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The entire Whonnock office is still working on the Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino project located in Las Vegas, which we are doing for Schuff Steel in Phoenix.

This is a large project in excess of 30,000 tons and will keep the entire office busy well into 2007.  Additionally there have been, and continue to be, a good number of design changes that have increased our scope and extended the duration.

Although it is fairly straightforward construction, it does have a reasonable mix of elements, including some very large box columns and trusses, and several rather interesting “shear walls”.

We have three separate groups working simultaneously on three distinct areas, and I must commend them for managing to maintain their forward momentum despite the challenges of missing information and design revisions.

You guys are the best!

Project Report, Burnaby Office
Rick Station

The Vancouver Convention Centre is still in full swing. The Eastern Part of the Convention Centre has started erection and is about 90% completely connected and detailed. The Western part of the Convention Centre model is being updated per meetings with the Architect and Engineer.  Wojtek Jablkowski and his crew have now been working on this project close to 18 months with at least another 9 months to complete the West. 

The 4600 ton Sprint Center in Kansas City for Schuff Steel Midwest is 100% detailed and out for Approval. John Chai’s crew is in the final stages of clean up this month and looking forward to new challenges. Thanks to Earl Horton at Schuff Mid-West and Paul Devereax at Mortenson.  It has been enjoyable working with you both.
   
We are finally receiving connection designs we have been waiting for on the 40,000 ton Goldman Sachs Headquarters in New York City for DCM Erectors.  It was a struggle in the beginning getting connections but now it is full steam ahead.  Ken Mussato and Tony Han’s crew are putting in a large amount of extra time to help DCM in getting this project back on track. We really do appreciate the effort.

Dowco has been awarded from Bechtel Power Corporation the 10,000 ton Sandow Power Plant.  Sanjay Prasad, with help from Steven Chang, is heading up this project.  There are no Engineering drawings supplied, just a completed model c/w sample connection ready for Dowco to connect and detail.

Dowco has also been awarded another project from Bechtel Power Corporation; the 120,000 Ton TXU Power Plant. There are 6 Boiler Structures identical and 2 more slightly different. Alan Ng from the Burnaby office and Mark Sencich from our Toronto office are our point people. On this project, Dowco has received a connected model ready for drawing extraction. This new project will be headed by Sanjay Prasad with help from John Chai and his crew. 

The Panama Museum of Biodiversity has hit another snag and at this point is back on HOLD. Hopefully this Frank Gehry Project will get underway in the New Year.

The North American economy seems to be humming along quite nicely and everyone in the industry I have talked with is busy right now. These signs are very encouraging for 2007. Let us hope this trend will continue.

The Burnaby office staff along with all of our other offices is getting into the Christmas spirit with its generous donation of non perishable goods for the Food Bank. I would like to thank Kirsty Newlands from the Langley office for organizing this again. We are very pleased to be able to help out less fortunate families especially at this time of the year.  I do wish everyone a prosperous 2007 and from my family to yours, we wish every one a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Project Report, Toronto Office
Eric Lee

Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays to everyone.  It has been two years since we moved into Dowco’s Mississauga office.  With a combined staff of thirty (30) plus, we are looking to increase to thirty-eight (38) in the near future -  additional space will be available by January 1, 2007.

Panalized Baghouse Modules – Moran Iron Work in Ohio awarded this unusual project to Toronto office.  It’s a light structure with lots of plate work.  The job is 100% out for approval.   Moran decided to issue all drawings for fabrication at the same time. There was also an unusual request from Moran’s customer to use copies of the EOR structural drawings as Erection drawings instead of our computer-generated drawings.  While this is not our normal practice, we complied with the client’s request

Goldman Sachs - Area 4 is progressing very slowly.   DCM are concentrating their engineering staff on the lower floors and has further delayed Area 4.   For the next 5 weeks, we are shifting some of our detailers to help Burnaby complete Area 3.  Looks like this job will stretch into the fall of 2007.

Fedex Hangar – This job finally started to move.  The drafting kickoff meeting was held in Hirschfeld’s office early October;  modelers were busy  getting ABMs ready and connections started to arrive from Hirschfeld’s connection engineer. The Hanger building is designed to accommodate the new Airbus A380 freight airplane with trusses redesigned to 40 ft plus deep, and just short of 400 ft long. The original plan to eliminate camber did not materialize.  The camber has made this project a bit more interesting and challenging.

Children’s Hospital – Phase I of this project was fabricated and erected by Cives, Helmark was asked to help complete Phase II and awarded Dowco with a detailing contract along with SCI for connection engineering.  A major revision to our original scope has added 50% more work to our base contract, followed by issue #2 adding another 25%.  This job is scheduled to complete by early June of 2007.

NTTA (Hirschfeld), Kaynor Tech School (SteelFab), One Bryant Park (Owen Steel), The Standard Hotel (Helmark Steel) and Clackamas Town Center (Fought and Company) are all in their final stage and should finish shortly.

Project Report, Kolkata Office
Ken Mussato

In October, Ewen Dobbie and I traveled to DowcoMax, India.  I had interviews with over thirty-five (35) potential employees while Ewen held meetings with our partners and directors of DowcoMax.   I’m sure he will be reporting on his trip, so I will expand a bit on mine.

We advertised for qualified staff in a local Delhi newspaper and attracted hundreds of inquiries.  Dowco’s international reputation even attracted applicants from as far away as Cyprus and Dubai.   Those short listed were interviewed in Delhi and Kolkata.  Matthew Peck is currently in DowcoMax training fourteen (14) of the newest DowcoMax crew on the latest version of Tekla Structures.

As a result of the added staff, we have created a new crew led by an eager Aloke Patra. Aloke has been in the business since 1988 and has several degrees…  B.Sc., I.T.I ( Civil) and a Diploma in Civil Engineering.

Our current work situation has created so much work for DowcoMax that they are working overtime to help us out.  The new crew will help us considerably.

Project Report, Surrey/Langley Office
Iain Brannen

The past five months have been busy and challenging with the opening of the new Surrey/Langley office and the amalgamation of personnel from the Whonnock and Burnaby offices.

In the midst of the reorganization, Schuff Steel awarded Dowco the Tulsa Event Center Arena project.  This undertaking, described as “The project of the century” by the Vision Builders 2025 group,  presented us with a number of unique detailing challenges, all adding to the excitement of being involved with a project designed by the world- renowned architect Cesar Pelli.

During initial discussions and early meetings, it became obvious that the focus of the arena would be the Icon Wall.  Subsequent modeling and detailing has indicated this to be true, and the Icon Wall is emerging as a complex and unique aspect of the arena project. The Dowco team has risen to the challenges and is doing an outstanding job with every member focused and contributing to the successful completion of the project in the spring of 2007.

In early December, Owens Steel Company awarded us the The John Jay College of Criminal Justice project located in New York City.  We look forward to again working with the Owens team on another fascinating and challenging venture.  This project is a 16-storey building with the floors hanging off large roof trusses that cantilever over the core of the building. All the floors will require camber and will be erected in the camber position supported by temporary jack columns that will be lowered and removed once all the floors of steel have been erected.  We have started the modeling and are being assisted by our DowcoMax team to help with the completion.  More details and pictures will follow in the next issue of Details.