The year was 2005. The project was the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Jackson, Miss. The decision, made by the U.S. General Services Administration at the end of design development, was to turn the 400,000-sq-ft facility into a GSA poster child for building information modeling. The design team would create a coordinated BIM and use it to produce 2D contract documents. The team would also provide its BIMs to the construction manager-general contractor, as reference material only, for use during construction.
Many on the design team had never been through a BIM “rodeo.” Yet each design discipline faced converting two years of work to a BIM and then integrating them into a model. “As we got into modeling we quickly learned we had taken on a difficult project,” says Brian Kimsey, professional services division director of GSA’s Southeast Sunbelt Region, in Atlanta.