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:

• Category 1 – BIM
• Category 2 - Steel
• Category 3 - Concrete

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 scheduledfirst home game, which the Dynamo won

Category 2 Winner - Steel – Structal-Heavy Steel Construction, Winnipeg Investors Group Field, Manitoba, Canada