A multi-use sports arena, power generating station flow control structure, and a Canadian major events stadium were all winners in Tekla's 2012 North America BIM Awards.
September 05, 2012 -- Tekla Structures, the most advanced building information modeling (BIM) software on the market, includes an accurate, dynamic and data-rich 3D environment, the benefits of which are evident for the above projects and in all the building information models that were submitted for the 2012 Tekla North America BIM Awards.
Each year Tekla hosts a North America BIM Award competition open to all Tekla users who have modeled projects with the software during the preceding year. The BIM Awards competition is held in conjunction with Tekla's Annual North America User Meeting, which this year took place in Orlando, Florida, August 15-17.
Our annual model competition attracts a growing number of submissions each year. Models were submitted for judging in three categories:
Participants submitted web models using Tekla BIMsight , descriptions of their projects, photos, and other supporting material. Online voting opened to the public prior to the 2012 Tekla North American User Meeting. The top projects then went to a panel of three judges: Jochen Teizer, Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Stephen Jones, Product Manager, Tekla BIMsight; and Jim McCartney, Segment Manager at Trimble Navigation Limited.
The winners for each category were announced at a special award dinner Thursday evening. Congratulations to the following winners!
View these winners at: http://www.tekla.com/us/Documents/BIM-awards-2012/winners.html
Category 1 Winner - BIM
– CSD Services
Houston Dynamo Stadium, Houston, Texas
Multi-use Sports Arena - BBVA Compass Stadium, new home to the 2-time Major League Soccer Champions the Houston Dynamo, is a multi-use arena to serve a professional soccer team, a local small college football team and other venues, including concerts. It is located in downtown Houston with a seating capacity of 22,000 with thirty-six luxury suites.
The superstructure is structural steel with an upper bowl consisting of pre-cast seating along the sidelines and aluminum seating at the end zones. The skin of the structure is very unique expanded aluminum façade supported by secondary white tube steel that is supported by the primary steel structure. As the picture indicates, this is a unique structure which combined structural steel, precast concrete seating and aluminum plane seating [Tekla User] coordinated with several different trades, each using different shop drawing methods; Space Frame Skin Support - SDS software, Precast - AutoCad 2000, Aluminum Bleacher Seating – Old School Hand Drafted.
An engineer's design model was used to create a Tekla model in which an SDS 3model was imported along with precast and seating supports manually added. This Tekla model was used by "Peterson/Beckner" to produce an erection plan along with pick points on trusses, by contractor for scheduling, sequencing, etc. all combined with limited space and a very aggressive schedule of fourteen months, from demolition of existing roads on site to substantial completion, the project was complete for the scheduled first home game, which the Dynamo won
Category 2 Winner - Steel – Structal-Heavy Steel Construction, Winnipeg Investors Group Field, Manitoba, Canada
Canadian Football Stadium - The Investors Group Field is composed of 9000 tons of steel, 28,000 cubic meters of concrete, 3500 sections of hollow main floor, 450 pieces of precast bleachers, 272,000 blocks, 8 acres of room, 33,500 seats expandable to 40,000 for major events, including Grey Cup and other major international events and concerts. The stadium arch trusses supporting the 8 acres of roof are the largest and highest in Canada, spanning 620 feet and approximately 200 feet in the air. They weigh 950 tons each. All steel pieces were detailed in Tekla Structure with great efficacity.
At the end of the project, we ended up with 8,600 shop drawings, 5000 for the bowl and 3600 for the roof. Some truss connections were so complicated that it was not possible to draw them on paper. The engineering firm, Walter P Moore, used our model to make the connection concept and transferred us the Tekla information so we could complete the 3D. The camber of the trusses was also a big challenge but good communication between our team and the project engineer enabled us to input everything into the model, therefore preventing problems in the field. We inputed in our Tekla model all the cast-in-place concrete and precast that could affect our steel for coordination. We have also shared the model with Walter P Moore to input the deck in Tekla to prevent any misfit in the field.
Category 3 Winner - Concrete –
KGS Group
Manitoba Hydro Spillway Replacement, Manitoba, Canada
Power Generating Station Flow Control Structure - The Manitoba Hydro Spillway Replacement project is an innovative spillway replacement project currently under way. This project involved major earthworks and cast in place components including 30,000 m3 of concrete and 145 tonnes of reinforcing steel.
The estimated total cost of this project is $300 million. This is a pilot project for Manitoba Hydro to fully explore the use of BIM for large scale Hydro projects. KGS Group selected Tekla as the optimum tool to perform the cast-in-place modeling and deliver the construction drawings. This was KGS Groups first cast-in-place project design & detailed using Tekla Structures for reinforced concrete. The coordination of this project fully utilized Tekla IFC, DWG and BIMsight exports to coordinate with the client and other sub contractors.
Many inp and db files were customized to meet the Canadian Rebar standards, industry specific profiles were created as well as creating a full metric cast-in-place environment. Custom templates were created to associate the Canadian Standard Bend Types with the Tekla Structures internal shapes. The rebar/concrete model, drawings, and schedules were completed by 3 Tekla users, with this being the first project for 2 of the users, while the structural steel was detailed by KGS Groups experienced steel detailing department that consists of 7 users.
Honorable Mentions
Barton Malow gained special recognition for exemplary BIM collaboration in John and Mary Brock Football facility, a climate controlled, closed practice facility for Georgia Tech's championship football team. Also,
JPW Structural Contracting's Spire Truss at Sutter Medical Center in Castro Valley, California, received an honorable mention for the steel category. The honorable mention in the Concrete Category was given to
Ambassador Steel for their model of University Of Alabama Science And Engineering Building in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
About Tekla
With its software, Tekla Corporation drives the evolution of digital information models and provides thus more and more competitive advantage to the construction, infrastructure and energy industries. The company was established already in 1966, and today it has customers in 100 countries, offices in 15 countries and a global partner network.
With an ambition to multiply its customers' potential to think and achieve big, Tekla provides an accurate, detailed, and data-rich 3D BIM (Building Information Modeling) software environment that can be shared by contractors, structural engineers, steel detailers and fabricators, as well as concrete detailers and manufacturers.
