BIM Worries

The article "Army's BIM Approach Worries Industry Firms" accurately represents the concerns individual firms like Sundt Construction may have with the decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in selecting one preferred vendor for its building information modeling platform.

I would like to clarify my statements regarding the Associated General Contractors of America's position about the Corps of Engineers' choice to select Bentley Systems Inc. as sole vendor. AGC has no plans to seek intervention from Congress. Associated General Contractors has been a leader in BIM and welcomes new opportunities to work with USACE as well as other public owners and private owners to discuss the effectiveness of the various technology platforms that are available in the marketplace.

Speaking for Sundt Construction, I believe our industry will be well-served by continued dialogue about the impact of using a single-vendor BIM platform.

Ronald B. Brown
Senior Vice President
Sundt Construction
Tempe, Ariz.

 We use Bentley software now, but we are experiencing difficulty with interoperability with other systems. The Army Corps of Engineers can specify that design professionals be "beamed up" to their meetings, but at the end of the day we will all be standing in line at airport security. The software industry has oversold and overstated the capabilities and reliability of their building information modeling systems. And the Army Corps of Engineers has bought in-hook, line and sinker. Disaster looms!

 D. Kirk Harman, P.E., S.E., FACI President
The Harman Group, Inc.
Structural Engineers & Parking Consultants
King of Prussia, Pa.

Project Types and Fees

Nice write-up in your story "Study of Design Fees Indicates Project Type Doesn't Matter". Matt Feldmann makes some good points. I think some fees are based on complexity, square footage, percent of construction cost and then how desperate an architect is to get a project because he may not have much of a backlog. I think we all try to get as much as our competition will let us.

Paul Wilson
Senior Estimator
S.M. Wilson & Co.
St. Louis

Feldmann should stay in his ivory tower. His conclusions are absolutely flawed wrong!

Charles H. Thornton, Ph.D., P.E.
Founding Principal, Thornton
Tomasetti
Easton, Md