Hello
My name is Kevin Cardoso and I am the son of Portuguese immigrants.
My parents came to this country from the Azores Islands in the 1970s. My mother ran her own daycare business and my father was a mason until he decided to get his general contractor license. But his English wasn't good enough to pass the exams so...how did he get it? My Mom! That's right.
She studied, practiced and passed the exam with her broken English and started a construction company with my Dad, all while running her own business. Incredible!
I have great examples of work ethic, determination & entrepreneurship in my family. My father was a military man having been drafted into the Portuguese army, so our household was very strict. My sister and I weren't allowed to speak English at home and we needed to work hard and help around the house. My father would take me to job sites as a kid and I would work with him while on summer breaks from school. He taught me what he knew of construction and I got used to seeing blueprints and sawdust around our home. But my father had a vision for my life...he wanted me to eventually take over the family business, which is something I didn't want to do. I wanted to create a career for myself. He tried to be supportive but he never did have a great poker face. Lol.
Instead, I loved seeing those blueprints on the kitchen counter! The angled lettering, the hand-drafted details...it was art! I decided to combine what I had learned from residential construction and create those blueprints. In 2004, I attended a community college to learn architecture. It was there that I finally met Revit! It changed my life. I fell in love with Revit and what it could do, later understanding acronyms like BIM & VDC and learning what it could do for construction. I worked for a variety of structural engineering firms and subcontractors, implementing Revit and self-taught workflows wherever I went.
But as I grew in my career, working for all these different companies and seeing what worked and what didn't, I noticed the huge disconnect between design and construction. Very few design firms are trying to bridge the gap and communicate accurately with construction using BIM.
This is why I started BIM Advantage! For construction! I want to bring BIM & VDC to construction by helping structural engineers & concrete contractors use BIM to THEIR advantage (pun totally intended!). There is a new generation of trade workers who thrive on construction technology. BIM & VDC models allow them to visualize, plan, sequence and strategize their projects. I want to help!