President's Report
Hugh Dobbie Sr

Corpus Steel is now officially Dowco Consultants (Quebec) Ltd. We have also changed the name of Dowco/TSD-Toronto to Dowco Consultants (Ontario) Ltd. We plan to keep the Dowco brand strong throughout the structural steel community.

The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Detailing for Steel Construction, Web-based Course was launched at the North American Steel Construction Conference (NASCC) in New Orleans in April. A special thank you to all Dowco staff who worked through the Beta version to help us uncover potential problems. See special article on the AISC course in this issue.

Acquiring and training staff is still one of our most challenging tasks. We encourage all staff to take advantage of our incentive program to encourage new prospects to join the company.

Building Information Model (BIM) is the new buzz word in our industry. Through BIM, all of the participants on a project - from the owner, architect, engineer, fabricator, detailer and the other sub-trades - have access to the model and can input their design and detail information for a complete picture of the project.

We have been building many of these Building Information Models (BI M) from the structural steel perspective. My ultimate goal is that after we build the model for the owner, contractor, engineer etc., we can proceed to prepare the shop detail drawings before the project goes to the fabricator for bidding. More and more clients are seeing the benefits of this approach and I predict it will eventually become the norm for progressive thinking owners and contractors. With the shortage of engineering staff throughout the country, I believe we can supplement the engineer’s staff and solve many of the design problems before the project goes to the fabricator.

We are looking ahead to some very exciting times. Stay tuned!