Friday, March 12, 2010

Rockford Federal Courthouse

Rockford Federal Courthouse is a fantastic project that I was fortunate enough to work on during my time with PSA Dewberry. I came into this project when it was in the construction document phase and this was a great opportunity to learn how a building this complicated goes together.

Following the completion of the construction documents, the decision was made to convert this into a BIM (Building Informational Modeling) project. BIM modeling is the new standard for all Government Service Agency projects. Rockford Federal Courthouse was the first project to be done in this manner and therefore has set the precedent for all following BIM projects. This was also the pilot project for PSA Dewberry's conversion to BIM. It was very exciting to be involved in this aspect of the project. I spent a great deal of time modeling the architectural elements of the building, and en even greater amount of time checking the coordination between all of the building elements. Proof checking in this manner saved millions of dollars in change orders and drastically increased the coordination between the multiple disciplines.

Rockford Federal Courthouse was a finalist in the 2008 BE Awards. Unfortunately, the remodel of the Sydney Opera House took first place that year. However, a great article about the use of BIM in this project can be found in BE Magazine, myself and the rest of the architecture team are mentioned in the article, so please take the time to check it out! The images shown here and in the BE article were created by Mike Justice and myself.


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