken the climb of the ladder is to nudge yourself into project management time. If you had such experience while working in the contracting side, make sure you make that obvious in your resume/application…but don’t fake it if you didn’t as they will notice very quickly if you do not handle the management responsibilities that are delegated to you. Most firms would like to see your experience in practice before they do that anyways…so the best advice is to find ways to get that experience, and make it a top priority…even if you can take CEU classes in a business college, or professional workshop kind of setting. Being aggressive at this may earn you the respect and salary you are seeking much quicker. Good luck!

[Eric Gilbey]

For GIS, ESRI may be as good as it gets, but if you are looking for a program that will receive and manage Shapefiles for your analysis and presentation purposes…as well as precisely overlay with Geo (World) Referenced Sat Image Files and even exporting to shapefiles, I would recommend Vectorworks Landmark. You can take the GIS information you may receive and utilize them in your preliminary design processes, as well as progress them to your design development stages and beyond.

With regard to the related question of GIS on a Mac, Vectorworks Landmark functions equally well in both PC and Mac.

[Eric Gilbey]

Andie,
I have instructed the LARE reviews in Ohio since 2000 and St Louis for the last 2 years, and have repeatedly recommended Ready Set Practice, as it really is more apt for studying. I also recommend AIA Glossary of Construction Industry Terms. This has many terms and definitions that might not be as obvious in one place and if there are terms that are similar, you can more quickly compare the terms.
If you work closely with a landscape contractor (or have some fairly regular contact with one), I would recommend picking their brain about contract procedures and liability. Another great resource is an insurance company that handles liability insurance for design professionals and/or contractors. Remember a decent part of understanding the professional practice is knowing what everyone else’s responsibilities are in a project’s process, even after installation.

I hope this has helped…let me know if you have other questions.

[Eric Gilbey]

Because the understanding of BIM is less of a known entity to landscape architects, it might be easier to learn about it from architecture cad technology writer, such as Jerry Laiserin, who writes for Cadylist…see the following link

http://aec.cadalyst.com/aec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=470080&sk=&date=&pageID=3

Keep your eyes out though, the information modeling aspect for sites (landscapes) continues to approach, as some landscape architects have already been using bim-like technology on their site related projects, and we just haven’t seen a global recognition of it as such…yet.

[Eric Gilbey]

Andrew, I’m glad to hear others speak about the success of Vectorworks (Landmark), as I can now say the same…a year ago, I had not heard of the program, but now I’m glad I have…and have more to say about it than the American industry standard…in other nations, around the world, it is actually the other way around, as Vectorworks is the predominant cad software in architecture and landscape architecture/design.

It is true that Vectorworks is native to the Mac and also true that you can run it both on PC and Mac…I too have used boot camp on a Mac Book Pro and used Vectorworks on both sides.

You will find that Vectorworks surpasses the typical 3 program workflow of general cad>photo illustrations>3D modeling, and brings it all and more into one program. As was mentioned, it imports and exports to dwg/dxf files, pdfs, image files (including world referenced image files) and also allows you to import shapefiles and survey text files relative to the 3D coordinate geometry (COGO).

If the BIM future is a concern, it should not be…it has already been functioning well with architect’s needs for BIM, and allows users to go beyond other programs’ BIM functionality by handling 3D site information.

Good luck in your pursuit, but I think you have an easy choice, especially on a Mac.

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