Promoting energy efficiency in the built environment through adapted BIM training and education

Abstract

The development of new climate change policies has increased the motivation to reduce energy use in buildings, as reflected by a stringent regulatory landscape. The construction industry is expected to adopt new methods and strategies to address such requirements, focusing primarily on reducing energy demand, improving process efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. However, the realisation of these emerging requirements has been constrained by the highly fragmented nature of the industry, which is often portrayed as involving a culture of adversarial relationships and risk avoidance, which is exacerbated by a linear workflow. Recurring problems include low process efficiency, delays and construction waste. Building information modelling (BIM) provides a unique opportunity to enhance building energy efficiency (EE) and to open new pathways towards a more digitalised industry and society. BIM has the potential to reduce (a) waste and carbon emissions, (b) the endemic performance gap, (c) in-use energy and (d) the total lifecycle impact. BIM also targets to improve the whole supply chain related to the design, construction as well as the management and use of the facility. However, the construction workforce is required to upgrade their skills and competencies to satisfy new requirements for delivering BIM for EE. Currently, there is a real gap between the industry expectations for employees and current training and educational programmes. There is also a set of new requirements and expectations that the construction industry needs to identify and address in order to deliver more informed BIM for EE practices. This paper provides an in-depth analysis and gap identification pertaining to the skills and competencies involved in BIM training for EE. Consultations and interviews have been used as a method to collect requirements, and a portfolio of use cases have been created and analysed to better understand existing BIM practices and to determine current limitations and gaps in BIM training. The results show that BIM can contribute to the digitalisation of the construction industry in Europe with adapted BIM training and educational programmes to deliver more informed and adapted energy strategies.