St. Louis, Mo., October 1, 2009 - St. Louis-based Oculus Inc. is celebrating its 15th anniversary this month of providing architectural services to a wide variety of clients across the country and competing successfully against much larger firms. Founded by Ron Reim and Lisa Bell-Reim in St. Louis in 1994, the firm has grown from a four-person firm designing small commercial tenant finishes to a full-service company offering architectural design, interior design, strategic facility planning and move management services to local, regional and nationally recognized businesses, retailers, commercial developers and health care organizations. Today Oculus operates full service offices in St. Louis and Dallas with a total of 20 professional and support staff.
In order to succeed as a smaller firm in the highly competitive world of architecture, Oculus has always identified and invested early in the new technologies, design trends and delivery methods that enhance architectural design and productivity and improve client service delivery. The Oculus team now includes licensed architects, LEED-accredited design professionals, Building Information Modeling (BIM) Certified designers, NCIDQ-certified and licensed interior designers, strategic facility planners, move managers, project coordinators, and information systems specialists.
"We set out to provide a broad but directed set of services designed specifically to meet voids in the offerings of traditional architecture and design firms," said Lisa Bell-Reim, President of Oculus. "In order to accomplish this and remain competitive against the larger firms, we have constantly upgraded our technology platforms and invested significant staff training time to maximize the impact of our technology investments. For example, we have gone from the early days of AutoCad systems to a platform entirely run on the latest BIM systems. In addition, the majority of our professional staff is now either BIM Certified or LEED accredited designers."
Oculus was one of the first adopters of Revit and BIM in the Midwest, and one of the first 30 users in the United States. Today Oculus is a recognized leader in delivering projects and support services for clients via BIM that are significantly faster and more comprehensive than the industry norm for smaller architecture firms. In 2007 Oculus established a subsidiary called ecostrategy to provide sustainability and environmental strategy consulting and education services to clients of Oculus.
"We were doing ‘green' design work before it became the norm that it is today," Bell-Reim said. "Today green is a market differentiator, and we are well-positioned to deliver the benefits of sustainability in all of the services we provide."
"We view our roles primarily as problem solvers, innovators, and implementers," says Bell-Reim. "This approach allows us to deploy our knowledge, training, and creativity to deliver a client-driven solution to a need or a specific set of needs."
Oculus Inc. is nationally certified as a Women-owned Business Enterprise (WBE) by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, locally WBE-certified with the State of Missouri's Office of Equal Opportunity, and certified as a Disadvantage Business Enterprise (DBE) by Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT).
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