Canadian Design and
Construction Report staff writer
The Canada BIM Council (CanBIM) has announced the first National Can-BIM Awards, recognizing excellence in Canada’s Building Information Model-ling (BIM) community.
CanBIM handed out awards in Inno-vation, Interoperability, and Best In BIM categories.
Quebec based general contractor Pomerleau earned top honours in two of the three categories, taking home awards for Innovation and Best In BIM. The awards recognized Pomerleau’s work on the Place Bell Cultural and Sports Centre in Laval, P.Q., and out-standing implementation throughout design to construction on the multi-functional amphitheatre Videotron Cen-tre, also in Laval.
In the Innovation Award category, Pomerleau edged out projects from Turner Fleischer Architects (Toronto) with Scanning Implementation Tech-nology, and Calgary’s GEC Architec-ture’s YYC/TCP Baggage Handling System; and for the Best In BIM award, McGill University Health Centre Glen Site from SNC Lavalin (Montreal) and DIALOG’s Brookfield Place Calgary.
“All nominees demonstrated great execution of BIM,” said CanBIM presi-dent Allan Partridge. “But Pomerleau demonstrated exceptional strength in their respective award categories, as seen by our experienced evaluators. We are proud to have received so many great submissions.”
Meanwhile, architecture and interior design firm DIALOG’s Calgary office took home top honours in the Interop-erability category for demonstrating ex-ceptional, seamless data transfer across software platforms on the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital proj-ect. Runners up in the Interoperability award category were GEC Architecture for YYC/TCP Baggage Handling System and Halifax based surveying and engi-neering firm Servant, Dunbrack, McKenzie & MacDonald for the BioVec-tra Plant Renovation.
“Our independent CanBIM evalua-tors represent a great cross section of the architecture, engineering, construc-tion, owner and operator industries,” said CanBIM executive director Gerry Lattmann. “They did a great job evalu-ating and selecting our outstanding nominees and winners for the inaugu-ral CanBIM Awards.”
On Oct. 1, following the CanBIM Awards and AGM, Canada BIM Council hosted its Calgary regional session and technology exhibition, the third and final 2015 regional session of 2015.
The presentations and roundtable discussion focused on the “Business of BIM” and how the decision to use BIM has become an important ingredient in the success of the Canadian design and construction community’s businesses and organizations.
CanBIM’s board handed out CanBIM Certification Certificates to a record 43 recipients, more than double the amount of the last two rounds combined. This latest round of CanBIM Certification received more than 70 applications ; the assessment process was both rigorous and thorough. Notably Turner Fleischer Architects delivered than 60 of the 70 plus member applications.
“It’s a great time to be a part of CanBIM as it rapidly becomes a mature, vital and leading organization representing Canada’s BIM community,” said Pietro Ferrari, chair of CanBIM’s education and research committee.
“The success of the awards and the ever growing interest in the certification program are clearly an indication of this momentum. CanBIM certification will prove to be the gold standard for benchmarking BIM excellence in Canada.”
The CanBIM board elected Christian Prolux, an Aéroport de Québec project manager, as its newest board member.