Navigating BIM and Architectural Innovations with Pierre Venter

0029 - Pierre Venter, BIM Initiative
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[00:00:00]

Introduction and Welcoming Pierre Venter
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Stephen Drew: Hello everyone. I am Steven Drew from the architecture social and I, and it's Friday night, it's Friday night and I've got company with, with someone that's become someone from the architectural industry where I have over the years, I've got to know. On a level that we speak on the phone, we can have long chats like old friends and talk about the ways of the world, talk about the BIM industry and talk about the architecture industry.

Stephen Drew: I am lucky to be joined by my old compadre, Pierre Venter. Pierre, how are you today?

Pierre Venter: Stephen, I'm great. Can't complain. No, I am. I'm going to do the English thing. Complain away.

Coping with Coronavirus and Weather Woes
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Pierre Venter: Coronavirus world. Oh, I woke up this morning. It was four degrees outside here. I'm in Kingston and I was really mad. You know, you can see the jerseys on and everything, you know, coming, [00:01:00] coming from Africa, it's, it's cold in England.

Pierre Venter: I'm not talking about the people and the compassion. I'm just talking about the

Stephen Drew: weather. It is. It is. And of course, we're not gonna, we're not, we're not going to go into the intricacies of what's happened on, but it's important as human beings to acknowledge that now is quite a stressful time. You're inevitably in this awful situation.

Stephen Drew: We're all in it in architecture. We're all in the, in the midst of coronavirus. And I'm not particularly interested in having a debate on Boris Johnson's ludicrous tier three system. Oops. Sorry. Did I say too much?

Reflecting on Early Career and BIM Beginnings
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Stephen Drew: Did I say not enough, but, but what we're talking about, it is a completely stressful, so we have all that going on, but in terms of context, I think it's really important that why I'm laughing and why I'm comfortable is because we've inadvertently known each other for many years, we kind of like go in and out of conversations naturally.

Stephen Drew: because of where we are in time, but we met many moons, many [00:02:00] moons ago, just when I was after being a part two architecture system, I trained up in them a little bit in the, in the architectural practice. I use it a little bit, but this was 2014. This is where it was when Revit was the, the. Then the thing that people needed to conquer this was the, on the agenda of any architectural practice in the UK in 2013, 2014.

Stephen Drew: They kind of knew they had to get Revit on board and they were going about it. And so at the time I left being a part of architectural assistant and I joined Bespoke Careers, which is a good recruitment company. It is a good recruitment company. And at the time, they sponsored an event called BIM Net.

Stephen Drew: Me and you met and we had many good conversations, and that's where I know of yourself, because we were there in person, not in this digital world, online, we were physically in Clark and Well, we were talking about BIM, [00:03:00] and that's where we met. So maybe if you rewind here for everyone here, so maybe give a bit of your backstory in terms of architecture, then going into BIM, and then how about you came, how, how our paths crossed in London 2014.

Stephen Drew: That would be amazing intro.

Pierre Venter: Yeah, so Stephen, an interesting one. I mean, I spent most of my life up until 2013 in South Africa and Durban. On the East Coast played water polo for 17 years. Really enjoyed surfing, diving, swimming, sailing, all water sports. And then to put it in context, I arrive in the UK and I've never been in the Thames River, which is just down the road.

Pierre Venter: Me neither. I've never gone for a swim, it's too bloody cold. I can't take it. No, no good coming here. Yeah, so I studied architecture at the University of Queensland. Natal at the time, it's now University of KwaZulu Natal. Part of [00:04:00] the changes that have taken place in the, in South Africa and the, and the provinces, et cetera graduated in 1990 and entered into the fray.

Pierre Venter: And one of the problems that we encountered was within my two years of registration, ended up with the firm closing down. We went into the first sort of economic recession in South Africa. And what do you do? You're a young, young graduate. You've just qualified. You've got this ability to put architect behind your name and say, I am an architect, but you've got nowhere to work.

Pierre Venter: Now, there's some parallels to where we are now.

Stephen Drew: Oh, you tell you what, you couldn't get away with that in the UK, isn't it? I remember when I was in architectural practice and I was an architectural assistant, and you can't say you're an architect. So, so tell me, that's really interesting.

Journey to the UK and Early BIM Experiences
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Stephen Drew: I've got a friend who's So who's actually the bid manager, Adams and Associates David Rose, and he's South African as well, but tell me what kind of in terms of my, maybe it goes slightly personal in [00:05:00] this sense, but in terms of when did you, when did you come to the UK and what made you decide that you wanted to kind of come to our terms of the weird and wonderful world of London, what, what brought you to that decision?

Stephen Drew: I was

Pierre Venter: practicing on my own at that stage, small micro practice doing consultation, teaching Revit Providing architectural services to one of the, the big Autodesk resellers in South Africa. And a friend of mine here in the UK said he had a job, spoke to an architect from, from an interior design practice who were doing some work and said, well, I've got a friend in South Africa.

Pierre Venter: Quickly to tell you is that there were three interviews. Because, you know, now we're going back in time where we still had Skype and that kind of thing. And the guy said, you've got the job. It took nine days. Basically sold the house, packed up the business. Wow. That quick you sold the house? Jumped in the van.

Pierre Venter: I've [00:06:00] never, I promise you, I've never been so knackered in my life. I work 20 plus hours a day. You think as a student, you work hard. I promise you, this was the hardest that I've worked.

Stephen Drew: Well, I know you work hard. Yeah, so I

Pierre Venter: fell asleep on the plane, which I normally don't do. And they actually had to come and check that I was still alive.

Pierre Venter: They put a mirror over my mouth. Anyway, I arrived two days later, started work in the city. And that was basically to come for two particular projects and just the challenge was really good and they wanted to implement Revit. And that was where my key focus was around BIM implementation and this new tool Revit.

Stephen Drew: Well, you've always been passionate about it and, and, and, and the thing is, even with me, so in terms of the role of, at the time, in terms of architectural bim, I was hosting an event and I was lucky that I actually worked in industry and I worked on Revit. And what I, I really enjoyed and the impression that I always retained in terms of yourself is that you are [00:07:00] very, very giving.

Stephen Drew: In terms of I, a believer of sharing information, because it's like everything else in life, you have some people, which of course we all work really hard and, you know, in BIM, I think a lot of it is about collaboration. Yes. You can script something and keep it for yourself and hold that up. But actually in terms of the BIM community, in terms of many communities, it's about giving back and contributing.

Stephen Drew: And the point is that's where I met you. Physically in an event, openly talking about BIM, the ins and outs. And if you remember the time, my friend, Chris Rossetto, who's kind of a BIM manager. I love Chris. Chris, if you're listening, shout out to you. You are an absolute gentleman and completely awesome at what you do.

Stephen Drew: But that's the point where. I had used Reddit for a little while. Chris Rosello was amazing at what he does. And I remember he was engrossed into a conversation with you as well. And that was back in 2014. So, what was the year you moved to London? Was it around that time that we met? [00:08:00] Yeah. I'd come in

Pierre Venter: March 2013, so it was, it was just prior to that and there had been some movements in, in, in where I was living in London.

Pierre Venter: I mean, I've really been benefited by coming into London and being, I'll say this side of the city, close to the river. Get on my bicycle, head off out to Thames Ditton and out down to Surrey Hills. I cycle. I mean, I'm keen on doing a bit of cycling. Great. And yeah, so it was at that time, it was that dynamic.

Evolution of BIM and Revit
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Pierre Venter: I mean, the one thing about Revit, BIM, all these things is that the changes that we're experiencing now, Are just phenomenal. The technologies quick one is that I've just, I've just taken a project I did in 2005, which was a proposal, and I'm going to publish it on my, my LinkedIn just for people to see, but it's something I think is important.

Pierre Venter: Go back and have a look at a project that [00:09:00] you did before. And to put that in context, to do a single rendering of really low resolution was 30 hours of work on a single image. Right. I've got a little bit of extra horsepower sitting in front of me right now. It's a little P53. Just rub the But you now do, you now do a 4K or an 8K resolution render in under two minutes.

Pierre Venter: And it's absolutely stunning. So this, this, the kind of dynamic that we're in is that this amazing capability. But the review process is so important. Because what you thought was great Actually, it was a pile of junk. But because you've now got these additional tools, you can actually start seeing where to go.

Pierre Venter: We're getting information and also information overload.

Stephen Drew: It's interesting. So to put it into context, because I love this topic and let's go for that, because in terms of listeners who are listening [00:10:00] to this, Pierre, we're going to get people that have used Revit for a long period of time, as well as people that are using it now, or maybe for instance, students which are literally just learning Revit, they're entering it and it's the status quo, but to kind of put it in comparison.

Stephen Drew: So in terms of the UK, and this is my opinion, and let's see what you think as well. So AutoCAD and microstation was prevalent up until I reckon 2012. It was really big in 2000, but up until 2012, it was a really, really big thing. And then 2012, we started having the pressure in the UK business environment to start going to Revit.

Stephen Drew: That doesn't mean, doesn't mean that companies did it straight away. It was a slow transition, which in some cases is even happening today. And you can go into the debate about every company is still transitioning because it's to what level of BIM you use, but without any jargon or anything like that. You, you, what was the first year you used Revit?

Stephen Drew: 2003 I

Pierre Venter: bought [00:11:00] my first package.

Stephen Drew: Right, so this is where we're going with this. So in 2003, it was the first time you used Revit, and it was being introduced in the UK. So that's where I, you know, that's where I live, and that's where you know. And I think it's fairly accurate to say 2013 is when people were saying, right, we need to deal with this.

Stephen Drew: 2015 is when, and 2015 is when people started panicking. But you know what I'm on about. It was not used in the UK at all. So this opportunity that your friend talked about came about. In that recent period of time, so for anyone that's been using Revit now compared to before, can you give us a little bit of a flavor of how it's changed over the years and what maybe what it was like to first use Revit?

Pierre Venter: Well to put this this in context as well is that I detest AutoCAD. Right. So anybody out there, I'm an Autodesk user, use the whole suite, but I really dislike AutoCAD. And the reason behind that was I [00:12:00] actually originally purchased a package called Genesis. And Genesis was one of the first parametric applications that I ever tried.

Pierre Venter: At the same time, I'd just done a course on draw base. I was using an old mini mainframe system called our plan.

Stephen Drew: Right.

Pierre Venter: When we first started a couple of years prior to that at Varsity, to start up the PC took 15 minutes. It was an XT, it was this size, five floppies. I mean Now we come along and we've got more power in this little device.

Pierre Venter: You're more involved. People understand.

Stephen Drew: Yeah.

Pierre Venter: So from that really slow 2D, lots and lots of redlining, and starting to make the move. That was a Revit version 5. 0. And I looked at it and said, I'm swapping because I could see immediately. This ability to see things three dimensions, but also to be able to produce the [00:13:00] 2d things that other people needed to see that just that switch was for me.

Pierre Venter: Mind blowing mind blowing we've encountered lots of resistance because this is a change and a common term you hear is, but we don't do it that way and a parallel to this exactly is what is the imperial measurement? I only work in metric until I deal with people from the, from the retail, the rental and, and retail and they want everything in square feet so they can market it.

Pierre Venter: And that, that's the sort of quandary where we've been in our, in our industry is that we've got, on one side, America's still working with 30 feet ten inches. Mind blowing that somebody actually does that.

Stephen Drew: It's true. My, my brain always thinks of metric. I struggle with that as well, Pierre. I, I, I find That completely fascinating.

Stephen Drew: And what I would say is that when I was a part two architectural assistant, I remember being in [00:14:00] the architectural office. And so EPR Architects is an amazing company. If anyone's listening, they're really, really good. And they actually were ahead of the curve. And now when I say ahead of the curve, the UK was still far behind in terms of Revit.

Stephen Drew: Okay, so they were an early adopter, but what you know as well, Pierre, is that being an early adopter in terms of the UK didn't necessarily mean that you were an early adopter of BIM in terms of the world, and so just to give it a bit of context here in 2014 So you're, you know, you had people like yourself, you had Chris Roseo, Australian, South African, my friend, David Rose, he's South African as well.

Stephen Drew: You have yourself, you have many other people. And what was bizarre was that there was this kind of Australian BIM rush or as I nickname it now, never thought of it like before, but it was like that, where actually some amazing, talented architects who were just very good at BIM came to the UK and they became BIM managers because During this period of time, [00:15:00] no one knew what was going on.

Stephen Drew: And you had this mad scenario where sometimes you could have a part two architectural assistant somewhere could become very, very successful as a manager, which would never normally happen in any other. Environment, but actually during this world, they proved they were, if they were very, very good. And what I'm saying is it was this crazy opportunity within this space to exceed or become pivotal roles where you wouldn't else before.

Challenges and Successes in BIM Implementation
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Stephen Drew: But another thing that's probably important, and this is my opinion in terms of BIM, well, there's so many success stories where I'm on about. There's so many different stories with BIM where you have a lot of people that have good BIM consultancies. I know the stuff that you do is really, really well, and you also have some people that are in for it for a quick buck.

Stephen Drew: And what I'm on about is that people that, like yourself, haven't Unlike yourself haven't, let me rephrase that, worked on it since [00:16:00] 1994. Unlike yourself, do not understand the BIM process. You understand the BIM theory, you've been there, and you've had really nice chats with me about, because BIM is a methodology.

Stephen Drew: That's my understanding. Revit's a tool. And the point is, you need to understand the brief, the agenda, what you're doing. It's not just about how you rule the software. And I think that From my outside of view is that there was a period where in quote, unquote, I call it the bin bubble bubble, where certain people could do very well for a certain short period of time, but actually when the acid test came to it, when they were down to the line and when they had to stay on a project, it was incredibly difficult.

Stephen Drew: But as you know, as well from my opinion, you're someone I respect in terms of Ben, you're someone that I I've, we've talked over the years. It's the UK's definition of BIM, where I sat has completely, completely changed. So you came in 2013, 2014. How was it like [00:17:00] then? Maybe you start there. Maybe we can talk about how it's like now, how things have changed.

Pierre Venter: Right. So I think that fundamentally, one of our biggest problems is that we thought that software Was the solution, right? And recently I did a talk for a organization called Exceptional BIM in South Africa and they're a training and development group. What it is, is that for me as an architect, fundamentally.

Pierre Venter: That's probably the most important part of BIM, is in fact the pen. Right. Because I'm still somebody who, and I did show you this a little bit earlier, but it was pieces of paper which is not very eco sensitive and all the rest of it, but it gives me a great sense of, of relationship. But one of the key things is that if we don't have the fundamental knowledge, right, we're not going to do well at BIM.

Pierre Venter: The other part is that BIM is about [00:18:00] people firstly, and when you put a team together, you get the best results. And the analogy is a rugby team. You have the big guy, who's the prop. Because not everybody can be big in, in the front as the prop.

Stephen Drew: That was my, that was my role when I was in . Yeah. I wasn't good.

Stephen Drew: Good for much, but the, the, the, the prop ,

Pierre Venter: yeah. Know I was a center and a wing, so I was the sprint out in the outside. But having a team, taking these technology enablers, and that's the part that Boom is about. And when we started, I'll be the first to admit that I used Revit as a drafting tool. Right.

Pierre Venter: Because basically that deliverable of putting out a drawing was the only result, not using and the tools just didn't have it. I told you about the 30 hours to render something. We didn't have the same capacity that the hardware now gives us. I do think that [00:19:00] part of the enabling those young people and I've worked with a couple of people that during my time in the UK and the younger people coming out who could grasp the technology.

Pierre Venter: Became in a way the technology enabler in a practice, the old guys like me, gray and what have you, who had a resistance to the change, saw the person as providing that skill, which got things out the door and that's it, we need to get production, but the whole part about the early start of BIM was How to get a series of, of documents out that would put your design forward, because that's ultimately what architecture is about is creating those spaces.

Pierre Venter: So it's a, it's a, it's a funny boat. It's almost like surfing. If you put too much. Weight on the front foot, you go tearing down the wave, it's almost like I did snowboarding at the, at the, what's it, the snow dome in [00:20:00] Milton Keynes. Fell off, I don't know, can't tell you how many times, and I thought I was a good surfer, so.

Pierre Venter: Anyway, so the, the BIM process, ultimately, that is something that as we've moved currently, I'm really happy to be this side of the pond. Not back in South Africa right now, because of the way that the UK and the people involved in the UK BIM Alliance, Centre for Digital Built Britain, et cetera, all those people are contributing to a leading place in the world.

Pierre Venter: You know, if we weren't there, we wouldn't have the ISO standard being pushed like it is now. So it's a great part to be because of the enabling that we're getting with putting things together.

Stephen Drew: I think that's a really good to kind of introduction to it. And, and that's the kind of bit that what I didn't learn so much is, so when I was a part two, when it was 2013, 2014, I was quite Keen to learn Revit [00:21:00] because I felt like it was the way to go.

Stephen Drew: And I assimilated my assumption of Revit based upon what I thought it was. I could kind of see from being a video gamer, like a bit of a geek that is the way to go. And the concepts that you talk about now in terms of. teams, collaboration, and people, it kind of felt like the norm because I was someone that would play World of Warcraft online and, and to, to, to kill the boss, you need the 60 people or talking to each other.

Stephen Drew: You needed the majors, you needed this, you needed that, and you needed the priest to heal you. And therefore, if you didn't do it, you couldn't do the task. And so these. Concepts I realized now is subliminally was in me that I'm like, well, yeah, of course, Revit makes much more sense, but I think that it's taken practices a lot of time to realize that, but also partly not due to their own fault as in and now I'm sure you can go to many examples where you'd say, look, any project is.

Stephen Drew: Better off in BIM, I would [00:22:00] agree with you at the start, though. There was definitely what I saw is, so when I moved away from working in architecture, so EPO is always trying to push towards BIM. They were always trying to do it the right way. And you know, it's probably like the first few BIM models you're going to get in the office.

Stephen Drew: It's like, let's be realistic. It's like everything else is going to be mistakes that people learn. On those projects, which are going to inform how to do a better BIM model. And maybe they're not quite BIM level one, BIM level two, they're like 5. But you needed to do them to get where you wanted to go.

Stephen Drew: And there's no shame in that. I always find it mad how people can be worried about it. But you get what I mean, Pierre, you have to learn. You have to use BIM and half of the things it's like you tell me this now. But what I think is that maybe you make certain mistakes in certain BIM models. which make it clunky, make it difficult.

Stephen Drew: And then the next one you go, do not do this scenario because that is a world of pain and we're not going to do it again.

Pierre Venter: Now, it's an interesting one [00:23:00] because that project that I took and reviewed, it's the one area that I find In a large number of practices and people that I talk to is we, we just don't make that tangible stop and review what we've just done.

Pierre Venter: And if we did that a couple of times during the project, and at the end of the project, it would have informed us along the way, and we would constantly improve the cycle. But we're normally in such a rush to get things done. We don't perform that action and the review really starts to say. If you start building the team, and that's the thing about a team is you don't just turn the light on and everybody's in a team and the teams that we're talking about right now is not just in an architect's practice.

Pierre Venter: It's engagement from the client right the way through to the contractor, to the handover, and then ultimately the end user, end use person. That's that whole team. And it's a very, [00:24:00] it's a different approach. I think that we're starting to see the changes that that's bringing.

Project Management and Team Dynamics in BIM
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Stephen Drew: Let's build upon that because you're onto something which I find it's really interesting because I think when people associate BIM and Revit, they associate, they can maybe, right, associate it with in terms of how well you know the program, how long you know, you know, all the shortcuts, how much you know all that, and yes, that's really important, but in terms of what you just talked about there for anyone, you talked about project management, you talked about reviews, you're talking about it.

Stephen Drew: Delivering a project alongside BIM. And in terms of BIM is an amazing tool, but what I quite like that, which you're fleshing out is that actually BIM is not just or in terms of this context, in terms of building a project, there's an awful lot of project management that is involved in it. It's an awful lot of people management.

Stephen Drew: It's an awful lot of several users, several companies using a BIM model. And that's the bit, that's the strategic bit that you talked about, which I [00:25:00] think can sometimes. easily go amiss because it's one thing to know the software, but from an outsider point of view, because I've not used it for many years, what it seems like to me, half of what a successful architectural practice is, is that they learn from examples of what did and didn't work.

Stephen Drew: And they go, okay, for this project, we need these people. We're going to do these reviews, which you're talking about, and we're going to deliver it in BIM. We're going to use this software and we're going to have a BIM manager. We're going to have a BIM coordinator to help them. And therefore it's set up.

Stephen Drew: Have you found that over the years that what's it like now then, Pierre, in terms of projects? Is it still very much that some projects, unfortunately, they do not get planned correctly at the start and inherit problems going on, or do you think that people are slowly getting there or is it a combination of both?

Pierre Venter: I think one of our first problems that we've made for ourselves as an industry is that we get a team together, architects, engineers, client, contractor. [00:26:00] We do a great project with all the little niggles in the warts in between, come up with something that's finished, disassemble the team. And reassemble a totally new team on another project instead of taking that team and transplanting it and doing the next project.

Pierre Venter: Now, I'm not saying that that isn't part of the dynamic, but we do it all the time. And those companies that are engaged now with contractors, large tier ones, et cetera, that have followed through with the same team are starting to experience the kind of benefits that by having the same people with a comfortable relationship in the team.

Pierre Venter: Doesn't mean that there's not going to be tensions and all the rest of that, but that they engage, they get the benefit because now everybody is conscious about somebody else. Because part of this team thing is all about mutual respect as well. You know, and we agree to disagree as long as you don't.

Pierre Venter: Disagree with me. It's fine. But

Stephen Drew: yeah, right. Go on. I know [00:27:00] you're super approachable and you care about the company,

Pierre Venter: but I do think, I think that the, the real part about the way that we do anything is actually establishing. And that's exactly what happens in the ISO standard and the BS 1192, but now the ISO standard is we formalize all the fundamental pieces.

Pierre Venter: And there's a couple of tools out there that are starting to really enable us even further. And we're not talking about trade names and all the rest of it, but there are some of these that I got engaged. I had a two year period where I was doing some time in Saudi Arabia and absolutely brilliant experience.

Pierre Venter: There was an application that came out called LOD planner, which has now gone and it's changed its name. But at the time that was absolutely brilliant. It started looking at planning and project management. Now, personally, I don't like project managers. Okay. So then, but that's because I'm an architect and I originally as architect, I did all [00:28:00] those things myself, but I do, I do understand.

Pierre Venter: There's definitely a place where project management is critical. However, with all of these things that BIM brings to us, what's the one problem that we do typically unrealistic expectations. Because people don't know how long it takes to put out a drawing.

Stephen Drew: Right.

Pierre Venter: And, and it's not finite. Design takes time.

Pierre Venter: But there's a couple of things that other industries have a much better set of benchmarks. And in practices, we need to do the same thing. In my opinion,

Advancements in Visualization and Technology
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Stephen Drew: I, so let's talk a little bit about what you've done with BIM initiative. So I, you've of course work with so many, many, many good companies as well as in terms of BIM initiative.

Stephen Drew: You've done some really interesting stuff and, and, and let's bring it to now because you touch briefly upon the, the, what's quite interesting is that now [00:29:00] hardware as propelled. Oh, desk have been following the gaming industry and we have, for instance, what you're talking about in terms of BIM. Okay. So we're not going to go into video game and we're not going to go into that.

Stephen Drew: But where I find it really interesting is that I wrote a dissertation many years ago in terms of interactive virtual environments. And what I've noticed about in terms of BIM is that it's gone so far. In terms of where you're on about, we're not talking about photo realism here, but not what we're talking about is high quality, very good looking images, which are produced on a very short and rapid period of time.

Stephen Drew: And that's why I appreciate it. What you're saying is that. What I'm amazed by right now is for Lumion and a few other things, but look, you're, you're the guru in this way of actually that it's not so convoluted anymore that you can actually set up an architectural in your architectural company. You can produce images [00:30:00] for which.

Stephen Drew: You can get back quickly. So in terms of, we know it's like in an architectural practice, yes, you're going to spend ages on your hero images and they can be rendered by that company. You know, the one that's famous and paid a lot of money because fine, because the developer is going to use that and it's going to be amazing.

Stephen Drew: But what you're on about is. Incredibly good company good. So say now this hero shot is a hundred percent awesome, but it costs a few thousand pounds. What you're on about is something that gets you 70 percent of the way. Looks very good. Looks very, very good. And that draw that image is produced in two minutes because it's generated by the kind of technology, which is used in 3D video game.

Stephen Drew: engines, right? Because there's an element of quick feedback. So surely, and sorry, I mean, I'm divulging in what I was passionate before, but how cool is that? Because And you mentioned in terms of a [00:31:00] design meet and this, this kind of feel and quality of image would take normally hours to produce and you can whack it out on the fly and surely then that has a massive implication on you as a designer, you can change things quickly.

Stephen Drew: You can see what they look like, but in terms of a design team meeting. The images that you showcased and we posted, remember we posted it on the Architectures of Social. You, of course, you spent a bit of time in there. Of course, you set things up. You could whack them out on a fly for me again, though, in two or three minutes, because you've worked out the process.

Stephen Drew: So what are your, what's your thoughts currently on that then? That's,

Pierre Venter: that's a game changer, right? So it's, there's a philosophy behind this. One of the things about producing visuals is actually, Not that they're just pretty pictures, but for me, they're actually a quality control.

Stephen Drew: So

Pierre Venter: when I see the material, if I saw a bitumen as asphalt wall, I know that somebody has put the wrong material in that [00:32:00] position.

Pierre Venter: And I'm using a really extreme example, but what the visualization does for us. And I use this frequently. I'm a keen user of Enscape and the idea behind that is that in Enscape, I can generate a panoramic view. Might take three minutes to generate it, but basically it's, you put it on the phone and you take the phone and you walk around like this and you can look at where you are in the building.

Pierre Venter: Right. So I can send that to a client and say, I want your opinion. Do you like the wood or the metal? Would you like the ceiling like this? So we're talking about some modeling and what have you going in, but what it does is it gives a client or somebody the ability to visualize what they're doing without five sets of drawings.

Pierre Venter: On a device that you can handle, and I've had people actually walking around the office saying to people in the office, they were doing a development, they said, what do you think about [00:33:00] this? And that opinion came back and immediately changed, made a decision that eased the workflow. Right. That's the one side.

Pierre Venter: The other side is that probably. And I think you'd probably recognize one of these things. I

Stephen Drew: reckon that, or I say, just for the audio listeners here, you pointed up the HTC Vive, a little bit of virtual, or what was that?

Pierre Venter: Oculus Quest.

Exploring the Oculus Quest VR
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Pierre Venter: Oculus Quest, VR though. Not the two, I can't afford that one right now.

Pierre Venter: Okay, fair enough, fair enough. But exactly that, that device, means you clip it on, it, it has the ability to be tethered or untethered. It can come through on the wire, wireless. And the nice part is you and I can go into the design without having to travel around. So the time that we save by not having to commute.

Pierre Venter: Can now be converted into having a session.

Immersive Design with VR
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Pierre Venter: Now, something that you know from the gaming [00:34:00] side is that these things are so bloody immersive. It just means that you, you get inside this thing and it's gone.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. You're, you're right. You get such a feel for the space and that could be and sure. And where you're going with in terms of the design team, you could probably snag something straight away.

Stephen Drew: Like this is not right. So you're snagging.

Practical Applications of VR in Architecture
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Pierre Venter: The kind of great thing is I'm in a, I'm busy learning how to use this particular application and I bought and I bought a subscription for a package called Iris VR, which is one of those in the market right now. But what's really nice is that these things get loaded into the cloud.

Pierre Venter: So I was busy practicing and I was on. In the building on the fourth floor and I kicked on the layers and turned the floors off and I promise you, I've never had vertigo before and I looked down and I saw floors and furniture and things four floors down and I almost found myself going, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Pierre Venter: Yeah, [00:35:00] whoa, stop. Stop me falling. That's it. It is that immersive, plus the fact that you can change the time of day, you can then, you're gleaning all this extra information, and that part is incredibly powerful.

Enhancing Collaboration with VR
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Pierre Venter: So, final part to this is that if we do the usual thing, every two weeks we, Print a pack of paper, you go and have a meeting, you redline all these things, people take that away, update, have a week review, redo work that they've already done, which they've had to now unwind.

Pierre Venter: You can imagine doing this, where you have a meeting session just. 30 minutes with a team and it makes it following the lean and sprint method is that you're getting this feedback cycle so much quicker. Yes. By going through and embracing people in this technology. Really as an enablers,

Stephen Drew: that's, that's where I find really [00:36:00] interesting because there's other practical applications in terms of like a really nice shiny wall crew in terms of a two million pound flat.

Stephen Drew: If someone is a buyer in Dubai and you sell a flat in London, you can do that remotely. But what I love in terms of your scenario, which I think people maybe forget, or I didn't think of it at first, I didn't think of it at first. So it's that. You're on about the practical application in terms of the architectural process day by day.

Stephen Drew: And what you're talking about is the way the conversation goes. That saying that me and you were in the room with designs in meeting and you say, here's what I think of the plan. This is what I've done. Then actually by putting the. Oculus Rift or putting the VR headset on, then it's another tool and that's what we're on about.

Stephen Drew: We're on about it's a tool for you to design that informs information, informs your decision. You're still making the decision in the physical sense, but what I quite like about what [00:37:00] you're talking about is that, and if I put this headset on, I can go, well, look, yeah, I was literally just in the space. I was literally there in the headphones and I didn't like the way when I went into the space, maybe I think that the, the stairs, it was a bit too close, or it could be that I was like, look, some pillars there, or I walked around a room and they were sitting design decisions.

Stephen Drew: I would change and you can go, Steve, look, don't worry about it. We're not on site. We're not early, early stages. I'm going to flip around it in the model and I go, okay, cool. I get a coffee. We talked to another thing. And then throughout that design team meeting, you go, Steve, just let you know, you complained about the stairs because I know you're very difficult to work with.

Stephen Drew: No, you wouldn't say that cause you're a professional. You go, Steve, you're a very valuable client of mine. And what I've done is I've changed the staircase. What about in this position, I put on the headset and I go, that's great. And so [00:38:00] what you're talking about is that, that you've boiled it down from two design meetings to one, because now the space of the technology, the, sorry, that is caught up in that meantime.

Stephen Drew: And so, and that's what I found really interesting because I wrote that, the thesis when I was in architecture in 2014 and Lumion, I think at the time I believe was out, but it was very early and twin notion was there and it was better, but less accessible than Lumion. And that's what I wrote on what I kind of saw from a 3D game environment.

Stephen Drew: And I actually used CryEngine at the time. I did one of my architectural projects in the CryEngine and people could walk around it. That's why it was so infused. So that's, it's really, I'm quite. Pleasantly surprised that our conversations organically talked about these tools in a literal sense, and that's why I want to draw from this is what I like is that we're on about design [00:39:00] team meetings.

Stephen Drew: We're on about stuff that every architect in here experiences and that's And the point is, it's not about being seduced by this technology. The technology should be there for you, right? It's like we're not in Revit or Lumen just for the sake of it. You aren't about that. You want to provide someone with a design decision that they can make quickly.

Challenges and Solutions in VR and BIM
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Pierre Venter: Well, amongst other things, Stephen, what is the biggest problem about VR? is that typically you've got no record of what you've done unless you record a video to show as you went around. So the technology now, the same speed of the graphics processor is starting to enable us to Include AI and there's, there's an application called fireflies.

Pierre Venter: ai, which is a voice to text transcript application service that's, that's being provided. Now, can you imagine you go along, [00:40:00] you've got your microphone on and you say, Joe, change the door on D seven. Now, how did you know it was D seven? Well, this is the part that that VR. So twin motion, that's one of the applications I'm using.

Pierre Venter: Okay, Unreal Engine. I like Unity as its competitor. But what it's doing for you is it's actually bringing the BIM information into the screen. You can go and click on something and get the information related to it. So you're not just somewhere in space and dealing with something that is ethereal. It actually has a real value.

Pierre Venter: And you can say to somebody, well, check element number 2, 500. But what it is, is that these things now are integrating the record of what you're doing, a log of what you're changing, and giving people the ability to go click, and go to that place in the model.

Stephen Drew: Hmm. Wow. It is. Yeah, I [00:41:00] agree. Let's say it as well.

Stephen Drew: I agree. And so what's interesting, I latch on in this subject because I find it really fascinating, the stuff that you're talking about in terms of 3D game engines using these tools to solve. Problems. And it's probably important to mention in terms of Revit and BIM. Actually, there are so many different ways you can solve problems as well.

Stephen Drew: So I have a friend called Thomas Mahone, he set up his own company called Biomorph and he's very much in a different end, which kind of compliments what we're talking about in terms of. Custom programming, making all this stuff. I've, I've spoken many times to David Flynn and Mark, you know, a design tag, which was from Grimshaw and they've solved different complicated problems.

Stephen Drew: And what I take away from this, and this might be a generalist viewpoint and you tell me what you think as well, but. Whether it's a 3D game engine or whether it's writing a complicated script that in Python that you, you roll it into the practice and actually [00:42:00] the interesting thing about Revit and the interesting thing about BIM, then let's go talk about BIM is that with all this stuff that we're talking about.

Stephen Drew: Without talking about fancy jargon, it's solving problems, it's getting, it's making decisions quicker, and that's what you want about. And it's about doing it in a way that everyone can collaborate. Everyone can make decisions together. Everyone can share information so that initially. Yes. It's harder that if you never worked in BIM to set up all this stuff, the point is though, the reason you're doing is because the ideologies of it is the right way.

Stephen Drew: It's built upon collaboration and sharing ideas. And where you're on about is that now technology is finally in a position to get there. And you have companies at the moment, like by morph and David Flynn, this new company, I forget the name, but it's from design tech. I'll get that and yourself and what you're doing with BIM initiative.

Stephen Drew: And it's about people sharing ideas and solve [00:43:00] solutions so that architecture as a whole uses it where it's relevant to make

Pierre Venter: decisions quicker. Right. So, so for me, the first part is that we've, we've got these incredible technologies. We've got a bunch of young people who decide to do architecture for any number of reasons.

Pierre Venter: For me, architecture is still the finest profession. I'm biased. Okay. It's a good profession. I'm biased as well, but I agree. But what the, what the biggest part about all these technologies, they enable us to make better decisions, informed decisions. Because it's no longer just a thing that's this size.

Pierre Venter: It's actually can be given quantities. But something that I think is really, really important, and that's for younger people coming into the market, is I still have a piece of paper. And before somebody models [00:44:00] something, I want them to draw it where they have line weights to know what's cut, what's in projection, what is a waterproofing membrane, what is insulation, where the cold bridges, so they understand how these things are, because to me, the architect was originally the master builder.

Pierre Venter: He was a person who understood how these all got assembled. Now we are, we're working in highly complex buildings. We're dealing with all these different properties and Grenfell Tower becomes one of those things about some of the contractual issues and how we do things and we do it badly. But one of those important parts of that, all those things we spoke about, the rendering, the visualizer, visualization, et cetera, all is around physical properties.

Pierre Venter: So like lighting levels. We need to understand that I've done a rendering myself where I ended up with a little LED light, a single LED light, and it was brighter than the biggest search light from World War II in London. [00:45:00] Just because it had the wrong values. And if you could find that light, you've just found the source of energy.

Pierre Venter: The eco guys will just be saying, wow, you've solved it. And this is the problem is that we need to understand those properties. Those, those are part of our trade. And the tools of our trade is knowing how big, how long, how thick, how wide the physical properties. And I think that these enabling parts that we've got with BIM, various of the applications, the authoring applications, and that's the part is we still have a problem with gluing them all together.

Pierre Venter: This package won't talk to that one. This one does that. We're going to open BIM. We've got a whole number of dynamics in our world. But there lies part of that energy is that I use Revit and you use something else. I don't care, but let's find a way that we can actually glue these things together. That when I hand something to you, you can pick it up and you may have to [00:46:00] make some changes, but you know what changes to make.

Pierre Venter: It's not smoke and mirrors. The more that we expose it to everybody. The whole industry is just going to benefit. And that comes back to what our early, early part of the discussion is more open. We are with those discussions and agree to disagree, et cetera. And we don't have, you know, a boxing session to resolve it is.

Pierre Venter: Rather go and buy another beer and much easier way of resolving things. We

Stephen Drew: can sit there and have a good chat. I think that's a really good analogy for it. And I think that's the thing that what I learned is because initially I almost felt many, many years ago that a BIM expert was entrenched in the software.

Stephen Drew: And that's what it's all about. But actually what I've learned is about. What you're talking about is solving problems is collaboration. It's working out things. And what we, it's the same as I think in terms of a building where you rock up on site and you realize, Holy moly, that's not what I expected to be there.

Stephen Drew: And it can be like that and be more like, [00:47:00] Oh my days, we're inheriting this model or, okay, we've got to issue it this way for this client. Or you've got all these crazy things going on. And to me, it's about. It's not about it being perfect. I think like a really good team member is someone that basically deals with problems and helps people out and overcomes obstacles.

Stephen Drew: And what we're talking about with BIM and what I like about this whole topic is Where you're talking about BIM is, yes, you're advocating BIM. What you're doing is you're advocating in a way of how it applies to an actual building, how we can solve problems, how people now can review and make design decisions because, and I think you agree with me that BIM is a fantastic.

Stephen Drew: Tool is not the end all you need an architect to have decisions to put in. You need people to have agendas. You need to do it, but it is the fantastic way as a fantastic methodology. Sorry. I should [00:48:00] say that Revit's a tool, BIM's a methodology to go about amazing architectural practice. And this is my opinion, but it's about getting to the crux of it.

Stephen Drew: It's not whole concept of what you're talking about is how you can help people build projects. Better, less stressful, because actually a really optimized BIM model, a really optimized project that is seamless because BIMs help things out, their models done really well, it informs people, the quality of the team, so people in terms of working there, they work in less hours, they're dealing with less problems, problems are picked up earlier on, and I love the analogy that we've used today, On this podcast, this episode, we're talking about design teams, because I think it's a really good example because it's not normally thought of like, I think people think of BIM as a work in progress, but architectural visualization as the end result when you're selling a building.

Stephen Drew: And what [00:49:00] you're talking about is. Visualization to visualize the current BIM model. Now we're not talking about the super, super, super graphics. What I liked about the images that you posted and we retweeted though, is that they were darn good considering the time involved. And I love exploring that concept you're on about now of.

Stephen Drew: A ratio to time versus results, and now it's because of the hardware where it's at because of the gaming industry taking off and being massively profitable means that actually we're in a really good position where we have. In my opinion, and I, and you tell me what you think as well, but like, we have hardware available that can generate these images quickly to make these decisions, which can support the methodologies, which like you said, BIM's been around since 1994.

Stephen Drew: It is, it's not like it's been, you know, Revit [00:50:00] 2014. It's been around for years, just we're now in a way where it's, it's, it's articulating it.

Pierre Venter: Right. So, so one of the first things we've spoken about the, the, the architect and the engineers and the, and the team that we put together, there's one person that we've actually just left out of the picture a little bit.

Pierre Venter: Oh,

Stephen Drew: who's that?

The Role of Contractors in BIM Projects
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Pierre Venter: And that's the contractor. Okay. Sorry, contractor. Now, the, the problem behind this or the, the, the opportunity that exists here, we currently spend, and I don't like the term design built just because that's part of my background and design build was, it was something and, and the term novation when I arrived here was, was, it just threw me, I said, no, no, but that somebody got two caps and that might not know which one they're actually wearing at the time.

Pierre Venter: But principally, one of the things is early engagement of the contractor while doing the detailing could [00:51:00] actually markedly reduce the amount of time and the rework that takes place of submitting a design. And then the contractor unpicks it to make value engineering. Right. Now, but what this does, and it would make so much more sense to engage that contractor.

Pierre Venter: And he says, listen. I wouldn't do it like that. I'd do it like this. But what you've done is you've prepared something which gives you a performance and you've opened the discussion. And if you do that before you finish the detailing, then you're only doing it once. So that engagement, I think. Typifies that the whole project team actually including the person who's going to be delivering it definitely benefit.

Pierre Venter: But the additional speed that this computer now gives us, it's actually more like the renderings. And you said how quick that, that visualization was put together is the particular approach on, on [00:52:00] Revit and SketchUp that I was using there. Is that Enscape is common to both those packages. So I can go to SketchUp and I can go to Revit and I should be able to produce the same or very similar results by using the same rendering engine.

Pierre Venter: So what I've done in my practice is now to have materials in SketchUp which are not the same as materials in Revit. In Revit, the one benefit we have in Revit is all the physical properties that go in there means that we can see that the physical properties that the engineer, the mechanical engineer, whoever would need, we don't get those with SketchUp.

Pierre Venter: But by having a common library of images means that the renderings actually look very similar from two models using the same image base. So that part means I can do concept in SketchUp or format, but then it doesn't work with, and that's once again, another dynamic of not [00:53:00] having Enscape in there. But what it does is we, we get the ability to very quickly generate those views and Initiate discussion, you know, even with the QS.

Pierre Venter: So the QS comes on and says, Oh, I wouldn't go and put Portland stone and it's just too expensive. But you've said to the client, look at what it looks like. And now you've opened that discussion so you can start throwing these things up.

Stephen Drew: Yeah,

Pierre Venter: sure. You're not standing under the block as it comes down, of course.

Pierre Venter: But

Stephen Drew: let's get it. I love that. Let's get, let's get the Portland stone in. I want that conversation. I absolutely love it.

Future of BIM and Technology Integration
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Stephen Drew: And I think this has been a really interesting conversation in that way. What I think though, is because I, you've seen so many things over the years. And what I'm conscious of is that now we've been talking for an hour.

Stephen Drew: And what I think now, Hey, I, Hey, that's not a negative. That's me saying, like, I could talk to you for hours.

Conclusion and Future Conversations
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Stephen Drew: I'm just thinking maybe, what would be awesome, and it depends how you feel about [00:54:00] it, Pierre, I'm springing this on you on the spot, but maybe what we can do is return and have a chat, maybe in a man format, so whenever we feel that you've got, you've got something you want to discuss, because actually, I think what today has been, it's been a really good conversation in terms of an introduction to BIM, and our chat has organically talked about making decisions in architectural practice.

Stephen Drew: And me, I've been gushing upon the kind of the stuff that I've talked about years ago. And it's really interesting to get an industry expert like yourself who's kind of on board. So perhaps what we can do is return and have a little chat. We can have a little glass of wine on the Friday night, like we are doing now, and we can have a little, we can set the words to write in the interim.

Stephen Drew: Oh, okay. Well, well, let's have a lot of conversations during COVID because I don't think this situation is going to end soon and we can, we can keep catching up. Bobo, if anyone has not met you so far, Pierre, where, where can we find you? You're on LinkedIn, you're on the Architecture Social. Do [00:55:00] you want to let us know where you're at?

Stephen Drew: New websites.

Pierre Venter: So get hold of me on any of those. I'm engaged in ARC Smarter, which is, which is also on, on the same platform that you guys are on. Networks. Yeah. And so, and the problem or the benefit of that is that all, all of it is opening up and engaging whoever wants to ask a question, right? We typically just don't have enough time for all of these things.

Pierre Venter: So, you know, make contact on, on LinkedIn or whatever. Come with a question that definitely will come up. How do we resolve things? How do we approach it? Because if you're a young person coming out into the market now, it's like going surfing in storm surf. It's very difficult to try and find your way around.

Pierre Venter: And when you go down that wave, there's no stopping.

Stephen Drew: I

Pierre Venter: love that. And you're on a new wave.

Stephen Drew: It's true. It is completely new. It's new for me. It's new for you. And that's why we were talking a little bit before this, because it is, and I hate the term unprecedented [00:56:00] times. Forget that. We're not going to say that, but it's completely, and I find it, it's funny.

Stephen Drew: It's, it's, it's very difficult for some people. And, you know, I find it in certain ways, it's very stressful right now. I know a lot of people do. No one is. alone right now. And that's the whole plan. That's why I've enjoyed our conversation. It's nice to talk about these things because we will get there. Of course we will all get there and it's a really good time to learn.

Stephen Drew: It's a really good time to build connections. It's a really good time to so I, I talk about it briefly. The architecture social, it was something that I sat up on furlough, Pierre, because I wanted to initially talk with students about. How to get a job and it's kind of taking a life on its own. And I really think that that's why I'm so grateful that we can talk now.

Stephen Drew: And there's a few other vehicles that do it. ArcSmart, fantastic community to talk about BIM. I've been on there. Anyone that's currently doing BIM asks the question. That is a place to go for. I mean, the Arctic is a social, I do my own little thing. It's [00:57:00] like, we joke about it and not joke about it. Like I'm on the glass of wine right now.

Stephen Drew: We're having a bit of fun. We're having a, you're having a glass. You're having like a coffee or what have you. Yeah. Next time we're going to have a glass of wine. I'll let you know beforehand.

Stephen Drew: It's Friday evening guys. So I don't want to hear any of it. It has been a tough week and it's a stressful time, but that's the point. We all do a different things. There's loads of different ways and LinkedIn. Yes. It serves a complete purpose. I'm on LinkedIn, really, really powerful. But if you want a community aspect, Oxmark sounds really good for BIM.

Stephen Drew: I've been on that. I think that's great. And anyone is welcome on the architecture social in terms of just, you know, if you're involved in architecture and who knows, right? But yeah, with the brief changes in the day to day, we can talk about anything. You can talk about BIM, you can talk about anything.

Stephen Drew: You can, you can find us there. Let's talk about your, briefly before we end, let's talk about the BIM initiative. I think it'd be really good to share with people. If you want to give a description of what you've been up to.

Pierre Venter: Right. So I've, I've had a number of jobs that we've, we've gone through and in the [00:58:00] time that I've been in the UK, since I returned from Middle East and it's been very interesting.

Pierre Venter: Then she got to a point where, because of doing contract work, I found that it was necessary to establish a company. So I did the traditional thing, put the name in there and it was far too staid. And it's been something that's germinated. So it got to a point where now. BIM initiative is exactly that. I think it's that the term BIM, everybody's starting to say, well, maybe we need to get rid of BIM.

Pierre Venter: It's a term that's too similar to Revit. It's too analogous to Revit. And we should change it. But if we're just changing for changes sake. The problem is that we put ourselves in a real quandary on the other side. Initiative is the part that I think we have so many opportunities for initiative and we're seeing that I think some of the some of the engagements we're seeing are enormous.

Pierre Venter: So I've been [00:59:00] engaged. There's been some pretty much an indecent amount of drying up of work. People putting things on hold. It's direct product of the market. But on the other hand, we've, we've had a couple of really interesting ones that the media that you saw is a company in South Africa that does wine sellers, bespoke wine sellers, and it's not just doing the renderings for them, but in fact, we're looking at the process behind documentation because they actually do bespoke furniture and somebody gets on a website, places an order, and we're looking at the at the process of how do we get from them to us.

Pierre Venter: Clicking on that, almost like Ikea, push on it and buying a shopping list, the cutting list, the finishes list, pricing, all these things all within using BIM and the process. And it means that people can then look at what they're getting, but what's, what's been the [01:00:00] enabler is the development of that process.

Pierre Venter: On the other hand, I've got a friend who is currently in South Africa. He lives in the Maldives. He's a quantity surveyor, went to school together. That was so long ago that in South Africa they talk about the Rinderpest. So that's it. It was that long ago that the Rinderpest was there. That was a period of illness in the country.

Pierre Venter: But what happens is that. Mark is there, his wife is in, down in St. Francis Bay, they've got a house. I took the headset, and between Mark, myself, and a model that I'd made up of the existing residents, we went through and looked at the potential for the changes. And that was a great test bed to see how this works over those time zones.

Pierre Venter: And so I think, I think that that, and the engagements I've had with, with people right now. Particularly some guys involved in doing conservation work and I [01:01:00] strongly believe that, you know, the little thing of the tablet, how our world is going to change. By bringing digital to the construction site and all of the phases up to that.

Pierre Venter: That's where I'm engaging with people now about that. Also on the same thing, I'm busy looking at doing Dynamo courses for some clients. So that's preparation for that. And the Dynamo is, is. Simply it's another enabler. There are guys out there who I'll stand back and say are absolutely brilliant. And I'll use Gavin Crump, Aussie boom guru.

Pierre Venter: Gavin is, is absolutely brilliant. And what, what it is, is that we need to draw on the strengths of those people because. they have a better capacity than some of us do for doing certain things. I can move the four inch paintbrush around, notice four inch, not a hundred [01:02:00] millimeters, but the part is that collectively we have all of those things.

Pierre Venter: So that's part of what I'm, I'm doing is, is in fact surrounding myself with people that have, Those additional capacities and can then push the kind of benefit that the client will get out of it because we're putting the right people at the right place in the right time. I

Stephen Drew: love it. Look, look you've been, I've met you many, many years ago and I've always my opinion of you mentally is someone who's generous, someone that helps and someone that's engaged in conversation, wants to constantly improve upon your own vision a bit and impart wisdom on others.

Stephen Drew: So look, I really. Thank you for this podcast. I've really enjoyed it. I hope you've had a good little giggle too, you know, you know, it's really, it's me and you, it's basically me and you talking. I've loved it. And the, the, the nice thing is that we get to impart our wisdom on the world. Hello, Spotify.

Stephen Drew: Thank you so much. And I really appreciate it. So thank you, Pia. Also, [01:03:00] you have a lovely weekend and we will speak soon. I really appreciate you so much. As long

Pierre Venter: as it's not cold tomorrow, then that's fine.

Stephen Drew: I cannot make that promise. Thank you. Have a good evening. Good one, Steven. Thanks.

Transcribed