BIM education: case New Zealand

Abstract

This article is a first step in a longitudinal research in New Zealand context to identify what impact national education approaches have on uptake of BIM education in individual tertiary institutes. Although BIM and BIM education as research topics are on rise, there is limited research on national approaches and their impact on width and depth of BIM education and through that graduate capabilities and BIM adoption by the industry. Case study approach has been selected to investigate first the challenges encountered by the tertiary institutes, how these can be addressed at national level and in later stages what the impact has been to the width and depth of BIM education and graduate outcomes. Only a limited number of countries such as United Kingdom have introduced national approaches to BIM education. In New Zealand National BIM Education Working Group (NBEWG) was established in December 2014. The group has representatives from eight tertiary institutes who have strong interest in including BIM as part of their programmes. NBEWG promotes integration of BIM into all architectural, engineering and construction programmes in New Zealand by providing national curriculum guidelines and guidance in adopting BIM curriculum. A survey was conducted among the institutes to identify the key challenges encountered in BIM integration. Among these were knowledge and skill gaps among faculty, crowded curricula, and limited time for development work.