9 Reasons why top AEC and EPC firms are ditching workstations for Desktop as a Service 

Something unusual is happening in the AEC and EPC sectors.  

For many years, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) and Engineer, Procure, Construct (EPC) firms have taken a conservative approach to their computing needs. Whereas most other industries began shifting to cloud computing a decade ago, AEC companies continued to rely on local workstations and on-premises servers. 

But in the last couple of years, things have started to change. A growing number of large engineering firms and EPC’s are growing through a “buy” strategy, often fuelled by private equity investments. To manage fluctuating capacity demands, most firms have established a flexible capacity layer of contractors. And without exception, any firm is now following hybrid or even fully remote working patterns. This means many are now quietly ditching traditional on-premises workstations for specialized Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) alternatives to run their CAD and BIM applications

In this article, you’ll learn about:

• Insights into the trend
• 6 Pull factors - what’s attracting AEC firms to the cloud
• 3 Push factors - why AEC firms are ditching workstations 

AEC firms are increasingly ditching workstations (or want to)

At Designair, we’ve noticed a real uptick in the number of firms looking for a DaaS solution in recent years. 

To get a sense of the demand for DaaS, we conducted a poll among 500+ users of Revit. The poll revealed that the majority (69%) would either definitely or potentially be interested in ditching workstations for DaaS. Respondents from engineering services (46%) and building construction companies (44%) were particularly keen.

This tallies with findings from studies elsewhere. 

In the UK, almost three quarters of architects worked remotely during the pandemic, driving demand for DaaS. Meanwhile, a recent survey found that cloud usage among AEC firms increased 50% between 2023 and 2024. The study also found there had been a tenfold increase in cloud collaboration within the sector. 

One underlying cause is the trend towards mergers and acquisitions across the sector, which has risen significantly in the past decade. With employees working in multiple offices and locations, there’s an even greater need to share resources and collaborate. This is hard, if not impossible to do with physical workstations and fragmented local networks. 

There is also a growing reliance on external resources (contractors) to meet fluctuations in capacity demand. DaaS and cloud computing is ideally suited to that kind of flexible resource management.  

Pull factors: What’s drawing AEC firms towards DaaS?

Several leading AEC firms are now using Desktop-as-a-Service to support their computing needs. 

For example, BAS-Solutions, a Berlin engineering startup, has been successfully using DaaS since 2023. As Anja Abeywardana, the company's CFO explains: “We are a digital company, and don’t want to be physically in the office every single day”. 

So, what’s drawing AEC firms to ditch local workstations and choose DaaS instead? Here’s another typical quote from our survey that illustrates what draws people to the cloud:  

“It is nice to have us all working in the cloud so that updates are streamlined and you aren’t constantly waiting on [other firms] to send updated backgrounds because it’s right there and you can see it”. 

Before diving into how DaaS improves productivity, collaboration, and remote work, it’s essential to understand why DaaS fundamentally enhances the way teams work with design and engineering tools like Revit and AVEVA.

The traditional setup: workstations and local networks

Historically, architects and engineers worked with design data on the same physical workstation where the data was stored. This setup worked well, even with massive datasets. For example:

• A Revit model for a large project can be gigabytes in size.
• 3D point clouds for buildings and industrial plants can exceed terabytes (1 terabyte = 1,000 gigabytes).

As long as the work happened on the same device, performance was excellent. Even when teams worked on the same local office network (LAN), collaboration remained smooth.

The bottleneck: collaboration

The real challenge emerged when engineers and architects needed to collaborate from different locations—whether from another office, a contractor’s site, or home.

Traditional workstations store data locally or on office servers, meaning external collaborators must pull data over the internet. This introduces a major performance bottleneck:

• Slow loading times due to large files transferring over a standard internet connection.
• Lagging workflows, forcing engineers to wait for updates, re-syncs, and file transfers.
• Inconsistent performance, depending on network speed and congestion.

In short, traditional setups were never designed for remote collaboration.

How DaaS eliminates these issues (and boosts data performance 100x)

Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) fundamentally changes where work happens. Instead of storing data on individual workstations, both the design software and project files are in the cloud.

For medium and large projects, most firms already store data in the cloud—for example, in Autodesk Construction Cloud, BIM 360, or a cloud-based FileShare. The missing link has been the workstation itself.

With DaaS:

• Software and data exist together in the cloud → No need to transfer large files over the internet.
• Users access a cloud workstation via a simple connection → The only thing transmitted is their screen (not entire datasets).
• Internal cloud networks are far faster than home or office internet → Opening, reading, editing, and saving happens instantly.

A simple speed comparison

Let’s put this into perspective. Top is the internet speed on a traditional workstation, underneath is the internet speed for a Desktop-as-a-Service. 

• In the picture above the workstation at home or in an office typically has a 50 Mbps internet connection.
• The DaaS-based cloud workstation on the right hand size operates on an internal cloud network of close to 5 Gbps (~100x faster).

For practical purposes, this means:

• A model that takes 10 minutes to load on a traditional workstation might open in 6 seconds on a cloud workstation.
• Syncing large datasets becomes instantaneous instead of a frustrating wait.

1- DaaS improves workflows and productivity

While DaaS won’t make one person 100x more productive, the productivity impact across teams and organisations is massive. Instead of engineers waiting for files to load or struggling with remote access, they can focus on actual design work—regardless of where they are.

This is why architecture firms and EPCs are rapidly adopting DaaS. The business case is clear:

• Faster collaboration across offices and with contractors.
• Seamless access to large design files without performance drops.
• More productive teams, less wasted time.

Using a DaaS solution removes all geographical constraints for AEC and EPC firms. This technology allows people to work in sync with their colleagues, staying in the flow of work, and avoid having to wait around for files to be shared. 

Besides this performance boost, DaaS makes it very easy to equip an entire project team with the exact same version of Revit, AVEVA or other software. This prevents lots of software crashes and model corruptions, a common source of wasted effort and user frustration. 

2- DaaS enables truly flexible resource management

Another attraction of using a DaaS solution is that it lets you spin up a fully functioning CAD/BIM workstation that’s accessible over the internet. Employees, contractors, interns or customers simply log in using any device (including standard desktop PCs or laptops at home). 

If you need to temporarily increase the number of resources working on a project, you can use a pay-as-you-go DaaS that means they can work on the project for as long as needed. Once the work is finished, you simply close down the virtual desktops. 

Similarly, a DaaS solution allows a firm to redistribute work at will,in any location (at contractors’ premises , in satellite offices, at client sites) to collaborate on projects. Whether you need to allocate designers to support their colleagues with a deadline, or need to show model updates to a client, using a DaaS offers so much more flexibility. 

Relying on local workstations in a local office, in contrast, makes redistributing work virtually impossible.

3- DaaS reduces the risk of project failure

How many projects in your organization run on time, stay within budget and meet or exceed your customers’ expectations? 

Sometimes on-premises workstations are a direct cause of project delays. These delays might be due to damaged machines, software upgrades, patches, slow VPN access - or simply old workstations running slow. 

But regardless of the cause of delays, Architecture and EPC firms need to mobilize extra capacity to increase project speed. With a traditional workstations set up, there's no economic way to quickly equip these extra resources. By contrast, DaaS removes this issue. DaaS solutions give your quickly mobilized resources access to powerful machines rigged up with the most advanced chips, all tuned to the needs of BIM and CAD work for any projects that have fallen behind.

4- DaaS will help you protect your reputation

If all your intellectual property and project files are stored exclusively on local workstations and servers, this is not only an enormous security risk. If you fall victim to ransomware, the costs to pay off hackers and to fix the damage they have done will easily exceed your entire IT budget. Even worse, you will have to regain the trust with your customers that their data is in safe hands with your organisation. 

In contrast to popular belief, with DaaS your data is far more secure than in your local office.  

5 - A local office setup doesn’t flex with business needs

Most AEC and EPC firms work on a project basis, with feast periods (requiring additional resources in the form of contractors/freelancers) and famine periods (where just your core team uses workstations). As the saying goes: an architecture and EPC firm has either too many employees, or too few, but never the right amount. 

Relying on traditional workstations to deal with these fluctuations means having a flexible “layer” of subcontractors to deal with the peaks so you’re not over capacity during the valleys. At this point you’re aware that you can’t rely on keeping several old workstations in storage for when you need extra help, or requiring these contractors to “bring-their-own”. In both scenarios, their productivity is severely handicapped. 

6- DaaS means you can attract and retain the best

When using a DaaS solution, you can “hire the best talent from almost anywhere, provide them higher flexibility and watch productivity soar”, according to Devan Porter of US architecture practice Design Service Professionals. 

Designers, architects and engineers want the choice of where to work. Using a DaaS solution allows you to easily and securely enable remote and hybrid work. 

And it's not just about retaining existing staff. Using a DaaS solution allows you to hire the best people in the world, wherever they’re based. 

That means your pool of potential candidates is no longer restricted to people who live within commuting distance of your office. 

Push factors: What’s driving AEC firms away from workstations?

There are several additional, tactical reasons why AEC firms are finally making the move away from traditional AEC workstations.

7 - Workstations cost more

A standard AEC workstation costs in the region of $4,500, while the running costs can be more than double this. By comparison, DaaS workstations - which you ‘rent’ by the hour - cost significantly less. 

8 - On-premises IT is bad for morale

If you rely on physical workstations to do design work, your design staff are forced to come to the office to do their jobs. Meanwhile, other departments are allowed to work remotely, whenever they want. This creates a perception of unfairness. 

9 - On-premises workstations are inefficient

Using local workstations is highly inefficient. It typically requires a help desk and several IT staff to manage installation, upgrades, patch management and so on. 

As one respondent to Designair’s survey pointed out, using local workstations means you “need to maintain and deploy local installs and… [pay for] local computing power”. 

There are various approaches to using DaaS

As ever more AEC firms start using Desktop-as-a-Service solutions, we’re also starting to see different rollout strategies. 

Some are moving ‘wholesale’ to the cloud. These bold firms are completely ditching their traditional workstations, and using DaaS exclusively. For example, US architecture practice DSP has been doing this since 2016. 

Others, however, are taking a ‘hybrid’ approach. In this scenario, designers pick and choose between using their local machine or the DaaS, depending on the needs of the project.

As one of the respondents to our survey explained: “Based on my experience… for small projects it would be easier to work on models locally rather than using the cloud. But for bigger projects I absolutely agree with working on cloud”. 

Another approach is to do a gradual rollout based on a specific set of users. An example is to start your  DaaS journey for remote workers or contractors - as a sort of flexible back up. When you need to add multiple contractors to a project or let an architect work from home, you can give them temporary access to a DaaS where they do their work. 

Interested in seeing how other AEC firms are ditching workstations and moving to a DaaS? Read our interview with German engineering firm UNISON.