Taking It to the Next Level
Arvin Eugenio, Sales & Marketing

 

The 2008 Tekla North American User Meeting

This year’s North American User meeting was held August 21st to 23rd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded in 1846, Milwaukee is largely known for its brewing and manufacturing industries. As at last year’s meeting, users came from the three segments of the industry, Steel Detailing, Engineering and Precast Detailing, for a record attendance.

As in previous years, Dowco sponsored the Welcome Reception on the night of August 21st and Tero Laine, Dowco Technology Services’ Business Manager, welcomed North America’s users to a wonderful night to inaugurate the meetings.

Tekla Inc. started strongly on the first day of sessions by inviting their keynote speaker, Walker Lee Evey, to speak on Design-Build and Building Information Modeling (BIM). Lee made several important points comparing the traditional Design-Bid-Build way of working versus Design-Bid. What struck many participants about his presentation was the point he made that, although the Design & Construction industry is driving the US Economy, it is the last trade taking on new technology in comparison with others.

Design-Build facts vs Design-Bid-Build

• 6% lower cost
• 12% faster construction time
• 33% faster project time
• BIM rebuilt the Pentagon in 1 year after 9/11 and saved 241 million dollars; Design-Bid-Build would have taken 3 years

The succeeding general sessions were more or less based on the theme of integrating Tekla Structures with tools used by contractors and erectors. Tekla’s Business & Product Development Manager, Stacy Scopano, led in to presentations by Trimble Navigation on integration of Tekla Structures with their surveying equipment while Vela Systems presented slides on their usage of mobile field applications via Tablet PCs that enable project team members to share information from Tekla Structures. These all served as a prelude to the launch of the *Tekla Structures for Construction Management configuration, which is expected to be due around late Fall.

The following meetings were then divided into breakout sessions for Steel, Precast and Engineering. The steel segment offered sessions on modeling, drawings, custom components, miscellaneous steel and the heavily anticipated Top 12 meeting. The Precast segment had sessions on templates, BIM Collaboration, custom components, the Precast Development roadmap as well as a meeting on how existing users utilize Tekla Structures. The engineering sessions involved topics on Analysis & Design integration, collaboration tools, drawings, custom components and even cast-in-place rebar modeling.

The winners of this year’s Model Competition were announced on Saturday, August 23rd to wrap up the meetings.

We would like to thank all our customers who continue to recognize the benefit of attending these meetings and we appreciate the time spent with them during the event. We look forward to seeing you again in 2009.

We would like to congratulate Tekla Inc on a very successful, well-organized event and for taking these valuable meetings and most importantly, Tekla Structures, to the next level.

* For more information on Tekla Structures for Construction Management visit www.tekla.com