As a civil engineer at Wood Rodgers, Eunice Oprea, EIT, uses AutoCAD daily through her Workspot cloud workstation.
Working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic has not been an ideal situation. Many found themselves in a lurch, having to make do with limited resources. But what if one company had been prepared for such a disaster, and had the structure in place to help them thrive under such conditions?
Wood Rodgers Inc. did. During the pandemic, the Sacramento, Calif.-based engineering firm found itself still able “to finish our projects ahead of time and able to continue to deliver services that Wood Rodgers is known for,” Director of Information Technology Mike Albrecht says.
He explains that Wood Rodgers did this with the help of Workspot, a turnkey cloud desktop and workstation service that it initially tested in its office in San Diego. But when the company had an infrastructure failure at its office in Oakland, Calif., it was able to put the platform to the test.
This allowed its employees to continue working via virtual desktops and saved Wood Rodgers the trouble of buying a new infrastructure. “When the shelter in place orders were implemented in California, we were prepared to utilize Workspot’s virtual desktops across our company,” he recalls. “We were able to take those lessons learned and work with the Workspot support team.”
During the pandemic, Wood Rodgers has sent out 125 virtual units to its employees, who can use the desktop application on any device. “The ease of access part is phenomenal from a management perspective,” Albrecht says, noting that employees have continued to be productive from remote workspace environments.
With Workspot, employees have been able to use Autodesk Civil 3D and AutoCAD modeling software from the safety of their homes. “Everything we have runs on a virtual environment,” he says, noting that 98 percent of Wood Rodgers’ staff is currently working from home.
Workspot’s team also worked with the company’s in-house staff to resolve virtual machine issues, including delayed keystrokes and choppy mouse movement. Many of these problems, Albrecht notes, came down to how the graphics processing unit (GPU) was adjusted.
“We were able to create our software files that allowed those configuration changes to be automatically applied to the GPU,” he recalls. This gave its workers a much smoother, more consistent experience.
As Wood Rodgers continues working through the pandemic, it plans to keep using Workspot. “We are very happy with the support and very happy with the technology,”Albrecht says. “They’ve been a great collaborative partner.
“They’ve got some new technology they’re coming out with regarding disaster recovery and business continuity options,” he adds. “Wood Rodgers will be exploring those options as well.”
