Quest is an international transfer program which connects Arcadians from all over the world. Quest is sponsored by the Lovinklaan Foundation. Every week we are highlighting one of the stories our employees who went on an exchange. In this blogpost we cover the Quest story of Julio Inhasz Paiva who traveled from São Paulo, Brazil to London in the UK.
“My Quest experience proved to be a unique opportunity to expand your network and to broaden and deepen your knowledge.“
Why did I apply for a Quest
My name is Julio Inhasz Paiva and I work at the Arcadis São Paulo office in Brazil. I decided to apply for a Quest exchange in 2016 when I asked on Yammer how other Arcadians create the geological model for geo-technical purposes with which I was working with at the time. The many responses from colleagues working in different places around the world made me realize how powerful a medium like Yammer and Skype can be. It can be used to improve the quality of our tasks and our work processes by connecting different people and sharing their knowledge within seconds. Through these exchanges and conversations with some fellow Arcadians from the UK, I realized that I could learn much more from them than I initially thought. This thus encouraged me to apply for a Quest exchange to the UK with the idea to use the knowledge I would acquire to complement our expertise in the Arcadis Brazil office on Geotechnical BIM (Building Information Modeling).
Highlights of my Quest experience 
During my Quest I was able to visit three offices in UK. My journey started in London, then Birmingham and I finished my travels in Bristol.
I spend four days in London where I met many geotechnicians who were working on some fantastic infrastructure projects. They introduced me to the Holebase SI, which is an amazing geotechnical database used to manage all your geotechnical field data. I tried to talk to as many team members as possible to learn about the projects they were involved with and their assigned duties. I was very interested in hearing their stories and exchanging experiences.
After London, I spend three days in Birmingham learning more additional features of the Holebase package, more specifically about the extension to Excel. With this tool you can create many different types of charts in a fast and easy way and establishing correlations between different geotechnical parameters. Similar to visiting the London office, it was a great to learn about the tasks the Birmingham team was involved in.
My Quest ended in Bristol, where I spend one day learning about using HoleBase in combination with a different geotechnical tool called Civil 3D. It showed me both the benefits and the disadvantages of using either one of the tools to create a 3D geological models for different types of projects.
My Quest in one sentence
My Quest experience was an unforgettable professional and personal experience.
Learnings and experiences
During my experience abroad, I discovered how Geotechnical BIM can be used in different projects. It gave me the opportunity to improve our expertise on Geotechnical BIM in our office in Arcadis Brazil. It also helped me establish some valuable professional relationships with colleagues working in the same field at another Arcadis office. Furthermore, this experience has encouraged me to engage more with the Arcadis company as a whole and to also try to collaborate more with other departments in Arcadis Brazil.
Lovinklaan provides Arcadians with a great opportunity to exchange knowledge with other offices and you should enjoy every minute of it. In my opinion, to get the most out of your experience, it is very important to organize your trip before you go. Try to plan everything,like: transports, presentations, what are your plans, what do you want to learn, the places you want to visit, and others. It will make your journey unforgettable.
Being part of a Quest Program is a unique experience. You meet people from different countries with whom you can share professional and personal experience. When you get back to your country, you can continue collaborating and exchange the gathered information and ideas with your office colleagues.
The international transfer program Quest, which connects Arcadians from all over the world, is sponsored by the Lovinklaan Foundation.
