Gavin Crump and I discuss Architecture, BIM, Sharing, Learning, Gaming and the World of Warcraft.

0052 - Gavin Crump and I discuss Architecture, BIM, Sharing, Learning, Gaming and the World of Warcraft.
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[00:00:00]

Introduction and Guest Welcome
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Stephen Drew: Hello everyone, I am Stephen Drew from the Architecture Social. It's the evening for me, but it's actually the morning for my fantastic guest here. We're doing a video for the first time as well. And so I'm not used to this Gavin, but Gavin Crump all the way. From Australia, who is the Aussie BIM Guru. How are you?

Gavin Crump: Oh, I'm doing great. Yeah just had Australia Day yesterday, which is one of the laziest days of the year. So just getting back into work mode. So yeah, no, doing great. And it's a relatively nice day outside. It may be a bit gloomy for Australia. It's a bit Oh, look at that. Not quite what you'd expect, but it's just dark here.

Gavin Crump: I haven't got much to show you, yeah, I'm actually, I'm in my new recording studio set up too. I just moved apartments about a week ago. So this is the first time I've got to video anywhere with my new new setup. So can't wait to use it more during the year, but yeah, doing really well. I'm really [00:01:00] excited to be here.

Stephen Drew: I love it. I love it.

Casual Chat and Gaming Interests
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Stephen Drew: So for any, so how we met actually was on LinkedIn on the live stream. So you were a guest there. During the last podcast. And so anyone that knows you, so you've got a background in BIM, but more importantly, we actually started talking randomly about World of Warcraft here in the live stream, isn't it?

Stephen Drew: So you're a BIMer, you're a video game person, but you're a bit far other than that, I think we would be best mates. Otherwise.

Gavin Crump: You know what I mean? Yeah, a lot of the people I meet in architecture and BIM, I start talking to them and I'm like, Oh, we're just the same nerd, essentially. There's so many people that, because I'm in programming computers.

Gavin Crump: There's so many overlaps with, nerd geek culture that I just come across so many kindred souls that I'm like, if I'd met you during high school, we would have been like, best of charms. So yeah, it's always cool to meet people with similar interests and things that aren't necessarily just architecture to things where you're like, Hey, this is actually more fun to talk about.

Gavin Crump: Cause we talk about architecture every day. So it's a nice sort of tangent sometimes to go off.

Stephen Drew: You need a, yeah, it's nice to have a bit of a breather. And one of the things on like the [00:02:00] architecture social that we're actually setting up at the moment is a bit of a gaming clan. So maybe what we can do is if we can get enough people.

Stephen Drew: We'll get 40 people in World of Warcraft when we raid MoltenCore. Vanilla, let's go to the classics. I'd have to

Gavin Crump: reactivate my account. I haven't played it for a little while. I stopped about a year ago just cause I was getting too into it. And everyone was on different time zones to me.

Gavin Crump: So it wasn't the best for my sleeping pattern, but I might be able to get back to it.

Stephen Drew: I stopped a while ago as well, but I tell you what, it would be fun. Fun on the Architectural Social to do that, but another reason why we actually, we were talking is because a lot of the early podcasts that I did as well, cause when I was on furlough, a lot of furlough in the UK is basically like being put on the back bench with work.

Stephen Drew: And I felt like it was a good time at that point to do some content, A, to keep my brain going, but to talk about students who might feel a bit lost during this time.

Journey into BIM
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Stephen Drew: One of the conversations that we had together, which I think is really interesting, is the fact that you now have gone down [00:03:00] this avenue where you specialize in BIM, but I'm so when you were studying, did you study a traditional course of architecture?

Gavin Crump: Yeah, I did. I did five years straight through three years bachelor's, two years master's. I think I got shown Revit once during the course. It was. BIM still wasn't really a big thing when I was studying, so it was almost a frowned upon aspect to BIM in the university courses because the idea was if you used BIM it was too rigid and constrained your designs, it constrained your thinking, and it did until you learned to, bend the spoon of BIM and actually, learn more complex modeling techniques in a more rigid program to bend the spoon.

Gavin Crump: So I didn't really even think about BIM until I worked on my first project, which was a two billion dollar hospital. Pretty much entirely being delivered in Revit. So it was massive. There was like hundreds of models and I think 80, 80 architects in one office. So that was obviously a bit of a storm in a teacup to be in, but it was a pretty, pretty amazing experience.

Gavin Crump: And I got sat next to the BIM manager of that job, that poor guy having, 300 [00:04:00] models on his shoulders every day. We have a million questions

Stephen Drew: from you. Yeah.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Early Career Challenges
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Gavin Crump: I literally, my first day on the job, like everyone, thinks I'm some BIM guru, but my first day on the job, I didn't know how to use Revit.

Gavin Crump: I botched my way through the Revit test. They just let me in because they felt bad for me and they needed people. I was really lucky to get that job. And I overwrote the file that six people were in because I didn't understand how you save in a work sharing environment. And so I made six friends on my first day and after that he said, all right, I'm going to take you back a step and show you how to clean models and audit.

Gavin Crump: And he put that OCD aspect in my brain about BIM and cleanliness and well maintained standards. And it just went from there. So it was a really strange derail almost of what I was expecting to do. I thought I was going to come in and do documentation design and it just completely derailed me, but like I could see the, I could see the rabbit hole straight away.

Gavin Crump: It was right there. It was really weird. So I was really lucky that I had that guy to really just. Reposition my, my thinking. And it just went from there.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, it's interesting. I remember basically when I was doing my [00:05:00] part one, it was microstation because the UK is a bit behind Australia. And I had the same thing where actually on my CV, I said microstation basic.

Stephen Drew: Okay. And I put, AutoCAD Advanced, because that's all I've done. Vectorworks Advanced, and MicroStation Basic. Now I advise people not to put the word basic in. It'd be literal how long they use software. But you're right, I put basic because I've opened it once or twice. And then I got the job, and then it was the same thing.

Stephen Drew: I got there, I was like, So how do I trim like a desk, and they just the guy knew straight away, he was just like, Oh God, here we bloody go. Do

Gavin Crump: so what do you know about micro station? I know of micro station.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Yeah. I was like, so this is the micro station. They're like, Oh, he's calling it the micro station.

Stephen Drew: Do

Stephen Drew: What I mean?

Gavin Crump: Whenever I hear the Revit, I know that feeling when you get a new hire and they say the Revit, you're like, all right, here we go. Let's start from scratch. Although they're my favorite people to work with actually, when they're like a block of clay. And, you don't have any premonition about what the program should do.

Gavin Crump: So sometimes that can actually be super valuable [00:06:00] as long as they've got the perseverance and the mettle to get through

Stephen Drew: it. Yeah, I think that's a fair sentiment, but look just so you know, I know you get a lot of interviewers, but I am fully equipped to do this interview because I have a certificate in my room.

Stephen Drew: I forgot to bring it in. Cause I messed up the time zones. Cause I'm, I'm now international, normally it's UK interviews, but the certificate is I went on a CAD assist course, which is, there was a company in the UK and I was certified Revit beginner. So I'm just saying.

Stephen Drew: Oh, there you go. That's a start. In 2014 though. And I haven't loaded it up. And I haven't practiced architecture.

Gavin Crump: Revit hasn't really changed too much since 2014, so that's probably good news.

Stephen Drew: I'll take your, I'll take your word for it, but jumping back to, I think there's an important nugget that you mentioned there of when you joined the office.

Stephen Drew: And I appreciate now I was like yourself, the person asking a million questions on MicroStation, but I look back and I think it's a really important thing that you're, And most architects within a practice, they will want to [00:07:00] help. They will want to help the next generation of architects. We almost feel sorry for the person, it's I've been in your position and sharing, sharing data is so important.

Career Progression and Lessons Learned
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Stephen Drew: But let's talk about, because you outlined a few really cool points and talking about career pathways. So you established them, you joined the practice, you crashed the BIM model, you overwrote the file, which, that doesn't sound good to me. All right. That's that. But it's where when Don't oh, by the way, I will tell you what make you feel better.

Stephen Drew: I once forgot a complete floor of this. This is there's this big tower called the Brown Brewery that's been built. Yeah, I feel like I forgot in the area schedule one whole complete floor. Or I think when I was doing a 3D model, I issued one floor. So someone on the design team, which was issued the next day, was like, it looks shorter.

Stephen Drew: And I just deleted a floor. So don't worry. I've been there, but then we do have another thing in common apart from being BIM experts is that while we studied [00:08:00] architecture, we don't do traditional routes in architecture anymore. And now I recruit. You're now you set up your own BIM consultancy, and I'm sure you've done a more traditional BIM role.

Stephen Drew: But you, I've seen so many people in recruitment now that I've helped become BIM coordinators and BIM managers who didn't even know that they were doing BIM coordination

Gavin Crump: in an

Stephen Drew: architectural practice.

Gavin Crump: I didn't even realize they had sometimes.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. What was your experience with that then? And that kind of critical point.

Stephen Drew: So You must have learned and done quite well since overwriting the models.

Gavin Crump: Yeah. There's a few improvements since then, luckily. I didn't just keep overwriting models and then make a YouTube channel about it. But but essentially I started in what they call like a technician role. So it's doing a bit of documentation, a bit of modeling, but learning about the framework of, What BIM models really are and how they all come together and, go into meetings, talking to people in higher roles and absorbing.

Gavin Crump: Essentially, I was just in sponge mode for my first two or three years, just like ears open everywhere I went, going online, doing heaps of [00:09:00] research in my downtime. I did a lot of a lot of practice from home, which was pretty necessary Just to get ahead of where everyone currently was because like there's more and more to learn every day.

Gavin Crump: There's more programs, more workflows, so you just have to catch up even harder every time you join. Like I do feel for the graduates these days there's a lot to learn very quickly and the companies don't always teach it. I expect that you just magically find it somehow and then bring it back to work tomorrow.

Gavin Crump: But yeah, so I went from there and then I went into it straight into a BIM Manager role. So I leapfrogged the coordinator role. I had an opportunity come up to go to Sydney in Australia. So I'm originally from a place called Adelaide, which is like South Central. I grew up there as a kid and worked there until pretty much after I finished that major hospital job and then did a bit of work in defense.

Gavin Crump: So I can't, Talk about that or a little red dot will start appearing on my head. But I moved into a BIM management role. I essentially went to, went out for a drink with the current BIM manager who came down from Sydney and we essentially just found an opportunity and off I went after I sobered up.

Gavin Crump: And then I probably did BIM management like a little bit too early. Like a lot of people I talk to. [00:10:00] I teach them like, learn to walk before you run. And I was jogging at least maybe, but I started running pretty fast and probably needed to take a step back and I became a BIM coordinator in a few different companies.

Gavin Crump: And that taught me more about collaborating with other people and coordinating engineering disciplines and learning more about. The way other people actually work and the way that their design requirements overlap with ours and how to resolve when, one person wants to drop the ceiling, but the other person needs to put more ducts in the ceiling and how you can make those scenarios work and learn all sort of the tricks of the trade and, how thin you can force an engineer to make their ducts that they're not telling you those sort of little industry secrets That are dangerous to know if you're on the architect side, but but went from there back to BIM management.

Gavin Crump: So there was a bit of a leapfrog as I figured out exactly what sort of skills I needed. So I took a step back and step forward and step back and then eventually ended up back in BIM management with a, I guess the full armament of arms to take on the challenges that I didn't have the first time around.

Gavin Crump: So it was a bit of an all over the place journey, so I always try to teach people that, you shouldn't be afraid of [00:11:00] change or, just realizing when you're missing a certain part of your skill set that you need to find somewhere. So it's all about just building up that confidence in what you do overall and finding what you do overall as well.

Industry Insights and Mentorship
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Gavin Crump: So are you a BIM Coordinator or? Are you a designer? Is there like a middle ground between those roles? There's a lot of gray roles and gray definitions I find these days. Some people you ask them what they do and they have to think for a second before they decide to put it in a few words because it's so hard to describe.

Gavin Crump: Like I just say consultant these days because most people I meet don't even know what BIM is outside of outside of architecture or they know what BIM is and they don't like it. So I try to just reframe it.

Stephen Drew: I think it's do you know what, it's strange to use the word consultant because I, it's in terms of recruitment consultant, that's got a stigma, isn't it?

Stephen Drew: So

Gavin Crump: it depends on the nature of the recruitment agency that they work for. I think if people work like on their own or in smaller firms, I think people like it more because they know that they tend to be more. Hands on or more dedicated to the employers, it's more like the churning recruitment agencies can be harder when they're like, they've got [00:12:00] 300 recruiters all working together and, thousands of people churning through the system.

Gavin Crump: But I find the best recruiters I've worked with have tended to be like in the smaller scale companies or even just like sole trading, doing their own thing. I find that they have a lot more to give because they're more personally invested in people's career development. Like I had one that helped me through one of my roles and they still call me, To this day, like every few months just to see what I'm up to, because they were so happy just to see how they helped me step on that journey.

Gavin Crump: But there, there is stigma for sure. Yeah. Cause I know a lot of recruiters can be quite persistent and sometimes, they'll get you somewhere for six months and then try to flip you six months later so they can get their little recruiter. There's all sorts of funny little tactics they use.

Gavin Crump: But. But I think most recruiters I work with these days seem quite genuine. And I see a lot of them too, cause I get at least every week in my LinkedIn message inbox, I get at least 10 people asking for like career advice or how to find a job. And if they're in Sydney, I usually flip them to a recruiter that suits them.

Gavin Crump: I can only really give them advice. They usually start by saying, can I work for you? And I'm like, I'll go and look at my bank balance. And I'm like, no, I think I probably can't. I'd rather keep that for myself, [00:13:00] but but I've flipped them to somewhere that can connect them with the right place. And cause I guess part of what I've done is turn myself into an industry mentor of sorts.

Gavin Crump: So that, that does happen quite a lot but there's good recruiters out there for sure. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: Hopefully I can be in the good camp, but

Gavin Crump: Oh, I think based on what you're doing with Architecture Social, you're definitely one of the good ones. All

Stephen Drew: Cool. But there's a few, you covered a lot of points that were really interesting.

Stephen Drew: And the one thing that I do sympathize for is cause when you were, like BIM Managers, BIM Consultants, I do think there's a period where it was almost like the rock stars of recruitment world. So you'd always have loads of recruiters be like, Hey, you're a BIM person. Can you please please look at my job and all this stuff.

Stephen Drew: And you were like unattainable gurus that had like loads of recruiters in your inbox, but it's changed quite a lot. And I think it's changed in a few ways. That's one of the bits that was really interesting. You talked about them [00:14:00] is now compared to 2014. Okay, when I, in terms of recruitment, finding a BIM manager for a role, it was, there wasn't many, right?

Stephen Drew: There was almost like this unofficial analogy that we're using recruitment of. You almost have to ship a BIM manager in from Australia. Seriously. It was like basically someone that was really good and BIM in Australia, they'd come to the UK and then they'd be like, BIM Manager for, I don't know, Foster, Shepard, Robson.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, I knew a few that did the jump. Yeah, it was quite common. I used to use the analogy that it was a little bit like the dating game, like all the good ones were taken.

Stephen Drew: Yeah,

Gavin Crump: that's the way to put it.

Stephen Drew: And there wasn't many. And what's really interesting now is that it was almost like I feel that BIM came from a place of like you talked about, it was experience in industry.

Stephen Drew: Whereas now, if someone's. interested in the idea of BIM that they studied architecture you could almost do a course in it and you mentioned it here in a few of the notes we talked about is you know should graduates like officially because in the UK you could [00:15:00] study an MSc like degree in BIM per se. Now I guess that's one way of doing it, but you probably have a bit of an insight into that.

Stephen Drew: And you talked about mentoring, what would you advise someone that may be interested in BIM or studying architecture or what's your thoughts on them?

The Importance of Sharing Knowledge
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Gavin Crump: Yeah, I have pretty strong opinions on the study of BIM. Like I've got a video I've done on YouTube that's. Super in depth, if anyone wants to check it out on my channel, but I'll link it to you after, but I more or less usually find that I have met people that have just done the pure BIM study pathway.

Gavin Crump: And first of all, I find they struggle to get a job because there's no company out there that's just BIM. That's not what the company's base offering is. Like BIM is the, it's one of the layers of the cake. So you need to know more about the overall cake and what generates company, the company's money or their income stream, which is BIM.

Gavin Crump: Sometimes BIM is a component of what they deliver, but it's actually if you're an architect, it's architecture, it's design. It's those things that BIM doesn't really teach you, but you can start with say like architecture and design and then find your way [00:16:00] into BIM with the context of architecture as the foundation.

Gavin Crump: And that's usually what I recommend people do. I usually, I say it's best to do like your traditional study pathway, unless you absolutely can't see it. Any of that pathway, don't force yourself through something that you know, you're just not going to enjoy it because chances are you won't even finish it.

Gavin Crump: You might never come back to the industry. And that's obviously not a good thing. But I'd say if you can do a more traditional pathway, I'd say it's better. If you know you're going to be an engineer than study engineering sometimes those courses they have a bit of a double degree overlap that you can do these days where they introduce BIM as a pretty major component, like almost doing a thesis, but now you do like a model or something like that instead on the side that, that gives you that context between your studies.

Gavin Crump: And then from there, I usually try, say, try to get like a fairly traditional job because you'll learn the base experience of being an architect or an engineer, and maybe you're not going to be an engineer by the end. You want to be a BIM manager. But every day you're going to be dealing with engineers, you're going to be supporting engineering requirements.

Gavin Crump: So you really do have to have been in those trenches to relate to the people that you're supporting. Whereas if you're just that BIM [00:17:00] guy, you may as well be like an IT manager. And how many people, relate to the IT manager on an architectural level? Obviously not many people. They're talking that the other definition of architecture to us, but the one that you look up and you look in the dictionary and it says IT system architecture, and it's no, not that one.

Gavin Crump: That's not the job I was looking for. Oh,

Stephen Drew: I get that all the time with the social where people like, oh, I thought it was a software architecture, but what was, what's interesting about what you're talking about is it is the same thing for me as in as a recruitment consultant, you get so many recruitment consultants that do not have an understanding of architecture and then become an architectural recruitment specialist.

Stephen Drew: And it's Hang on. You were never in the office. How do you know? And you can get some good ones, but I do agree that actually having studied architecture and working in architecture, it means that you've been there, therefore you can relate to someone. And I think that I imagined there is a transferable quality to that with BIM as in, because you've worked on a project, you see it from Bye bye.

Stephen Drew: Maybe a [00:18:00] Say now in, in terms of a task, you would see BIM from an operational standpoint, or you see it from a strategic standpoint, but then you'll also understand from you being that guy who crashed that BIM model six times, that, you've got to train someone up the right way, or you've got to You've got to do all these factors and you can sympathize from their position.

Stephen Drew: And I think that is really useful. And I yeah, but if you didn't go in industry, that's the bit you miss though, isn't it? Because you don't, you've never been doing the late night as you never. Know the frustrations. Do you know

Gavin Crump: what I mean? With the people that you're supporting, a big part too is almost you play devil's advocate to yourself sometimes when someone comes up and says, Oh, something's not working and they won't tell you exactly why because they've done something wrong and they don't want to say what they've done.

Gavin Crump: If you've been there and done it, you know what's happened and you can just break that barrier straight away and say, okay, real talk. Let's just solve it. I know why this has happened. It's okay. I missed out a whole level in the building. How can we fix this? How can we fix this? And, a pure BIM manager might just say that's just silly because I'm a programmer and I think about the world [00:19:00] in ones and zeros.

Gavin Crump: So it's, you need that human relation as well, where they can see that you've done this sort of stuff before too. Like you've started in a similar place to them. And I don't think that empathy is a really important quality that, that you need. Sometimes, without that experience, you just don't have, you can pretend that you understand what they're doing just to get them to leave your desk, but that's not, that's obviously not the right attitude with it in

Stephen Drew: AC, I think you're touching upon a really interesting thing. And it actually is one of the points we got here, but it's so true is while you've got the skills of BIM and we're talking about working in industry, people's skills and that kind of compassion. Yeah, it is so important. I've got a bit of a story to talk about with that, and I think you'll enjoy it.

Stephen Drew: But. And it's one of my, it's one of my friends, actually, but we're going to be all hypothetical. And so when I was working in industry. with a really fantastic CAD manager, BIM manager. But sometimes people would be scared to go and show him problems in the project, because what would happen is, so you know, I'm issuing the [00:20:00] deadline, right?

Stephen Drew: And I need to speak to Gavin about something, but I'm like, ah, shit, because if I speak to Gavin, he's going to flag up all the problems in my projects,

Gavin Crump: I've been that guy before, yeah. Yeah,

Stephen Drew: And I don't need that right now because I've got to issue something to the client. I might have set the file up wrong, but I've got to get the drawings out.

Stephen Drew: And that would be the, I remember once on a deadline, it was like, oh, I need to find out this microstation thing. And they were like, do not go to him. Do not do that now.

Gavin Crump: Don't go and point out the layer naming standard when you're just trying to smash a drawing out,

Stephen Drew: yeah? Yeah, because I remember being that guy, just with not doing the naming standards and everything.

Stephen Drew: And even in recruitment now, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and it's important to acknowledge them. My weakness is, sometimes you see online, like them productivity people or the people that do lists of lists, I'm the opposite. I don't do, I don't do, yeah, I don't do lists. I used to,

Gavin Crump: I just dropped it.

Gavin Crump: It was too OCD. I was [00:21:00] spending more time managing lists. Than doing things . It always became, yeah.

Stephen Drew: This it is a good habit of having one way. Ill occasionally though, bite me in the ass when I've done something wrong. Or I used to be the guy when we were doing renders that would have like final version.

Stephen Drew: 1, 1, 1, 2,

Gavin Crump: copy. Two. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: Which is not good. Which is. That's too far. But I guess we have all of this. I do think it helps to be a little bit organized and

Gavin Crump: it helps. Yeah. I think it's good to just pick a system and stick to it.

Balancing Standards and Flexibility
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Gavin Crump: That's one thing that some BIM managers are really bad at doing.

Gavin Crump: They'll reinvent the wheel constantly and you never have the latest and greatest system in your project because there are already three versions ahead of you. The moment you, Blink essentially, like for example, my own business, I think day one, I decided on all the naming conventions for my documents for my client numbering system.

Gavin Crump: And it was the really boring stuff, but I said, let's just get it now, stick to it. Haven't looked back, still use it. And I learned that through BIM management, that if you constantly rename standards and line weights, you end up with. 20 different versions of everything, and you haven't even got a standard at that point.

Gavin Crump: But you're right. There is you need that base standard that [00:22:00] carries it through, but it's more about consistency and finding something that works for whoever's using it, yeah.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. I think it comes down to the analogy we're talking of. The more industry experience I have, bizarrely, the more it would seem unorganized, but I think over time, the more you learn things, you, I like what you said there, or if you realize what's important and what's not.

Stephen Drew: And so your experience has gone, I need some kind of naming convention, but you don't need to do the new naming convention of all naming conventions when that one works. And I think that's the, and then the other analogy that you've we can test the theory I've got is that, so when I've set up a recruitment business, Half of as you're setting up a business or I almost used to think of myself as a bit like a BIM person.

Stephen Drew: I was like, I'm all about efficiency and procedures. And what I tend to find is when people are setting up things, these procedures, they'll overcomplicate the process. Whereas I always felt like a good BIM manager or someone designing systems, actually, you should always [00:23:00] think of the person that's using it and you should reduce the process.

Stephen Drew: It's about making things efficient. Taking stuff out.

Gavin Crump: Human readable, human usable. I look at my old systems and my new systems and I used to build like a system that only myself and a computer with an algorithm built into it could understand. Everything was a code and a letter and it's like what does the F stand for here?

Gavin Crump: Oh, it stands for furniture. What does it stand for over there? Oh, fire. It's oh, I can't understand it. Little idiosyncrasies that I had to iron out of the way I work. And now I've just tried to break it right down. My coding system is like four digits and that's it. Like it's just, it's one system stick to it and document the heck out of it too.

Gavin Crump: If it's going to be complicated, like it needs to be documented and accessible and trainable too. I guess if you can't train something in five minutes, it's probably not a good system, or at least the base principle. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: This is what I find fascinating about and what I respect about BIM consultants and BIM managers, is that it's less to me it's less about so I [00:24:00] realize the importance of BIM.

Stephen Drew: I'm not going to be the guy on Twitter sort of saying this and that because I don't know enough about it but what I think is interesting is every BIM person I've met who's really good it's all about their pursuit of Making things more efficient. Solving complicated problems. So I mentioned briefly before, one of the people I respect is Thomas Mahone in the industry who set up BIMorph.

Stephen Drew: He's just like ruthlessly persistent on what's the word I'm going for? Like he makes BIMorph modules and

Gavin Crump: solves problems. Oh yeah, he's very, if he's, from what I'm saying, when he starts something, he sees it through and he makes it work. And he makes it accessible too, like he actually shares a lot of his code source and stuff like that too, so he's really good at not just, internalizing a proprietary system, it might be complicated, but it's still accessible and understandable.

Gavin Crump: I use his Dynamo package all the time and some of his nodes are some of the cleanest. The latest implementations I've seen in custom nodes, so they really respect him. But he's a good advocate for what he does too. He shares a lot of his ideas on the forums and yeah, he's [00:25:00] good like

Stephen Drew: that.

Stephen Drew: That's an important point as well. So I guess what I was saying is that I really admire the way he like, tenaciously goes after a goal. And I think a lot of business I respect the passion that goes into it. So you've been in industry and then over the years I think that I can add value here.

Stephen Drew: I think that this can be done better and therefore you've set up, the BIM Guru stuff. You got Tom at Bymorph and I think that's great. But that's the really interesting bit is that. You were in industry then you found your passion and then you pursued it and I think that ties in a little bit and what I try to say to graduates is you should probably do a year or two in industry find out what you like find out what parts of it and then you can build from that because I think that because you mentioned briefly, you'd like to do more mentorship.

Stephen Drew: And I think that's amazing that you're going to do that this year. And I watched your YouTube because I'm subscribed and I watched your presentation where you said you're going to do it, and I think it's amazing. You're going to do that. But the trick is. With the [00:26:00] person and just to learn BIM for the sake of it, there's only so much you can do with that.

Stephen Drew: But I guess what I'm saying is people have to be really passionate about it. They have to want to solve all these problems and they've got to be invested. But the other bit I like that you talked about there, which resonates with me in recruitment is sharing. Okay. Because recruitment consults, no recruitment consults, they don't share.

Stephen Drew: Right.

Gavin Crump: A lot of firms in AAC don't either. There's a lot of silos still being held up pretty strongly. A big part of my YouTube is trying to break a couple of silos on things that just don't need to be proprietary. Just basic workflows that I know every office has their version of.

Gavin Crump: Here's one that's out in the open now. And, I see firms replacing their old version with what I've shared and I'm like, okay, cool. Like it's out there now. And sometimes I'm on LinkedIn and I see people posting up screenshots of Python code they're doing. And I see the variable names and I'm like, that's my variable names.

Gavin Crump: Cool. Like it's out there. I'll release it in the wild and announce everyone. So I think, it's changing slowly. Like we've got like open source as an idea now emerging where [00:27:00] people are trying to develop platforms off, say like the back of Blender, for example, to have an accessible and sometimes free, not always free in terms of cost, but free in terms of access and being able to reach into the base code of the program.

Gavin Crump: So there's definitely like some resistance emerging at the moment. You saw the open letter from, Autodesk and Revit and some of those things that, signs of, cracks in the silo emerging. But yeah, I imagine even in recruitment, you've got a year. Your systems and your standards and your techniques that you use.

Gavin Crump: So just to stay competitive, that's the challenge. Yeah. Yeah. It just comes down to finding what makes the company's competitive. Because that's the thing that obviously should be proprietary to some degree. Because if everyone has it, then what's everyone competing based on? But you still need, enterprise and business to be successful.

Gavin Crump: And competition's good too, because it gives the client choice. But it's more finding what matters. Is the line weight table in an architecture firm what makes them competitive? Hopefully not.

Gavin Crump: They might think it is, I'm happy to tell most of them it's not. So maybe that should just be out in the open and industry standard, if you develop your own platform, sure, [00:28:00] maybe you keep that internal to some degree, but maybe you can share it out somehow by licensing it or yeah.

Stephen Drew: I think that you're onto something. What I would say is at first, the idea of even doing a live stream or even with me, it was. The idea of there's two things, I think you almost feel if you're given something away, like it's foolish, you're like, are you crazy? Why would you share this information?

Stephen Drew: Why would you give someone a script? But I think it's the opposite. Actually, people in industry and life, they reckon, they recognize that you're the one that gave it away.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, it comes back to you in so many ways. Just even people knowing who you are, that's a great feeling for me, knowing that I'm there in the industry and I have like my place in it now.

Gavin Crump: I go back three or four years ago and no one knew who I was. I was an unknown, just toiling away at a BIM manager's desk and, never actually impacting the industry in a bigger way than supporting a project, essentially. So that, that's even just a reward unto itself, but it does open up a lot of opportunities.

Gavin Crump: Obviously like things like podcasts [00:29:00] that I wouldn't be on otherwise, but. But a lot of my, even my clients, a lot of them came to me through just knowing what I did on YouTube or seeing a tutorial and wanting to, have the next model upgrade of what I showed them as a little mini teaser.

Gavin Crump: So there's so many ways it comes back to you as well. People think that if you give away something, you've essentially lost the opportunity to make some money out of it, but there's probably bigger awards at the end, even from a financial aspect as well. My anchor client last year, who probably pulled in half my income they essentially just found me off YouTube and said, Hey, I want you to do that, but I want to do like the Rolls Royce of what you've shown, like you've shown me, like the little mini Cooper, I want the Rolls Royce and we just went all out and, it was a massive undertaking for one person, but I wouldn't have had that Without, putting some of that knowledge out there to give people confidence in what I can do as well.

Gavin Crump: So yeah, it's always, there's always opportunities. Even you might not even realize them at first and suddenly later, like one year later, someone discovers your channel and off it goes. Cause I think I did three or four months on about a hundred subs and I just pushed through just kept going and eventually it started paying off.

Gavin Crump: So yeah, there's a lot of reward [00:30:00] to it. And sometimes closing things off is worse because you're only helping five or six people maybe. And that's, not really that rewarding. I'll just steal it and go somewhere else and give it to someone else anyway. So yeah, if you put things off, you run the risk that it's going to get open and you're not going to be the person that's really credited for it anyway.

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I remember when I left the EPR Architects, I downloaded the BIM execution plan and I logged it down. I remember someone being saying to me have you taken that? And I remember they were a really good company and they just had to ask me and I was just like. Honestly, if you think I'm putting like your BIM execution plan on Craigslist, come on.

Stephen Drew: You know what I mean? I was just like, yeah but I think there's a few interesting points in what you're talking about there, because this, if we imagine you're on your journey or you working out what you want in life, I think that there's an element of.

Community and Collaboration
---

Stephen Drew: community and especially now during this pandemic and everything else where I think being online and sharing is so important.

Stephen Drew: [00:31:00] So for instance, you would mean, I'm not interested in, and take this in the nicest way. I watch your videos and. They're engaging and I find it I respect what you do, but I'm not the person watching the videos. And yet we met online because we were, we had mutual interest in mentorship

Gavin Crump: and what we were doing.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that comes from being being open to opportunity. That sounds like a bit like a LinkedIn term, but when you're up for it things come back.

Gavin Crump: Opportunity and I'm not open to work, open to collaborate, be the one. Yeah, maybe that's better than open to collaborate.

Stephen Drew: There you go. But I think it's just that willingness to discuss and I have a really good example as well, as I think we both know, like Pierre Venter, right? I had him on the podcast. I've known him for years. And He, you can talk about some stuff, BIM, that I won't understand, but I thoroughly enjoy.

Gavin Crump: He goes very deep.

Gavin Crump: He goes beyond even the level that I'll think about it. He's given me some amazing ideas just over the past year or [00:32:00] two, just about where even I should focus my attention. And he's a

Stephen Drew: big fan of you. Oh, yeah.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, we met about probably two, two years ago, I think, through LinkedIn and he just started chatting and suddenly I was getting these huge messages and I'm like, wow, this guy cares.

Gavin Crump: So it was good to meet someone that's that passionate about it. Yeah. And WhatsApp chat. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. He's been really helpful with the social and what's been interesting is that, especially when we first spoke to Pierre, I said, look, I'm setting up the Architecture Social and. You don't miss words, but it's okay, that's interesting.

Stephen Drew: I think there's another BIM one and, and then I was like, oh no, but just come on for the fun of it. And then what's been really great is that we've, me and him have had a few stimulating chats about really engaging with things. And I tell you in specific with the BIM community as well, I've seen one or two like BIM webinars.

Stephen Drew: And there's, I think there's a part of the culture right now where I think actually just going to a BIM seminar, if you're not prepared to participate, or if you're not prepared to learn, it's worth nothing. A [00:33:00] piece of paper saying that I was in the webinar.

Stephen Drew: Doesn't mean anything,

Gavin Crump: but in general, just don't focus on the piece of papers anyway, just to focus on the value that you're deriving from what you're doing. Even when I make my own course platform, there'll be certificates, but I'm not going to be like, Hey, this is what matters.

Gavin Crump: It's just going to be tacked on the end. I did it. Cool. Like it's more like the value that you get along the way is really what matters. And like you said, that engagement, that's really the only way you can derive your own personal. Value out of the experience, I guess too. Yeah.

Gavin Crump: And sometimes those BIM sessions can be a bit like jargon. So it's more like finding the right ones that, that suit your skill level as well. I know a lot of people just go to them because it's BIM, but it's reading, who's doing it, what are they talking about and really thinking about, what level.

Gavin Crump: You want to learn that as well. For example, there's a guy called the Revit kid or Jeffrey in America, and he's doing some really good live sort of live streams and he has really accessible content that's broken right down for the beginners. And I find sometimes people, that they'll go to some, Super officiated, super BIM talk instead.

Gavin Crump: And it's just because it's maybe on YouTube and it's not the format that they think is going to be the one that gives them a good piece [00:34:00] of paper or something like that. But really the value they can get out of something like that, it's much more meaningful. And that's what I like about your platform too, in that it's very accessible for students that aren't necessarily looking for the bee's knees, I don't want to just.

Gavin Crump: Go from zero to BIM Manager in one day. It's more about collaborating with people at similar levels to them and, actually building each other up as a community. So I think it's really great what you're doing. No, You look really promising and I'm seeing like some really good activity on there as well, which is a good

Stephen Drew: sign.

Stephen Drew: No, I appreciate it. The only reason I was giggling there a little bit when you're talking is because Every time you get involved, I almost want to not talk about BIM when you come to live stream and now I just want to talk about World of Warcraft. That's why I was giggling.

Gavin Crump: We should do a separate one just talking about WoW and we can get our characters out and go walking around.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, but I, that would be so cool. I'm, I think that

Gavin Crump: BIM at the same time. I don't know if you know that weird YouTube format people use these days, where it's just them playing a game, but talking about something completely different while they're playing the game. And that's just, I

Stephen Drew: think

Gavin Crump: we're just walking around

Stephen Drew: I think that's like a brilliant idea.

Stephen Drew: Either [00:35:00] you can do BIM on there. We can talk about the future of architecture, but I tell you what, mini side topic for a second is that I was totally fascinated with Vive and and actually do you know what I wrote my dissertation on in architecture? Bear in mind, this was 2012. I was proud.

Stephen Drew: I wrote about interactive gaming, basically at the time, Twinmotion and Lumion were in beta alpha.

Gavin Crump: It was quite early for that time. That was really just, Cutting edge at that time. So you'll bang on the money with that one.

Stephen Drew: I'll send you it. You can use, wait, it's going to be outdated, but I thought at the time I remember doing it, I didn't get a good grade because what I did is that I went off and I lost the meaning of it.

Stephen Drew: And what I did was I just thought they were so cool. And the dissertation was just like, Oh, you've got Lumion, you've got this and that. And the guy was like, you're geeking out. And they couldn't relate to the There was no point. There was no like meaning. I was just like, at the end, I was like,

Gavin Crump: yeah.

Gavin Crump: To get the right lecturer or the right tutor, like I know one guy at my uni that would have just given you a HD for just even using like [00:36:00] a headset or something. He was so on that at the time. So usually I found unis a bit like that too. You almost have to get like that tutor that's in sync with you to really get like a resonant grade.

Gavin Crump: So I find sometimes I encourage students not to worry about the grades. It's too much, like obviously figure out your GPA that you want to meet, at the same time, picture more about the value you want to get out of each unit that you do. So for a design studio, don't just do the building, your tutor wants you to do the building you want to do.

Gavin Crump: Like it's finding those opportunities. Cause I think when I was at uni, the people that got the big grades are the ones that basically just, sucked up to the tutors and hopefully it's not quite that typical these days, but I'm sure people still try to just figure out the criteria to get the grade that they need rather than what they should really.

Gavin Crump: Learn

Stephen Drew: From the unit.

Gavin Crump: It's,

Stephen Drew: I went to two universities and they were totally different. I went to the University of Westminster, which was more London centric, and there definitely was, and they could have changed since then. Bear in mind, 2006 University of Westminster don't come from the same personal experience, but yeah, there was definitely an element of I used to call the, some of the [00:37:00] two as studios, mini me's.

Stephen Drew: So yeah, if you followed their ideologies, you'd get the good grades themselves after them. Yeah. Yeah. So it was like, literally, sometimes you'd go to a studio and you were like, wow, this is the same project like 40 times. And there was no kind of personality. Whereas actually Manchester School of Architecture, it was the opposite where every Individuality and, having your own style, your own motivations.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Yeah. And so there was a tutor at the time that had Dr. Nick Dunn, and I was lucky to have him.

The Shepherd Analogy in Teaching
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Stephen Drew: And he used the analogy that teaching in his opinion, good, a good teacher was like a shepherd, as in you've got your flock. And he would let the flock roam, but he said

Gavin Crump: Yeah, let you graze and find your own patch of grass.

Gavin Crump: Don't just say this is the only patch you can eat from, yeah.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, so he just, he would let it go, but he'd go, but occasionally if you get too close to the electric fence, I'll pull you back just before you die, but that Yeah, if you're going way off

Gavin Crump: track. They do need to do that.

Pushing Creative Boundaries in Architecture
---

Gavin Crump: They do need to say, okay, this idea is just genuinely probably not a good idea to follow because my final Master's piece I did a [00:38:00] massive like brutalist concrete thing where replacing a shopping center with apartment buildings and I was like, I'm gonna have some fun with this and just turn it into this brutalist nightmare just to parody the shopping center as the site because it was such a brutalist pace on the site to begin with and one of the tutors is no, no one's going to live there.

Gavin Crump: And I'm like, But it's not a real project. I want to design something that's more of a discourse than a, than I guess a, I'm going to go and build this tomorrow. So it was more, and then one of the lecturers just suddenly realized what I was doing. And he's do it. And he just pushed me like all the way through.

Gavin Crump: At the end, like everyone had to do physical models and he's just give me a 3ds Max model. I just want this thing digitally so I can fly around it with my headset on. And it was a completely different experience. So sometimes you find those people that just push you down that path to see how crazy the idea becomes.

Gavin Crump: And it's good to follow those paths. Yeah. And same with BIM too, like sometimes people need to shoot, write down some, go down some rabbit hole that no one understands before you go down it and you're like, Oh, trust me, I'll come back out and it'll be great. There'll be all this stuff at the end. And like when you write a script or a code, it's the same thing.

Gavin Crump: You start with the idea and you don't know how you're going to get there, but you just give people the confidence to let you. Let you go down there. [00:39:00] I think

Stephen Drew: it's, there's, it's definitely interesting that I caught, there's a lot of nuggets here, but what kind of comes, what I find really interesting is that let's pretend now, so outside of me and you, if someone's hypothetically got their eye on BIM right now, I think.

Stephen Drew: Would you say it's fair to say, keep that in mind, but working in the industry, just to get the understanding of how an architectural practice or but then the other thing I was going to ask you, cause you've got one or two points here, we covered skills graduates need. So the soft skills and I feel, dealing with people and getting that industry experience, but if you were maybe a graduate that wants to be clued up.

Stephen Drew: Is there any tips or programs you would learn or places that you would go to right now?

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Essential Software for Architecture Graduates
---

Gavin Crump: Obviously like the major platform, at least here, and I know in the UK is probably Revit. It's a program everyone seems to love to hate at the moment. But it's still, yeah, that's

Stephen Drew: true.

Gavin Crump: Everyone. Yeah. What [00:40:00] else are we going to use, right? There's other programs like ARCHICAD or plan alternatives, but you really do need your design studio to use the program to really get the most value out of it. Whereas I find Revit, there's so much educational material out there that you almost can't fail in learning Revit.

Gavin Crump: It's just a matter of time and perseverance. I find that probably a lot of side programs from there, like the visual coding programs like Grasshopper and Dynamo that they're a really good entry. or Gateway into programming itself, which is going to be more and more relevant by the day to our industry.

Gavin Crump: There's more software developers entering our industry now from outside and also from within. I'm half. I do a bit of programming, but I also don't want to get too deep into the code because you can get quite lost in it. So I think it's really important to at least have a basic interest in programming.

Gavin Crump: Even if you don't use it, just how someone else will use it that you work with. So you can talk to them in programming terms because there's nothing worse than a programmer that thinks no one understands what they're doing. They tend to become quite disgruntled and give bad results. As well as that, I think like a lot of the visualization programs you were talking [00:41:00] about, like your Twinmotion, Zenscape, Lumion, the rendering programs that don't need someone to work on it for, three weeks just to get a hero shot, they're becoming really relevant, especially for designers to communicate their designs in 3D.

Gavin Crump: Also internally, it's just such an essential tool. Like I use Enscape myself personally, just cause I'm quite a strong Revit user. But if you're not, then like Twinmotion might be better, for example, because it comes with a lot of prebuilt assets that you don't need to have a Revit family for, and it's a lot easier to just slap materials on things and build a scene.

Gavin Crump: So I think at least one of those should be like your home base for visualization. I think that's really important. And if you're an engineer, I'd say Navisworks is probably really important to learn so you can coordinate with other disciplines in a more efficient manner. Most people don't, we don't really coordinate visually that often now.

Gavin Crump: So you won't just fly around a 30 story building and go every story and have a look at each floor. It's more about finding those. Class detection routines that can say, just tell me every problem on those 30 floors and I'll fly through one of them just to look at all the typical [00:42:00] challenges. So they're probably the main like software platforms that I encourage.

Gavin Crump: Outside of that, there's a lot of open software emerging right now. So like Blender, for example, is building a really strong community. Visualization aspect, but there's also some guys over at what they call OS Arch or Open Source Architecture. So if you're interested in pure development and open source development, that's probably something that's going to grow this year and continue to grow as more people come to it.

Gavin Crump: There's one guy I know called Dion Malt, who's trying to build essentially BIM inside Blender itself by putting like the IFC data schema in there. So that's that's pretty important. I think down the line, that's going to at least inspire the next big platform in BIM, I would say. And there's a lot of stealth startups as well.

Gavin Crump: Some that I know of. Quite deeply, but can't say a lot about them because of NDAs and all that, but so there's a few interesting things.

The Debate: Revit vs. Other Software
---

Gavin Crump: I don't know if there's a Revit killer yet. Everyone's always looking for the Revit killer. But there's definitely some competitive platforms that will have the benefit of hindsight in how they're set up.

Gavin Crump: So the other programs I've had to develop as they [00:43:00] went these ones are pretty much developing on the back of every other program's lessons. So I think they're the main platforms I'd focus on and obviously Adobe. Creative Suite or freemium versions of those programs. Like I use a, an online web version of Photoshop now that's free called Photopeer.

Gavin Crump: And it's I don't know how it's legal, but apparently it is. Apparently they must have lost a patent or something like that. So I use that instead now, but just having the ability to creatively manipulate images and designs and objects is probably quite necessary as well. So that you're not one of the users that says Revit can't do it.

Gavin Crump: So I can't do it. It's more about interoperating and yeah, lots of programs essentially, but. But they're the core programs that I guess I focused on and found that they gave me the most value through my, my, my 10 years or so, so far, but there's a lot of programs still coming and developing that'll probably come and sweep a lot of those under the rug one day.

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Stephen Drew: You'll tell you what will make you laugh, right? So I did one video on Christmas, yeah. And bear in mind, I'm, I talk about software from the employability point of view, and what I like, what you said [00:44:00] there, and it's true, is that you can have an opinion on how ARCHICAD is better than Revit, and how, all this stuff, but, so I released a video, And the am and in the YouTube where it's like, the comments are brutal.

Stephen Drew: So I came out and I said, software you need to learn in 2021. And I was like, oh yeah, I saw that

Gavin Crump: you, yeah.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. And I was like, it was far from perfect, where it's like on YouTube you gotta to keep developing and sound level this and that. But anyways, I said, you've gotta learn Rev. And even then I had one guy I had, he's this video was sponsored by over desk, acad is so much better.

Stephen Drew: And I just felt like saying, okay. That might be true. You might have a much more better understanding of the two softwares than me, but in the UK everyone uses Revit. So if you want to statistically improve your chances of getting a job in industry, knowing Revit, whether or not it's the most efficient piece of software is the way to, is the way to go.

Gavin Crump: I guess. Yeah. It depends on the country too. I know in [00:45:00] Scandinavia, for example, Revit's not as as relevant. Oh, really? There's a lot of context depending on where you want to work as well. One person I met once, they could not stand Revit at all, detested it, and they couldn't find a company that used it.

Gavin Crump: And I just found two other people like them and said, go and make a little firm and do Archicad. Don't let yourself be limited by what everyone else is doing. Limit yourself by your own passion and creativity. And I ended up. doing a little tiny little startup firm and now they're putting little jobs out there and I was like you know take something negative and put it into something positive so because there is a lot of Revit sucks hasn't changed for five years there's a lot of negative sentiment but a lot of people are still using it to do work out there and you know building buildings on this platform so it's not all it's not all bad obviously I do have to stand on the fence with this one just because On YouTube as, the BIM Guru, I can't just be the Aussie Revit Guru.

Gavin Crump: I do have to keep a more open mind, but I don't think it's a bad platform by any means. I think it's done some amazing things for our industry and it invented a lot of systems too, that have influenced other programs as well. And they, a lot of platforms [00:46:00] borrow ideas from each other and pass things around.

Gavin Crump: And there's a lot of programs that say they're inspired by something just so they don't get sued. But you can see it and go, yeah, you've basically copied that. So it's good to see the impact that program's had on the industry, even if it's not the one that we use in 20 years, like it's left a legacy of some sort behind for all of us to better understand BIM and how building models function building information models function.

Gavin Crump: So yeah, it's definitely relevant. You have to be aware of the program at the very least, cause you'll be coordinating with people that use Revit even if your firm doesn't. So there's definitely that, that needs to be aware of it, but It's more about what people want to do and where they want to work.

Building a Career in Architecture
---

Gavin Crump: I always tell people to pick three or four firms that they want to work at and just make that their their target. Even if they don't start there they're hounding until they get to one of those firms and you learn what programs they use. Ideally, if they all use the same programs, it's better.

Gavin Crump: But if they don't. And that's how you motivate yourself to learn a platform because you have a purpose. Eventually, it's not just learning Revit. Revit, it's learning it. So you can go BIM Manager, Norman Foster or somewhere like that. Yeah, that's that goal.

Stephen Drew: I think it's [00:47:00] it's definitely an interesting point.

Stephen Drew: The other one I get, which I'm sure you'll enjoy here is that I get occasionally one or two and I get it. My opinion has changed over the years. So what we're gonna talk about is when I say so in recruitment knowing Rev is bought by the line of prerequisite now. At least on the roles I work on, because we're talking IT.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, and so I'll get someone and they'll be like, it's a Revit role. And I go do you know what? I don't think you need Revit. We've got CAD. I can do a brilliant detail in CAD. And I think it's gone past the point now, where my response before would be to talk about, The advantages of BIM, but now I say, do you know what?

Stephen Drew: If you don't want to learn it, don't learn it.

Gavin Crump: You're going to get left behind. They're a bad hire. They're going to be a problem the moment they start, because they'll be trying to turn the entire office around just on their system. And it's no, it'd be like a BIM manager coming in and saying, oh, you've got standards, but I've got my own little thing.

Gavin Crump: And now, and the amount of BIM managers that still do that, they try to come and, turn the ship around on their own and, it's just. Suddenly everyone's just going, Oh, where are we going? This [00:48:00] is crazy. I've seen so many small companies have that. Like even as a consultant, some of my clients, I've had to come in and essentially just turn the ship back around and say, you guys were like going here and then you did this, what happened?

Gavin Crump: And they're like, Oh, we hired this guy or this girl. And they did all this crazy stuff. And I look at it and I'm like, Oh, this is garbage. They've just completely ignored what you needed. And you almost have to go back a year and say, okay, where were you? Let's just get you back on that track and keep going.

Gavin Crump: And immediately they're like, oh yeah, I remember that system. Good. Let's keep going. So the same thing, if they don't want to meet the criteria of the role, then yeah, it's a big risk, for the people. And also for them, I don't really understand the mentality of going against what people actually need rather than just imposing what you want.

Gavin Crump: And then it's like, why are you even applying for the role if the criteria don't. Don't meet what you need. It's be selective. Don't just apply to every and any role. I know it's hard times and people are looking for work, I think it pays to be, at least diligent in what you apply to as well so that it's a job that you're going to actually want to stay at as well.

Gavin Crump: Cause otherwise you just bounce between job to job. And even I did that for a bit too, cause I was figuring myself out, but I see a lot of [00:49:00] people with a two months, four months, six months, eight months and it doesn't look good on a survey. No. You can get,

Stephen Drew: yeah, you can

Gavin Crump: get,

Stephen Drew: normally, if someone keeps moving around, there's an, there's a reason.

Stephen Drew: And if you embrace it and you just go like the way you did and go, look, I was finding myself, I wasn't quite happy with where I was going or where I was, then I think that makes sense. But I, the one bit I do say, and one bit I will confess is that, so if you knew me in university, I was the guy who definitely, okay, I've got to phrase this in a way, which I can still put on the podcast.

Stephen Drew: So I was definitely not the guy in the studio who had the Adobe license with a crack. I was definitely not that guy. And I definitely wasn't the guy. Who would have MicroStation version, cause remember back then there was no, the, we were in an era though, guys, when there was no Adobe student licenses cheap, and there was no Adobe [00:50:00] Autodesk version, and you had to know someone or download it on a dodgy site.

Stephen Drew: And I'd have an old version of the software because it was the only one that could be cracked. Hyperfactory. When you

Gavin Crump: say you, we're not talking about us, we're talking about them. The other people.

Stephen Drew: Okay. It might have been hard times, but so I was that guy at the cutting edge, always the tech, and like you were saying is that I think I took pride in being at the cutting edge, but now what I'm.

Stephen Drew: I'm. I'm actually isn't because part of the architecture social is and you kindly talked about the website. I have the same attitude of, okay, I'm not a web designer, but I need to learn it enough that I understand it. I can do it myself because I'm not in a position to hire someone to do the website.

Stephen Drew: And also, There's some really good skills that you learn in it, because now I can do it and I can do the graphic design. I can do it all myself, which is really powerful. But once I get to the point that I've achieved the goal, I'm not interested anymore. Whereas 18 year old Stephen Yeah, there's a

Gavin Crump: point where you [00:51:00] need the skills.

Gavin Crump: I had the same thing in programming. A lot of people say, oh, it doesn't look like you're doing C Sharp, which is like the next step after Dynamo. And I'm like, no, cause there's like hundreds of other developers out there doing it as well. And I found what I need and I found what it works for me. And I found out that there's still, thousands of people that don't know it or learning it.

Gavin Crump: And I'm like, I'd rather stay here and keep funneling these people through to get them all up to the same level. And it's you find that point where you're like, this will do this is what I need. And I don't want to make that mistake. I get an income or what I need to be satisfied with what I've done.

Gavin Crump: Like you said, you built your graphics and your website. Obviously, you can pay some person on Fiverr to go and do the graphics, but they're not your graphics and you didn't have their own personal connection with what you've done. And I have the same thing on my website. I build a lot of the graphics on it and the parts.

Gavin Crump: I use Wix, so I still did a lot of, click and drag. But a lot of the graphics and logos and things like that I made myself and I can look at it and be proud of it for a long time.

Gavin Crump: That's something

Gavin Crump: that I learned bits and pieces through as well. So I think it's really valuable to do that, especially in a business.

Gavin Crump: Cause you've got, that's your identity. Like even I'm wearing like the Aussie BIM Guru shirt. So like [00:52:00] you carry that brand with you and it becomes something that you can really, personally speak and relate to and the clients can say that and it all connects.

Gavin Crump: Yeah.

Stephen Drew: Do you know what? I'm going to high track the BIM track for one second. So I've got something I think you, you will be proud of. I've, I set up on the Architecture Social the marketplace. Okay. And so I've got in the next day or two, I'm going to be having like an image up on there, but I've got an idea for which we're going to roll out.

Stephen Drew: So if you go onto there now, so you know, the background of the landing page, the Architecture Social, you can buy the artwork of that. Oh, cool.

Gavin Crump: I found a really good little website called Redbubble where you can make your own graphics and sell them essentially as well. That's what I've been using for my shirt printing.

Gavin Crump: So don't go to

Stephen Drew: Redbubble because I was going to say, Oh, we're going to do it on the social Gavin. We're going to do it. So

Gavin Crump: I know that's like for a really basic, I think if you can own the marketplace, it's better. Like I sell my own content on my website. Oh, this is sweet. Yeah, you've changed the graphics since I last saw it.

Gavin Crump: Awesome. Yeah, do you know what? It's really cool. I like it. So what

Stephen Drew: do you think about [00:53:00] this, right? So now I've got everywhere t shirts, because I went crazy in the weekend. But basically, so the artwork section, what I've got now is, so every month, we're going to have a student it's going to be an open competition.

Stephen Drew: Now I've got to actually do it because I'm announcing it officially through here. Oh no, this is going to be, I'll have to trim this bit out at the end if it goes wrong. No, we'll keep it in. But basically every month we're going to have a competition. The best piece of artwork then goes on a picture on the wall.

Stephen Drew: People can buy the artwork. It's going to have a QR code on it, which you scan and it'll go to the student's portfolio. And I'm going to give away a fee for every sale after tax, after profit, because you understand that as a business owner, I can't say the whole thing, otherwise I'll get, but then I'm thinking between 10 to 20 percent we'll give back to the student for every painting that gets sold.

Stephen Drew: That's a great idea. I love that. Are

Gavin Crump: you in? Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I can see I can see one of my courses is on here too. The Performance Network Rhino inside course. [00:54:00]

Stephen Drew: Oh yeah that's that links to Gen Ed Performance Network. Yeah, no, of course. Are you on there? Yeah, that's

Gavin Crump: my course.

Gavin Crump: Yeah,

Stephen Drew: I'm gonna have to, I'll walk you through. Now we're officially mates online, so I'll star that and I'll boost you up in the store.

Gavin Crump: No, it's very cool. It's good. A lot of things here too, like event listings. This is great. This is very exciting. Yeah. I look forward to seeing this part grow.

Gavin Crump: This is a great idea. I like this. Yeah, it beats Redbubble.

Stephen Drew: Okay. Yes. Yes, this is me on the weekend because sometimes I'm a bit of a no lifer and I just was doing on

Gavin Crump: the weekend. I locked myself in my room for about a year just to learn Revit, so I've definitely been one with the no lifer.

Stephen Drew: You let me off, but it's the perfect time.

Stephen Drew: I was

Gavin Crump: going to say I still play Magic the Gathering too, so don't worry, my life is still like a bit of a no lifer sometimes.

Stephen Drew: Do you know what Oh, this would be interesting.

Gaming and Personal Interests
---

Stephen Drew: Have you seen the Dungeons and Dragons group on the Architecture Social we're doing? Ah, no, there's one on there? Yeah, so we've got to go, it's called Dungeons, Architects and Dragons, right?

Stephen Drew: And so [00:55:00] Ben, who's arranging it, I've never played Dungeons and Dragons. He's making it so that you have to fill out a form, okay, and then He's gonna do it so that he's gonna be the game master. I've never done it before. And he's gonna be all on Zoom and he's gonna assign us rough characters that we embellish.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. There you go. So magic

Gavin Crump: views and traits and things like that. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I want to see, why don't we do it?

Gavin Crump: I'm just getting into D& D right now, I've got a friend that's trying to invite me into their campaign as well here, so I'm just brushing back up on the rules for version 5. 3 or whatever one they're at now.

Gavin Crump: So yeah, that might be something I can find some time for, yeah.

Stephen Drew: We'll have to change the name from Dungeons, Architects and Dragons to Dungeon Architects BIM and Dragons and that I've

Gavin Crump: still got like a tiny bit of architecture in me, just not too much now. Yeah. ,

Stephen Drew: We'll do that. But alright.

Stephen Drew: I think we ha we're around the hour mark. So what I would say, I think it's been a great chat. Maybe what we can do yeah. We can return [00:56:00] on a particular topic. So the next one we have do we can even, it can be either Willer Warcraft or we can have a particular subject. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And we can talk and do something on the side.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Maybe as well, what would be really cool, but I'm going really off on one, is that we can have someone ask me a new questions and we can see who knows more World of Warcraft

Gavin Crump: lore. Oh, you'll beat me hands down. I'm not the redshirt guy, that's for sure.

Stephen Drew: I know that reference. Yeah, the redshirt, yeah.

Stephen Drew: I don't know, that's pretty up in there, I reckon.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, for anyone that doesn't know that hasn't played WoW, it's this guy that basically knows all the lore and he comes to all the conventions at Blizzard and essentially picks out the smartest, smallest details that they get wrong between the games and they go and fix them for him in the game.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I was playing it back in 2004, but I do think that You've

Gavin Crump: got more history with it than me. I started playing it when I became single, so that was probably I had a good bachelor period where I got on the wow, when I finally had time for

Stephen Drew: it. Okay, World of Warcraft is not going to help the [00:57:00] bachelor period.

Stephen Drew: It's going to extend the period. And

Gavin Crump: you accentuated it, yeah. Once my partner showed up, I said, I'd better stop playing wow now. That was, I think, 2012 through to 2015. So I got about three years in there, yeah. But I didn't get to play the classic days when it was like in its heyday, but we could always check out classic, maybe.

Gavin Crump: I know they've just got that going as well. So

Stephen Drew: I played a little bit of it. And then I re remembered that, how brutal it was. I basically, I, cause in the old days, you got to love 60. I got to 20 and I was like, Oh my God. But then I, what I remembered is back then I had loads of time on my hands.

Stephen Drew: It's the classic problem. I'm sure we have, but it's I used to, hypothetically again, maybe use BitTorrent and stuff to download films and now I have money, I can buy stuff and I buy everything.

Gavin Crump: We live in an age where information is just so readily available and products are so readily accessible as well.

Gavin Crump: It's crazy. I even have to just think about the days of dial up internet and how much things have changed and It's hard to even explain it to generations now that haven't experienced it at all. All they've known is the internet. [00:58:00] It's a strange sort of meeting point of the difficulty of actually accessing things.

Gavin Crump: I think we re appreciate it more and we're better at troubleshooting problems because we had to be the guy toggling the switches on the modems and trying to figure out what's going on. And you couldn't just go on your mobile and do a little FAQ where you're trying to connect your computer to the internet with mobile data.

Gavin Crump: You had to genuinely just guess your way through it.

Stephen Drew: Where someone picked up the phone, it would cut off the dial up. I remember like Mum, oh gosh, yeah. Do you remember? And she's I want to call your auntie in half an hour. You better be off. And I'm like, I can't because you know the dial I downloaded like the album of Nickelback, which was like.

Stephen Drew: And then halfway through the song, it would just go and

Gavin Crump: then you're like, Re establish the connection. Oh man. Yeah. Times have changed. Yeah. And even in, in BIM and all these other things, there's just so much more training data out there and you don't have to guess your way through the programs anymore.

Gavin Crump: It's changing a lot. So yeah, I'm glad it has, like I wouldn't want everyone to go through what we went through, but. I

Stephen Drew: I, it was, I like, it's like the best of times, the worst of times. Oh yeah,

Gavin Crump: [00:59:00] It's like good times, the blessed of times, but yeah, no, we had had some good times in the 90s.

Gavin Crump: I think

Stephen Drew: And last thing before we go, just so we got to add each, are you on Steam? I've got Steam.

Gavin Crump: I think I am. Yeah. I'd have to go and check my ID cause I don't use it too frequently. I'm mostly a PlayStation player these days. Oh,

Stephen Drew: PSN. Okay.

Gavin Crump: Yeah, my handles I've got the handle if you want it and if anyone else wants it.

Gavin Crump: You're going to publicly put your handle on the podcast? Yeah, it's called it's called Lord of Riots 88. So anyone that plays Magic the Gathering might know the reference

Stephen Drew: there, but Right I'm into the voids because, I'm also cool. I like that. Yeah, that's pretty good. And I'll tell you what, I've got an embarrassing amount of games on there.

Stephen Drew: You will look at it and I've done a few sales before, yeah, they build up pretty fast. Alright, how many games do you think I got on there? I'll just guess you got a few hundred, maybe. 3, 500. What? Yeah. I know. They some [01:00:00] people use the analogy and I'm not saying it's true, it's having too many shoes in the closet or something like that.

Stephen Drew: I've got like a billion games on my Steam account. That's how bad, that's how bad I am.

Gavin Crump: Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. Okay. And I definitely bow down my gaming hat to you with that one. That's you win that one. I don't think I even own that many games, full stop. It's

Stephen Drew: Embarrassing amount.

Stephen Drew: And I haven't played all of them, but so

Gavin Crump: Some achievement on steam for doing that, but only a few people.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Gabe Newell, the owner of I put a wing on this house, do you know what I'm saying? I'm telling you. But I think, so we've covered Steam, we've covered World of Warcraft, we have covered BIM and stuff as well and

Final Thoughts and Future Plans
---

Gavin Crump: I always talk about BIM, because I do a lot of BIM talks, and it's nice to just connect it all back to the facets of life that aren't just about BIM as well because we're all human at the end of the day, and I don't eat and sleep BIM too often.

Gavin Crump: I like a

Stephen Drew: big flow. No, I think it's more about with BIM or whatever you do in life, I think that it's more [01:01:00] about the social is a combination of items. It's ideas that I've had over the years and it's, I've managed to do that because of my experience getting there and the fact that I worked in the industry and the fact that I've done recruitment all helps to get there.

Stephen Drew: Part of

Gavin Crump: the journey, isn't it? Even my my consulting business, there were steps to that, that I'd laid in place years before I started doing it. Like my YouTube was part of an idea of being someone so I could actually have my business and be known as someone. So there's all little.

Gavin Crump: Little stepping stones along the way, and that's always advice I give people as well when they're looking to be consultants or doing something more abstract is like you need to have that pathway mapped out to some degree, even if it's an abstract pathway, it's not just a, I open a business tomorrow and the clients show up, it's a, it's much more, calculated pathway so that when you're on there, you can keep guiding yourself through it the next to the next step of the way.

Gavin Crump: And it's really important. Like with your social platform, I'm sure there's still steps that we haven't heard about that you're planning and it's all coming together. I need,

Stephen Drew: I need to get a Gavin Crump special artwork with where we can, the QR code goes. Yeah, I can

Gavin Crump: contribute a couple, yeah. Yeah, we need [01:02:00] that.

Gavin Crump: I've got one of Australia where it's got all the program logos built up, all the states of Australia. So that could be a fun little graphic.

Stephen Drew: Let's do it. And we can haggle on the split of the commit on the things, huh?

Gavin Crump: Yeah, no, that sounds fun. That sounds fun. Yeah, I've got to get on there more often.

Gavin Crump: I use LinkedIn a little bit these days, but I am trying to find some new platforms just that are a little bit more focal and to the point because I find that LinkedIn is becoming a bit of a Facebook. So maybe we can do that. Social could be the next the next LinkedIn for me.

Stephen Drew: Hey, that would be cool, isn't it?

Stephen Drew: That would, and I I've already got the Dungeons and Dragons. So I might,

Gavin Crump: yeah, I know how

Stephen Drew: to get, yeah. Cause it's the, it's passion for gaming. So we'll ignore the architecture and the BIM. We'll just go. Yeah, for me

Gavin Crump: it'll

Stephen Drew: just be

Gavin Crump: a matter of time

Stephen Drew: commitment. Once I can sort that out I'll be there for sure.

Stephen Drew: No, you're totally cool. If I think of it like an experiment, we do as much or as little as you want. And what was I going to say? The last thing I was going to say, just on the point of, I think the analogy for this and like BIM or anything you can't just be a BIM person, or for instance, I tell you the other day, someone said to me, Steve, I [01:03:00] want to build an architecture community.

Stephen Drew: Can you tell me how to do it? And At first, I don't think this person actually understood the gravity of the question, because I was like, A, don't do it, because it takes up all my time. But I was like, you can't just want to do a community, and I think it's like BIM or anything, you can't just say, you've got to live it, breathe it, and then it, it comes.

Stephen Drew: You want to

Gavin Crump: do it first step, and then everything has to come from there, yeah.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, so it's like the your BIM YouTube channel, which is really helpful, comes from your experiences on where you were. So for anyone listening to me, if you want to, if you want to build your own social platform or be on YouTube, or you're thinking of becoming a BIM manager, think about more of the journey getting there or what you want to do.

Stephen Drew: Getting that hands on experience and you might find that you end up dumping a BIM Manager, you do something else or you do something else, but you find your own passion and that kind of search for what's interesting is going to make you more successful because you're going to be doing something you're passionate about.

Stephen Drew: Do you know what I mean? [01:04:00]

Gavin Crump: And have your motivation as well. Have a reason for it. Like mine was actually born out of like frustration, out of the closed nature. of BIM in our industry at the time. And for yourself, I'm sure you're trying to make everyone more socially connected and active and collaborative.

Gavin Crump: And there's probably similar motives there as well. So I think that's really important too. Wanting to do it's one thing, but knowing why you want to do it. That's probably the bigger part, because that's what drives you forward to keep doing it as well.

Stephen Drew: You definitely have passion and you, I tell you what, you will definitely be making.

Stephen Drew: The people proud that you crashed the BIM model off that decision.

Gavin Crump: I still see them back in Adelaide sometimes for drinks and they still remind me of it, of course, but.

Stephen Drew: Oh yeah, it's going to be brought up every time he goes, he's got a BIM consultancy now and he crashed the BIM model and you're like.

Stephen Drew: But I'm the same. I would just totally bring it

Gavin Crump: up to every Yeah, but it's good fun. Someone told me that they found out that story and they're like, did that really happen? It's this guy told me and I'm like, I know exactly who told you based on how you told me. I know the guy. So it's good.

Gavin Crump: It's good fun. But that keeps you humble. It reminds you of where you came from and [01:05:00] Yeah. So it's important. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: We're everywhere. Everyone makes mistakes, but for anyone listening, they can find you online. You are on the social, but let's talk about where they can find you, your YouTube channel.

Gavin Crump: A few places, I guess on YouTube.

Gavin Crump: Aussie BIM Guru is the channel name. So that's Aussie with two S's, not the Z variant. And I'm also on LinkedIn just as Gavin Crump. I think I'm actually like the Gavin Crump. I was on there quite early. So I was lucky. I had a dormant LinkedIn for 10 years and never used it. And then finally, so I have no numbers after my name, luckily, which is cool.

Gavin Crump: You can find me for consulting at BIM Guru, so www. bimguru. com. au. So similar to my YouTube channel, but without the Aussie. And in general, you can just contact me through either my email, which is aussiebimguru. gmail. com just for general queries. If you're having trouble with the program, just let me know.

Gavin Crump: I don't do like freemium work too often. Like I'll help to a point, like maybe I'll give you like five minutes of coding time just to see if I, if it's a really easy solution, I'll just, I'll show you how to do it. It's I need you to build a script for me. I'm like, okay, cool. Now we're [01:06:00] consulting. There's a fine line, but but I try to be available for especially students or graduates that are looking for advice on where to begin.

Gavin Crump: I've got literally one that I'm getting back to after this podcast me right before. And I said, I'll get back to you. And a few hours with some advice. So if you're struggling or just be confused or you just need like a little bit of a push in the right direction just let me know.

Gavin Crump: I think I've responded to every LinkedIn message I've ever got, even if it's just telling outsourcers to leave me alone. Yeah, so there's a lot of ways you can reach me. I'm probably a little bit too accessible. If anything, my phone buzzes all day. But yeah, no, definitely.

Gavin Crump: I'm keen to help people out where I can and I'll do my best too, so don't hesitate to reach out. I don't bite. It's amazing what you've done.

Stephen Drew: It's so amazing.

Gavin Crump: Because I see what you're doing too and it reminds me of when I was starting off my channel and just getting that momentum and I can see that this is going to go a long way in the social.

Gavin Crump: I can see the, I can see the trajectory for it for sure.

Stephen Drew: You are I'm a bit, it's a bit, I'm a bit torn because I love my, my, my lad, Tom Mahone, you've got the wool of the warcraft, so you're doing well at being like the best BIM friend right now, do you understand [01:07:00] what

Gavin Crump: I'm saying?

Gavin Crump: Tom's great too, Tom can do a lot of things that I can't do in BIM, and I'm sure I can do a lot of things that he can't do in World of Warcraft,

Stephen Drew: you two would be the dream team on it, but hey, just the last thing before, just so you know, on the Architecture Social, I had put you, As supported channels, you're a friend of the social, so you might get one or two subscribers from them.

Stephen Drew: And the sole thing

Gavin Crump: I say is you're welcome. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I

Gavin Crump: mean, the subscriber count doesn't bother me too much. It's just about sharing and getting the knowledge out there. That's my motivator. And that's what that sort of thing does that makes people aware of what I do. And for those that are wondering when I'm coming back, I've been on break for about two months.

Gavin Crump: I'll be back on probably second week of February, if anyone's freaking out. Let them know. So I'll be back in swinging. So in a course platform, we'll be coming about a month after that. So busy year ahead. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: I can't wait to follow in. So thank you so much, Gavin.

Gavin Crump: I think you are. I've had a great time on here.

Gavin Crump: Really good free flow discussion is really my favorite sort of podcast. So I've had a great time. So yeah.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant. I hope that the bloody files are exported all right now. So I'm going to click the button and we'll find out Gavin. Otherwise [01:08:00] I'm going to literally jump out of the bridge. See

Gavin Crump: you

Stephen Drew: Okay.