Interview with Mohammed Eleyan, BIM Modeller – Designer Assistant in Pekabex. We talked about education and work, Mohammed told us how work in Design Department looks like from a foreigners’ point of view and how he feels in Polish reality.
Your master thesis was awarded 3rd place in the competition for the best diploma thesis at Politechnika Poznańska. Congratulations! Could you tell us more about the topic of it?
The topic was about design of prefabricated concrete structures by using BIM technology – Building Information Modelling. It’s a new smart technology basing on gathering all engineering information for a project and connecting them together. I had a knowledge about BIM and design previously, in general, but since I came to Europe, to Poland, I noticed that prefabricated structures here are common. In my country it’s not so popular. But here I see there are a lot of prefabricated structures so I decided to increase my skills to meet the market requirements. I started to read more about design and modelling and I chose it on my thesis so I could force myself to learn more. Sometimes it was difficult to write it, especially it has two branches, theoretical and practical part so it was a challenge for me. My promoter, professor Mieczysław Kuczma gave me a great support.
When and why did your interest in prefabrication start? You mentioned it’s not so popular in Palestine, your homeland.
I started learning about prefabrication in Poland. It has a lot of benefits compared to the traditional building methods. Sometimes we face difficulties to cast the concrete in situ, such as bad weather. But when we have prefabricated elements, we have just to bring and assemble them together. Thanks to this technology we can also save time, costs and energy, what is more ecological. I think in Palestine we would need huge factories like here. I think the whole world needs prefabrication to increase building industry, I mean communities, not only one house.
Was it easy for you to find yourself in Poland and our Company?
I have lived in Poland for two years now. I think what makes that easier for me is that at the beginning I had a preparatory course, so I could learn something about Polish language and culture. This helped me to become involved in the Polish community. I speak Polish a little but mostly I communicate in English, also at work in Pekabex. I don’t feel strange that I cannot speak Polish fluently because everybody in my team speaks English. My colleagues introduced me in Pekabex and showed me the departments and branches. They also gave me some books and they’re very supportive for me. I have only two challenges: language and new work, but I am trying to manage it. I applied the prefabrication and BIM topic in my thesis and now I am ready to scale it up to practical life using new software that I used in the university.
Thank you very much for the conversation and we wish you many further successes!