The 2007 North American User Meeting
Arvin Eugenio, Sales & Marketing

Baltimore, Maryland, took centre stage at this year’s 2007 North American User Meeting. Since the 1600s, America’s most notable seaport has been an historical location for trade, welcoming ships and goods from all over the world. Last August 16 to 18, Baltimore inner harbour welcomed Tekla Structures users from all across North America and, being an east coast venue, attracted more attendees from eastern Canada, particularly from Toronto, Quebec and New Brunswick.

With attendees numbering over 300, Tekla welcomed an increase in participants from the engineering segment as well as several from the pre-cast segment.

Once again Dowco sponsored the first night Welcome Reception with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

Tekla’s Stacy Scopano opened the General Sessions next day by citing various global projects and summarizing how Tekla Structures was applied. His presentation fittingly segued to the keynote address presented by Kristine Fallon, FAIA. Kristine presented a summary of her efforts with the National Institute Standards and Technology (NIST) as well as her experience as Chair of the American Institute of Architects – Technology in Architectural Practice (TAP) Advisory group.

Her endeavors with NIST and TAP provided attendees with an “understanding of the national efforts, including the National Institute of Building Science – National BIM Standard, as well as a definitive explanation on developing sound strategies to participate in model–exchange based projects.” She also noted in her closing slide that the “early adopters have achieved results that validate the value of technologies”’ – an irrefutable point that we at Dowco especially agree with and have experienced over the past years, not only in our own usage of the software but also in witnessing our users apply Tekla Structures.

In contrast to previous meetings, Tekla added the Pre-cast segment-specific sessions to the Engineering and Steel Detailing ones. Interestingly, most session topics this year were geared towards either Building Information Modeling (BIM)/Collaboration and presentations on segment focused functionalities. Dowco’s Technical Coordination Manager, Sanjay Prasad featured his presentation on Structural BIM and the Vancouver Convention Center Expansion Project (VCCEP) in one of Tekla’s Engineering breakout sessions, highlighting the benefits achieved from having one Master Model and other benefits such as faster problem resolution, minimized errors, more accurate connections etc etc.

After the first day’s meetings, 200 or so attendees enjoyed a boat cruise tour of Baltimore’s inner harbor, while the remaining attendees ‘water-taxied’ elsewhere to cap off the evening.

Case Studies on the USC Cinema Arts Center and the Solaris Redevelopment project were presented during the next day’s general sessions. Both projects *focused on the importance and benefits gained from integrated project delivery.

Aside from Tekla’s annual Top 10 presentation, many users felt the extended tools and .Net Development session was the most helpful this year – with Chris Keyiak, Michael Gustafson and Charles Pool alternating presentations on EOR Review, Base Plate, Stair, Change Management and Erection Sequencing Applications – all of which were developed via .NET technology.

We would like to express our sincere appreciation to all our users who attended this year’s meeting. It was truly worthwhile and we had a great time with you during this year’s Users days, and we look forward to seeing you again in 2008.

The 20 percent increase in the number of attendees this year is a strong indicator of Tekla’s brand dominance in the structural modeling and detailing software market and the company expects attendance to reach the 500 mark by 2009. Kudos goes to Tekla for an informative and successful user meeting – the future is indeed bigger and brighter.