Episode 6 | From Then to Now: BIM Insights with My Old Boss

In this episode of The BIMTech Podcast, Matt McGuire reconnects with his very first boss, David Fee, for a walk down memory lane. They talk about Matt's early days as David's apprentice, sharing stories, lessons learned, and insights from their time working together.

Transcript

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Oh right was that it now? I’ve missed the opening now. I’ll do it again then. Hiya Matthew, Lovely to see you again. So, today I'm with Dave Fee. Who is my first ever boss. So, I guess it's the apprentice and the master today. I wouldn’t say that. No, I wouldn’t say that, no. Because... I remember, you came across as a right nice wanting to do the job, guy, and that's why I give you it virtually immediately. But you talking about, I had to send you on site. Well, not send me, took me. My first ever... Well, my interview was turning up thinking I was going for a sat in an office interview. Yeah. And got told I was, coming out to site with you to Blackpool Victoria Hospital to help you measure up a job. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. That was a fun little experience as an interview. I don't know what my mum and dad thought. They thought I'd gone away for an interview and I was going to be home in about half an hour. I think I come home about six hours later. Well you didn’t have mobile phones in them days did we, you know. You couldn’t say oh mum... the interview must gone well, you've been there six hours. Either that or you’re dead. Well, I’ve done a few drawings while I were there. But yeah. No, it was good. I'll just explain to people about the old school... Blackpool Victoria. We used to have consultants and then the engineers and then I was a mere draftsman and I was remembering... that makes me a mere draftsman Apprentice. Yeah. I was a mere senior draftsman, I think at a very young age, actually. But I went to site with the engineer because we were doing this riser and it wouldn't fit. And could you tell a consultant? No. But in them days it was very, it was old school. So we had the consultant there, the engineer there, and I'm here and we have the drawings out. And I'm saying, well, you can see that hole, I said, we've got this size duct, this size duct, this size duct. So I've laid it all out and said it won't fit. Well, the consultant looked at my engineer and the engineer had to say to him. David's done the hole, measured the ductwork and it won't fit. And then the consultants say can we do this to the engineer. Then he turned to me because the consultant wouldn't talk to me. He was above speaking to you. He was above speaking to me. Wow. In them days. I know earlier we were talking off camera. Yeah. About some of the experiences we've had together, because I was like, your apprentice followed you around. Yeah, yeah. Different prisons we’ve visited. And... Yeah, yeah. Some of the scary things we’ve seen. Yeah, yeah. And other projects we've been to and everything. But one of the things that I wanted to ask you about today was... Yeah. That Obviously, well, not obviously to anybody who's watching. Obvious to me is that since then you've moved to New Zealand. Yeah, yeah. And you set up a company very similar to BIMTech Engineering in New Zealand. And I just wanted to know sort of what the cultural differences are working, and like, what's the construction industry like in New Zealand compared to what it is here? Yeah, that's where, you know, when you said about the apprentice and the master, it's when we got together at Thermal Transfer. You had this step. You wanted to know about ductwork, then you wanted to know about pipework. That’s why you went there, and then you were going to talk about, well, electrical tray, I mean, it’s tray isn’t it? Trays, tray. Trays, tray. Electricians won't be happy if they're watching this. Or electrical engineers, but... Yeah, yeah. As long as the trays big enough, they’re alright. Yeah. When I got to New Zealand, I saw that they're, like, 15 years behind us over here. Right? And I remember talking to you when I got there about that they’re behind and, I wanted to push the 3D stuff. And that's when I fell in with another guy who was a pipework guy, and he was looking to get into the 3D stuff. So he taught me pipework. I taught him about ductwork. And that's when we started going to the market over there, trying to lift them up into the 3D world, which... So you single handedly implemented BIM into New Zealand. Is that what I'm hearing? Not singlehandedly? No, but, I don't know how many people were doing it, but I was one of the first. Yeah. Yeah. And I rode on your back because of that. Because of the way you’ve gone forward so I’d like to thank you for that. So do I get royalties for that then? You’re going to get a Guinness afterwards aren’t you so shut up. That’ll do, I'll take that. Yeah, yeah. So but, obviously we talked about it today about, unfortunately we’re on a volcanic island. Yeah. And since Christchurch. I’ve already spoke to you about this, we have, like, seismic restraints. And to my mind, they’re really overengineering stuff now. Yeah. They’re trying to save everybody's life in every situation. You can't do it. You know, I mean, I showed you some supports. They were ridiculous. They were ridiculous, and then they’re complaining about the costs of building over there and how slow it is. Yeah. I mean, a 20 mil copper pipe? I know. So the pipe costs about... What?£2 a meter? Yeah. And the support bracket to support it costs probably about £600. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But it'll hold up in an earthquake. The building will fall down. But the pipework will still be there. It’s hard isn’t it? I mean I always remember going in some of the biggest construction firms over there and one especially, which was one of the biggest at the time. They might have gone down the ladder a little bit, but we got laughed out of. I think we were a lunch time sort of entertainment. Yeah. And we sat there in this meeting showing the 3D stuff because we’d just done a cinema. So we're using that as an example. Saying oh, we can get all the coordination done in 3D. So, you know, it’s faster to put in, it’s less materials wasted because, this, that and the other, you know, and the cards were stacked against us in them days because they had the big boss there and they had sort of like the old fashioned coordinators there. You know, who used to do overlay drawings. Yeah. And he was asking, saying, well, do you see any benefit in this? Well, I think they sort of saw it as a... A bit of a gimmick? Not a gimmick, but maybe opposition to their role. Oh, right. You know. Yeah. So they got a bit defensive. Very defensive. Yeah. And this particular guy, I knew the job he was working on, and it was a right c**k up. And he's going oh no, we don't need these guys our jobs going really well. I’m like... We kept plugging away, plugging away. Yeah, it's come good in the end. It's come very good. Yeah. Yeah. But I feel now they’re sort of like regressing a bit now because, like you and me, we want to do the full coordination in-house as one. Yeah. Now they're going, because it's such a smaller market these little firms are quite powerful. And they're saying well, what's my draftsman going to do? Yeah. Or now it sounds as if they’re like going back to the old fashioned way. Were they'll deal with all the... And then try and get someone to bring it all together. Yeah. Yeah. Which I see that as an opportunity still for us. Yeah. Yeah. It's another role I guess isn’t it? Yeah. And we're working towards that on a couple of projects. Good. And one thing I forgot to tell you was we’ve done our first scan job ourselves. Oh, very good. Over there, yeah. Have you bought a scanner or have you rented it? No, no my young lad Nathan, who would love the plug. Has just done it via some apps he's found or something. So I don't know how it's got on, it might be rubbish. He'll be glad for that little... I haven’t heard any bad things so it must be all right. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, you know, your technology's going... We don't know where it's going do we? No. No. But the thing is, I mean, we invested, I mean going back seven years, whatever it is now, but we invested probably with the scanner, little hand scanner, software, round about £55,000 into scanning. And we thought we were going to take the world by storm with scanning. We thought what sets us apart is we've got engineering knowledge. Where you had a lot of these firms out there that were just scanning firms, they didn't really know what they were scanning. They'd go in, they'd scan anything for you, and they’d produce you something that replicated what was out there. But they couldn't tell you whether it was a pipe, whether it was a duct, whatever it was. So we saw with our knowledge of building services, we can offer a service where we can go out and we can scan and we can advise you exactly what it is. And at the time when we sort of tried to bring that to market, we found nobody was actually willing to pay for that at the time. Yeah. And yet funnily enough, I went down to construction week, in London probably about a month ago now, and I'd say 50% of the sort of stands and displays that were there was all about scanning. Yeah. And it just feels like we were seven years to early. Yeah. And what it means now is what we bought seven years ago is out of date compared to what you can now get for, I wouldn’t say a fraction of the price, but a lot cheaper than what we paid for. And it's one of them isn’t it, it’s when do you trigger that point of buying something? Yeah. Because... Everything’s travelling so fast. Yeah, technology moves so quick. The second you buy something, it’s out of date. Yeah. And it's like, is it worth that investment at the time you buy it or is it worth trying to hang on to see what's the next best thing coming? And it’s knowing that point to do it like you say, when we’re down at construction week, we’ve seen this fantastic scanner again and we were like, wow, we need to have one of these. This is one you can walk around site with it and it scans as you go, does everything as you go. We thought this is great. But then just like what you said, are we going to get to a stage now where you can do that on an app, on a phone? And do you want to go and spend 40 grand on a piece of kit when you can just buy, get an app, maybe even a free app on your phone and do it for free? Yeah, I was doing the same. I was looking at investment in New Zealand and it was well over$100,000 for the scanner, the training, and then you’ve got to find the work. Yeah. But that’s the other thing isn’t it? Yeah. You can't look for the work and not have the scanner. But then if you invest in the scanner and you go out looking for the work and you don't find the work you’re like, well, what have we invested that money into? Exactly, yeah. Yeah. So just sort of going back now then, like, talked a bit about the difference between the UK and New Zealand, but what about the differences between, I mean, I know in my head what the differences are. When I first joined you as your apprentice. Yeah. And we were on the drawing board and we were using... Ah, wonderful days....pencil and ink pens. And I think we were joking earlier when you used to be able to... Someone was chasing you up for a drawing and you'd say it's in the post. Yeah. Now it's like, you can't get away with that now because you can send a drawing like that, can’t you? So it's instant. It's awful now, yeah. There's nowhere to hide is there? I can't blame the postman anymore. Well we have a bit of a get out, sorry go on... I was going to say so sort of moving through that stages to get to where you are now. You've obviously like me, seen all the changes in technology and everything else. And do you feel the better for it? Do you wish we were back in the good old days or? It's a mixture of both, isn't it? You know, when I first went into the 3D world, see being on the drawing board, we had that advantage that our 3D views were in our head. Yeah. When you're looking at a drawing there and you put your section up and then your other elevation, you know, 3D orthodontic was it? No, that's a dentist isn’t it? Yeah. Orthographic? I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know. So by doing that then you're visualizing it in your mind. Yeah. And then I got this thing and I pressed a button and I could turn the model around. And it was like, God I love this. Made your life so much easier. Oh. Did it. It reinvigorated me as a draftsman, you know. But there is downsides to it, like you said now, emails, emails, emails, everything's in the cloud. So especially with it being in a cloud now and your clients can get straight into there. So if you say, yeah I've done it, they can go, no you haven’t. Why? Do you ever say you've done it when you haven't? No. No I don’t, no. Again that's another thing I tell my lads, I say for God's sake be honest with people. No point in lying. No. Especially these days. The other thing, what you’re just touching on there with like the sort of speed of people interrogating your models and seeing what you've done. Yeah, yeah. I think one of the downsides now is we don't have what we used to have called design freezes. Yeah. You used to be able to say that’s it, this is what we're working with and you'd have a period of time to catch up and say, right, we're going to work with this design. Yeah. And now we're coordinating. And whilst we're coordinating the architectural model, the structural model they're developing as we're developing, nothing's ever frozen now. Yeah. It's, you'll think you've coordinated something and then like it is normally, every two weeks everyone uploads the models and you'll upload that latest model and find out you've got a hundred clashes or something, that you didn't have the day before. And you’re kind of reworking stuff and it's a sort of thing because you're like me, you've got your own business and everything, and you can't price for that. No. If you included that in your pricing and said... You’d never get a job. Yeah. They'd say you’re too expensive. Yeah. So you kind of have to take a lot of that on the chin I think. Like you said, because it's so easy to change now, they change it. In the old days, like you say, we’d do our drawing. We’d send that off. And a few days later it’d come back with the markups. Yeah. We’d do the markups and then that's it. Yeah. Technology now. Oh can you just, ahhh can you just move that vessel over there? We think it'll look nicer over there. Yeah I can do that. Oh, and then can you do this and then... Yeah. You know. Yeah, there's a bit too much input from outside sources now into what you're producing as what would have been a drawing back then. Now it's a 3D model. Yeah. So yeah there's a lot more cooks in the kitchen isn’t there? Yeah. And I think again years ago, when we're talking about draftsmen. I think we're getting more and more put on us these days, you know., there you’re talking about the fire regulations. And... Yeah, you're expected to know everything. Yeah. So I've always said this, is that, when we deal with clients and I've been to meetings where you'll sit down and you'll speak to the clients ventilation specialist, the pipework specialist, the public health specialist, the electrical specialist, they’ll have all these specialist people. But every one of them you speak to as a specialist talks to you as if you have the same knowledge as them. So, you're meant to be a specialist in all these different fields and that only comes from experience. Yeah. It's not something you can learn in college in 2 or 3 years or whatever, and there's no courses that teach you that level of knowledge for what it is we do, I don't think. But, there again, you just mentioned about five different things just then. We've then got to put it all together. Yeah. We’ve got to pick all those bits out and make sure it’s right. Yeah. Consultants, I think consultant’s models are getting better. I do. Yeah. And I found that we used to always have this thing where we'd say a consultant does a design model. They then pass the design model to us, again any consultants watching. We then throw the model in the bin and we start again and we do a model that's fit for construction. I think we're finding now that the models we're getting now, we can use them a lot more than we used to be able to. Yeah. And off the back of it as well. What we found is, we're doing more work for consultants than we ever used to. And we got into that through the future prison works that we do, and we ended up working on the future prisons, and we had to catch up stage three, because the stage three got redesigned and they’d lost the stage three period, but construction on site was still plowing on. Of course. We got asked, how can we improve it? And we were like, well, let us work with the consultants and let us produce their models rather than them produce a design model and then us throw it in the bin and start again. So we did that. And by doing that, we kind of got ourselves in a good position on the prisons where we work with a few different consultants on the prisons, we work with a few different contractors on the prisons. So we kind of work with the consultants taking the model, stage three, stage four, and then we kind of get novated over to the contractors and we can work on the prisons then through the stage four into stage five, and then hand over at stage six. So we've kind of fell into a position where we’re bringing the consultants models and the construction models together and sort of creating that bridge. Well, funnily enough, quite a few years ago the New Zealand market was going down. So we shot across to Australia and, picked up some work from there. Because again, they were a little bit behind. You know, they’d got into the 3D stuff, but there wasn't that many people. And we got snapped up. And an engineer in those days said to me, said, oh Dave, he says, I see companies like you working direct for the consultant, he says, and we'll just take that and fit it. Yeah. And I laughed. What you just said then that’s what sparked it off a bit. Yeah. I think that's the way, I feel is the way it's going a little bit because I think more onus is getting put on the consultants now. Oh there is yeah. They're not getting away with producing a model that design wise works. They are having now to prove that sort of installation wise it works as well. And that's where I think they need people like me and you. Yeah. Or our companies. Yeah. Definitely. Our experience. Yeah. Do you find prefabrication is a big thing in New Zealand? Because it's massive over here now in the UK. They’re trying to get... See again Matthew, because it's such a smaller market. They're trying to get into it, but they don't have the scale of jobs. Right. You know, we were doing some modules for a refurb job right in town, right near the front. They were converting this building, it used to be a big old bank into apartments. They said, right because it's in the center of town we want to put your modules in, bring them in, corridors only, so we were doing the modules and then the other subbies were taking off our branches. And so we did all that work. And then they looked at the weights of all these modules. And it was actually when the structural guy looked at it he went, it'll bring the building down that, because they were so heavy. So I mean, it's up and running now, I don't know what happened to the job. But obviously they had to change the design. You know, but no, it's. Yeah I know they do it a lot in Australia. Yeah. Yeah. Because we did a big hospital over there, Melbourne hospital. Where again, down the corridors it was all done in a modular format. Yeah, we find hospital's are big for the modules. Yeah. Like you say, especially the hospital corridors. Yeah. Where they’re just hammered with services. I always say, like, when you walk down a hospital, like I'm walking down a hospital and I'm with somebody, my wife, some member of family, a friend, whatever. And I say to them, look up and you see the nice ceiling tiles and that. And I said, if you knew what was above that it’d terrify you thinking all that is above you and you’d be thinking, God, if that fell down. It's unbelievable what goes above some of these ceilings. And, I think, I mean, for us, the modular side of it, it's just growing and growing in the UK. And I think it's all coming down to program time. Oh yeah. So what we're finding is, is that these modules can be getting built whilst the structure is getting built. Yeah. And the second the structures ready, they’re brought from a factory and they’re in and they’re up. Yeah. And the amount of time it saves. And I think, it’s like most things these days isn’t it, everything's cost and time. Time is the biggest cost. I mean, when you look at some of these projects, if they overrun and you look at what the liability costs are and everything for them to overrun, everyone's terrified of projects over running. So if you can use prefabrication to sort of, you know, just firm up that program and give, a bit of... Well, like I was saying to you about the lateness of getting us on board. It’s a big problem for us over in New Zealand. Yeah, we still have that here as well. I mean, some projects are good and we get a nice lead in and they tend to run better those projects. Because you can plan it better. You can plan your resource. You can look into setting all your family's up and you can do everything up front. So then when you are ready to go, you hit the ground running. Yeah. Whereas we still get the projects where you’re promised a project and then it's, we're going to get our order next week. We're going to get it next week, we're going to get it next week. And by the time you know it, what you've programed, you're already eight weeks behind. You get given the information and all of a sudden everyone's wanting you to somehow claw that eight weeks back. And your backs up against the wall from day one. So, anyway... I'm very proud of what you're done Matthew. Well, thank you. And thank you for coming all the way over from New Zealand just to do this podcast. I know. That’s really good. And I'll send you the bill for the air tickets.