Young Latvian student impresses Cundall bosses

Graduate Jurijs ‘Yuri’ Pavlovics has secured a job following his involvement in an international design competition.

The 23 year-old, originally from Latvia, arrived at the Cundall office in Newcastle expecting to be involved in a gruelling but fun competition.

He was taking part in OpenBIM Build Sydney LIVE where teams had 48 hours to design a building to current architecture, sustainability, engineering, planning and construction requirements as a full 3D integrated model.

Yuri was representing BIM (Building Information Modelling) Campus, the specialist construction training business which is part of space group.

48 hours later his team had won the prize for best use of BIM for Sustainability or Constructability and he had been offered a job with international engineering company Cundall.

Yuri was enrolled on the inaugural 12 week intensive BIM course at BIM Campus to build up his technical BIM skills following his degree in Construction Management at the University of Northumbria.

He said: “I was getting toward the end of my course when my tutor, Peter James Morton mentioned that there was a BIM competition coming up and that Cundall was looking for assistance for someone with REVIT experience. I spoke to Keith Anderson (Building Services Partner at Cundall), and the following week I found myself sat in a small room with the rest of Cundall’s Build Sydney Live team.”

Keith Anderson, partner in charge of the Build Sydney Live 2013 added: “Yuri fit into the team really well and the knowledge he had already with the software was a great help to everyone.

“Although this was his first time using BIM on a real life project, and was slightly more complicated than his previous experience, he coped really well and even picked up new skills and techniques from the other staff. Yuri impressed us so much we asked him if he would like to join us as a full-time employee.”