NASCC Conference
Wayne Morrison

Several Dowco staff attended the 2008 North American Steel Construction Conference held April 2^nd to 4^th in Nashville, Tennessee. Attendance the year was 20% higher than 2007, which is a strong indication of the current level of activity and the optimistic outlook of the steel construction industry.

This year, I joined Pete Carrato of Bechtel Power Corporation, Mark Holland of Paxton & Vierling Steel Co and Randy Bolt of FabTrol Systems, Inc. to form a panel for a 4-hour session entitled ‘BIM instruction for the fabricator’. BIM is short for Building Information Modeling, which is also known as EDI, or Electronic Data Interchange, Lean Construction/Design or Interoperability.

BIM can be as simple as the detailer providing CNC/Fabtrol files to their fabricator customers or as advanced as the sharing of and transferring information within models.

Over 100 people attended the session. This increased level of interest mirrors the faster adoption of BIM in our industry. Owner and general contractors are increasingly willing to embrace the more efficient and cost-effective team-based approach to working on projects. In the last 12 months, approximately 90% of all Dowco’s projects have involved some form of BIM. Recent BIM projects include: Freedom Tower, NY, Goldman Sachs HQ, NY, METS Stadium, NY, Vancouver Convention Center, BC, Panama Museum of Biodiversity, Panama and the Denver Art Museum, CO.

New Projects

So far in 2008, Dowco has been awarded new projects to provide steel detailing, pre-construction, model preparation and pre-detailing services to:

• Alstom Power Systems
• Atlantic Constructors
• Berlin Steel
• Canron Western Constructors
• Dave Steel Corporation
• DCM Erectors Inc
• Gayle Manufacturing Co
• Hatch International
• Helmark Steel, Inc.
• Herrick Corporation
• Hirschfeld Steel Co, Inc
• Isaacson Structural Steel, Inc
• Littell Steel Co
• P.T. Freeport Indonesia
• Schuff Steel Company

New Employees

Dowco welcomes the following new employees:

• Adil, Dominique, Doris, Jocelyn, Luc, Neil and Rob in the Canadian offices.

Tekla Staff to Visit Dowco

Chris Keyack and Steve Jones from Tekla Corporation will be visiting our Montreal and Vancouver offices in early May as part of the continuing close relationship between the two companies. The aim of these meetings is to share information about the market and industry processes and to brainstorm areas of future development for Tekla Structures.