HDR’s Mitchell Elected to buildingSMART International Infrastructure Committee
Written by Carolina Worrell, Senior Editor
HDR's Transportation BIM Program Manager Alexa Mitchell
HDR announced April 11 that Alexa Mitchell, the company’s Transportation BIM Program Manager, has been elected to the steering committee of buildingSMART International’s Infrastructure Room, effective April 1.
This influential group of global industry leaders, HDR says, is “developing, sharing and promoting the open data standards that will define how the world’s infrastructure is designed and built in the coming decades.”
According to HDR, digital delivery is quickly changing how tomorrow’s roads, bridges, ports, tunnels and more are created. But much of the design is now created in proprietary formats, which, the company says, “complicates the exchange of digital data used during planning, design, construction, and operations and maintenance.” The buildingSMART committee is the international non-profit authority for open standards that “seeks to resolve this difficulty and allow designers, contractors and fabricators to reliably and consistently pass detailed 3D model information and attributes seamlessly across software packages.”
The 12 members of the Infrastructure Room steering committee, which includes representatives from Australia, Sweden, Japan, the UK and beyond, serve for four years and oversee the buildingSMART projects and activities that “move forward open standards in infrastructure.”
According to HDR, Mitchell has led cutting-edge research on digital delivery for several state DOTs, authored multiple technical guidance documents and facilitated workshops and webinars for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) related to 3D model-based delivery. She co-authored the first ISO-compliant and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) adopted information delivery manual in the U.S., laying out data exchange specifications for highway bridges. Additionally, Mitchell has served as technical lead on the ongoing HDR-led effort to develop an open, national standard for the design, fabrication and construction of U.S. bridges and structures.
“I’ve dedicated most of my career to the advancement of digital delivery and invested a great deal of sweat equity in trying to advance this practice,” Mitchell said. “Broader adoption of open standards in the U.S. is just around the corner, and I’m excited to be part of that journey and an agent of change.”
“This election is continued proof of Alexa’s extraordinary thought leadership in digital delivery, in the U.S. and globally,” said HDR Highways Director Will Sharp, who co-chairs buildingSMART USA’s Roads and Bridges Industry Committee. “Her expertise will be invaluable as buildingSMART sets a new foundation with enhanced digital workflows for how we design, build and maintain the infrastructure the world uses every day.”
