Taija Puolitaival

Practical challenges of BIM education

Purpose Building Information Modelling (BIM) is becoming the new norm in the AEC industry and also part of many construction project management (CPM) programmes. The purpose of this paper is to address the difficulty and challenges in walking the narrow line between an industry-ready BIM and a BIM that is good for student learning and offers a realistic and practical, but simultaneously achievable, learning environment. Design/methodology/approach An action research was conducted in an undergraduate CPM education setting. Findings Key challenges encountered were availability of appropriate teaching and learning resources for BIM; finding the balance between theory and practice, technology and process, and traditional and emerging CPM methods; and facilitating staff’s professional development. Closer look was given to the teaching and learning resources for BIM. Theoretical resources that are available for education in the form of books, articles and websites are easy and straightforward to locate. Likewise, a good share of various tools are available for educational purposes. On the other hand, actual building models represent a challenge in terms of preparing and optimising usage of the model for high-quality educational purposes. Several different approaches for obtaining BIM resources were identified with various challenges and benefits. Originality/value The results and recommendations will assist educators to better understand and overcome the practical challenges related to BIM education, especially those related to teaching and learning resources.

Tertiary delivery modes and construction industry sector habits, do they match yet?

Collaboration has become a buzzword, whether describing tertiary educational delivery modes or themes in industry related conferences, or touted by leaders in the construction industry sector. Educational organisations would not thrive without collaboration, and hence the term collegiality. Over the last two or so years Unitec has been developing and facilitating delivery modes involving blended learning, and project based learning for the undergraduate construction management and construction economics students. Teamwork and real-world learning is the norm. The question is, “How real is integrated collaboration in our construction industry as yet and does it yet match the focus of the Integrated design and construction management undergraduate course run at our institute?”. How the course is delivered and assessed is compared with the findings and trends from the industry assignment, and presented in this paper. The findings suggest that whilst the majority of projects are still being run on the Design-Bid-Build basis of design then construct in that order, that there appears to be a slow but obvious shift toward several companies working collaboratively with clients, stakeholders, designers and contractors from the earliest stages of the projects.