Connection
Changing how we practice with a ‘One Team, One Model’ approach Jessica O’Donnell, AIA O’Donnell is a project architect at Kitchen & Associates in Collingswood, N.J., where she focuses on multifamily housing projects and internal staff development initiatives and leads BIM management initiatives. O’Donnell has over nine years of experience in residential and mixed-use building design, holds an NCARB certificate, and is licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Jake Timmons Timmons is a licensed professional engineer specializing in structural engineering and a principal at Riverstone Structural Concepts in Boise, Idaho. Timmons has over 15 years of experience providing structural engineering services on a wide array of projects, including bridges and industrial, residential, commercial, mid-rise, and hospitality structures.
Dustin Balton Balton is a project coordinator for Holstein White. Since early 2013, he has consistently executed plans and specifications for the company’s engineering assignments for commercial, municipal, educational, health care, senior living, hospitality/entertainment, dining, and residential projects. In this role, Balton is part of the mechanical department at HW, specializing in the design of mechanical, plumbing, and fire-protection systems.
Beresford Pratt (BP): Can you please describe the project? Who is on the project team to help make this project successful? JO: Brook Street Lofts is a new construction, 245,000 square feet, transit-oriented development in New Jersey. The six-story mid-rise building consists of four floors of residential housing above two floors of non-combustible garage parking for building occupants. Additionally, there are walk-up residential units on the first two floors along Brook Street. This building contains a total of 146 residential units of mixed-income family rental housing. The design team started working on drawings in 2019, and construction is slated to wrap up this fall. This was Kitchen & Associates’ first integrative-design project with out-of-house consultants working “live” in the same project file database. We collaborated with the Riverstone Structural Concepts team from Boise, Idaho, and the Holstein White MEP team from Feasterville, PA.
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BP: For those who may not be familiar, can you describe the tool ArchiCAD? JO: ArchiCAD is a building information modeling (BIM) design software used internationally on projects of all scales and degrees of complexity. Within this software, the design team can take one project file from conceptual schematic sketches through construction documents. There are a multitude of features and plug-ins that enable designers to create realistic renderings, movies, and VR walkthroughs of projects from that same singular file. ArchiCAD also has several internal messaging options that allow users to communicate with one another within the database. BP: What were some of the determining factors that encouraged the team/your firm to select ArchiCAD over other programs/tools on the market?
