Alex Belkofer
39, director of Senior VDC
McCarthy cos building.
Saint Louis
Armed with a degree in Architecture Sciences and Construction Systems at Ohio State University, Alex Belkofer could have chosen a race in architecture or building. Chose the latter.
“Although I have a little technology and the eye for design, I always felt more aligned and rooted in being a builder,” he says. “I have a deep thanks for doing things with my hands.”
His first work in 2005 was as a field engineer for a small construction company, p | c | Sa Cleveland, who challenged him to find out the BIM emerging technology platform. Belkofer learned by attending conferences and talking to other technologists.
Warning a presentation of Autodesk was essential for Belkofer. “I started thinking about how we can use visual technology and use more cloud -connected technologies,” he says. Everything excited about technology, he also thought that “I need to do my job very well as a young person outside of school. I have to learn more about practical construction management … but I also need to find all these other tools and things that can add value.”
After going to Project Manager and working with owners, designers and contractors, Belkofer realized that “I have a good control on how to use this technology to speed up the project delivery.” In 2014, he played a virtual and construction role in Messer Construction, which led to his current VDC workplace in McCarthy.
Today, Belkofer is considered a pioneer and a technological evangelist who strives to remain at the forefront of the digital transformation of construction.
A challenge of the ongoing industry is the exchange of data between the architect and the builder, as well as between the members of the builder and the trade and between the owner and the contractor.
“Data exchange, for me, is still where the industry has to make this great leap forward,” he says. “How can you exchange information without data loss, without expectation loss and only be able to use tools perfectly?”
Despite the margin of improvement, Belkofer says that data exchange improves “because we choose better tools to integrate in our easiest projects to use. But we do not yet have the Holy Grail.”
Since moving to McCarthy in 2017, Belkofer has grown his VDC group to 16 people and has successfully directed the planning and execution of VDC initiatives on numerous large -scale projects in various sectors.
He says active listening is key to adding new technologies.
“I have learned that you have to meet people where it is,” says Belkofer. “It is really difficult in the construction industry to push an agenda and wait for everyone to align. There is a lot of inherited knowledge and [those] They have been doing things in certain ways for a long period of time and think, “If you do not break, do not solve it.”
Belkofer shares his experience widely, acting as Secretary of the Council of the National Council of Information Management of the Building Institute of Building Sciences and supervising the national commitment work of the BIM National United States Program.
A member of the main team of the United States Army Engineers Corps BIM Consorts and national chairman of the VDC Committee of the Bouild Institute of Design of America, he is also a member of the American construction technology consortium, an emerging group of great national general contractors who seeks to use their collective voice to collect the general quality and coherence of technological resources of industry and infrastructure.
