Exploring Industry Solutions and Evaluating Teaching Methods for Delivering BIM in Senior Design Class

Abstract

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been adopted by the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry to simulate the construction environment before it is constructed in the real world. However, the adoption of this technology has been challenging for both the AEC industry and engineering education at the undergraduate level. Some challenges faced by the AEC industry include a lack of BIM professionals, and a lack of guidelines for BIM implementation, so there is a need to emphasize the importance of finding solutions to those challenges, which is critical for successful BIM implementation. The growing demand for BIM professionals is leading universities to adapt their curricula and provide adequate BIM training for the next-generation professionals. The senior design class is a core course for last-year students in many Architecture, Civil, and Construction engineering programs. Students are given opportunities to work on a real building project through multiple class activities, BIM software, and lectures by practitioners. The goal of this research was divided into two parts: 1) Evaluate the teaching methods for delivering BIM topics in a senior design class. A questionnaire survey was distributed to students; 2) Fill the gap about the need for more research to be conducted on the solutions for implementing BIM in the AEC industry. The existing research may have identified the problems, but the solutions are not as thoroughly studied or documented. So, an interview and a panel discussion with AEC industry practitioners were conducted. All invited companies are successful in BIM implementation in the industry, so the solutions that were implemented to overcome the identified challenges were discussed. Also, the practitioners transmitted their opinion on the current Senior Design class curriculum. The findings of this study are expected to (1) learn solutions to challenges encountered by companies in implementing BIM (2) improve the teaching methods for delivering BIM to better equip students with industry-needed skills and knowledge.