The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would like to hear from anyone with experience commissioning accurate scale models for use in a museum setting.  As part of a restoration and documentation project, the Corps has agreed to produce models of the locks on the Portage Canal in Portage, Wisconsin.  The canal, completed until 1876, connected the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, providing a continuous waterway from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River.

Since developing museum exhibitry is outside the Corps' usual areas of expertise, feedback in the following aras would be especially useful:

1. Is it better to compose a formal bid document (where almost all details of materials and technique have been defined in advance) or to work with an RFP (where potential fabricators have more leeway to apply their own ideas and experience)?

2.  How can we access the necessary model-making expertise, either to develop reasonable bid specs or to evaluate differing proposals?  Is hiring a contract consultant useful and/or necessary?

3.  Where should we advertise the project to bring it to the attention of potential fabricators?  Are there specialist publications directed toward model-builders?  What are the standard venues for reaching museum exhibit fabricators?

Please reply on- or off-list to Brad Johnson, St. Paul District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, [log in to unmask], (651) 290-5250. 


David B. Driscoll, Curator of Business & Technology
State Historical Society of Wisconsin
608-264-6571

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