Developing a Modular Advanced BIM Course in Construction Management

Abstract

Due to the rapid adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, many construction management (CM) programs in the US have introduced BIM in their curriculum. Previous research has revealed that most of the BIM courses offered in CM programs have mainly focused on modeling skills as well as BIM applications in scheduling and estimating. While these topics appear to be important to apply BIM technology, students will not be able to fully understand the BIM process in a construction project without knowing the fundamental workflow of BIM. This paper presents a modular BIM course which was developed to help CM students better understand the BIM workflow and focuses on advanced uses of BIM in construction projects. The course contains three modules: BIM workflow, basic BIM applications, and advanced BIM applications. The BIM workflow module discusses how BIM is addressed in project delivery method, contract, the execution plan, and team building. The basic BIM applications module explains the typical BIM applications in coordination, scheduling, estimating, logistics, visualization, etc. The advanced BIM applications module demonstrates the latest technology advances in the AEC industry that utilizes BIM applications, including laser scanning, virtual reality, and mixed reality. The course objectives and assessment methods ensure that CM students’ understanding of BIM will be considerably improved from as a modeling tools or software program to an efficient process, and their insights into BIM will be significantly broadened beyond the existing 3D, 4D, and 5D applications. The highly positive course evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of these approaches in meeting course objectives, delivering course materials, as well as raising students’ interest. This paper will serve as a case study of an advanced level BIM course in CM programs.