Employee Spotlight – Zachary Phillips

Following a six-year period of education along with various freelance drafting, 3D modeling, and rendering projects, Zachary Phillips joined Nexus PMG where he now serves as a senior drafter. He maintains an expansive proficiency of numerous computer programs used by several industries and uses his strong aptitude to learn the purposes, functionalities, and reasonings behind the things that he models to further increase his proficiency, efficiency, and precision.

What’s the best career lesson you’ve learned so far?

One of the main things I have learned was how to balance the amount of detail I put in my 3D models and drawings and my time efficiency. I used to model in every little detail to the point where I was sacrificing time that I could have used to model in more important things. The moment it clicked for me was when I did the calculations to find the exact connection I needed to use for a steel structure and I spent an entire weekend modeling it in for fun.

If you were to write a book, what would it be about?

A time traveler who is a historian from our present-day going back in time to major wars and providing a military modern-day technology to see what the outcome would be and how the opposing military would react. Each chapter would start off as if the reader was reading from the historian’s notebook that recorded the events, but then it would seamlessly transition into the perspective of someone from that time period who the historian is interacting with.

What aspect of your job do you enjoy the most?

I really enjoy learning new things every day and approaching the challenges we face while finding the best way to tackle them. What I love about my job the most is the wonderful culture that Nexus PMG has created for employees and clients.

What was your favorite class of your educational career?

From high school, it would be the two-semester combination class of CAD design and computer programming. The teachers that taught those classes were amazing and pushed me to create the best work that I could. 

In college, it would be architectural computer graphics III. I loved that class because I had a full set of 2D architectural, structural, and mechanical drawings of a local fire department that I used to create a fully-detailed 3D model in Revit. I think I spent on average 12-13 hours a day for an entire semester working on that model, but I enjoyed every second of it.

What are your hobbies outside of work?

Sim racing, going to the gun range and long-distance shooting, photography, New England Patriots football, and watching Formula 1 and Nascar.

If you could implement one sustainable swap in the world right now, what would it be?

100% biofuels for all gas engines with no compromise to engine life or performance.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received or given?

Motivation is always a momentary feeling. Most of the time motivation will not carry you all the way to your goals. You may be motivated to do something, but, eventually you will hit times where your motivation seems to have disappeared and things start to become a grind. The true struggle is finding that motivation again. 

In a way, motivation is like a river — it starts from a little spring and leads to its goal, the ocean. If you ever feel like you’re not motivated, go back to the spring, or the source, of your motivation. Remember the reason why in the beginning you wanted to pursue your goal. Even if your goals change, your original reason why you wanted to achieve a goal in the first place usually never changes. Just like how a river has many branches that seek new paths to get to a body of water, you must always find new and old ways to keep yourself motivated and never lose sight of the original vision that you have.

Sometimes a river’s branch will merge with another river, creating a stronger flow. The same goes with motivation — someone may be in need of some encouragement to reach their goal, and by lending some of your own motivational support, you instill a new liveliness and enthusiasm into them.

Meet the rest of the Nexus PMG team.

Nexus PMG
Latest posts by Nexus PMG (see all)

You may also like: