When construction of the Freedom Tower, the skyscraper that will replace the ill-fated World Trade Centre, started on 4 July 2004, the project team swelled from just over a hundred professionals to several thousand. 
 
Design architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) expects the project to generate more paperwork and design data than any other single project since the firm was established almost 70 years ago, and has turned to technology as its primary tool for communicating project reports, sharing design documents and managing construction. 
 
The fast-track project schedule demands that the team works efficiently together, staging and accomplishing tasks quickly and securing approvals from the diverse project stakeholders – from the Mayor of New York to the landlord, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Throughout the course of the Freedom Tower project, an online project management service, Autodesk Buzzsaw Professional, will enable the enormous project team to share at least 100 different subsets of drawings as well as meeting minutes, progress reports and schedules.
 
Extending the long tradition of American ingenuity and innovation in skyscraper construction, the Freedom Tower incorporates the highest standards of design, safety and technology in what will be the tallest building in the world. It has 70 occupied floors and 241 500 square metres of office and public space and must succeed both as a practical, commercial building and as a symbol of the rebirth of the World Trade Centre twin towers.
 
Paralleling the project management challenges are the complexities of the Freedom Tower design itself. Clad in shimmering glass, the tower evokes the form of the Statue of Liberty, and its parallelogram-shaped base conforms to the street grid of the lower Manhattan site. Its innovative structural system includes a cable-net structure, which recalls the form of the Brooklyn Bridge and encloses wind turbines that serve as a “wind farm” to collect energy--one of the building’s many sustainable design features.
 
The online project management service, Autodesk Buzzsaw Professional, is developed by the design technology company, Autodesk, which is renowned for its development more than 20 years’ ago of the first PC-based computer-aided design (CAD) software, AutoCAD, which sparked the shift away from cumbersome mainframe computers and drawing boards to the desktop PC. Today, there are six-million users of Autodesk technology.
 
Autodesk’s general design software, AutoCAD, serves as the project’s primary 2D and 3D design and documentation tool. Because AutoCAD is a highly customisable application, SOM has been able to create tools in AutoCAD to facilitate modelling the complex building geometry as well as design variations, and to coordinate different aspects of the Freedom Tower design. 
 
The team is using Autodesk’s newest technology, the Autodesk Revit building information modelling platform, on the whole building, including complex sub-grade levels. 
 
About SOM
Founded in 1936, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) is one of the world's leading architecture, urban design, engineering, and interiors firms. SOM has completed more than 10,000 architecture, engineering, interior architecture, and planning projects in more than 50 countries around the world. The firm has unparalleled expertise in designing super high-rise buildings. It was responsible for the design and structural engineering of America's tallest building to date—the 109-story Sears Tower in Chicago. Other signature projects include Lever House, an office building in New York City that set standards for office design around the world; the 100-story John Hancock Tower in Chicago; Jin Mao, an 88-story mixed-use tower in Shanghai; and the Bank of America World Headquarters in San Francisco.
 
About Autodesk
Founded in 1982, Autodesk is the world’s leading design software and digital content company. Autodesk offers solutions for professionals in building design, geographic information systems, manufacturing, digital media, and wireless data services. By delivering progressive products and services, Autodesk helps customers create, manage, use and maximise the value of their digital data throughout the lifecycle of their projects. For more information about the company’s building solutions visit http:// www.autodesk.co.za or phone Amanda Wesson on (011) 805-1555.