James Vandezande is a registered architect and a principal at HOK in New York City, where he is the director of the firm's buildingSMART initiatives. After graduating from the New York Institute of Technology, he worked in residential and small commercial architecture firms performing services ranging from estimating to computer modeling to construction administration. In 1999, he landed at SOM and transformed his technology skills into a 10-year span as a digital design manager. In this capacity, he pioneered the implementation of BIM on such projects as One World Trade Center, a.k.a. Freedom Tower. James has been using Revit since version 3.1 and has lectured at many industry events, including Autodesk University, VisMasters Conference, CMAA BIM Conference, McGraw_Hill Construction, and the AIANYS Convention. He is a co-founder of the NYC Revit Users Group and is an adjunct lecturing professor at the NYU School for Continuing and Professional Studies as well as the Polytechnic Institute of NYU.