ASSESSMENT OF LEVEL OF IMPLEMENTATION OF BUILDING INFORMATION
MODELLING EDUCATION IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY
By
ABDULLAHI MOHAMMED AMIN (P16EVQS8035)
Being a Project Proposal
Submitted to the Lecturer PRMT823
BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION
One of the essentials of construction education like the other technical education is to
remain up to date and current. It is quite important for universities to teach new technologies in
construction education curriculum. Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a new technology and
tool is one of the latest developments in construction industry (Ahbab et al., 2013). BIM is an
emerging technology in which digital information models are prepared to represent the physical
and functional characteristics of a facility (Azhar et al., 2012). To satisfy the industry demand for
professionals with BIM skills, many universities around the world have started to integrate BIM into
their academic programs of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) (Pikas et al., 2011).
Adoption of BIM in educational programs is relatively a new effort. BIM teaching programs
are being offered in many universities around the world; however, they are usually narrowed to
software training. There is growing interest and demand to implement BIM in academic programs
and to offer entire courses or programs focused on BIM at all levels (undergraduate, post-graduate)
of the AEC specialties (Magiera, 2013).
According to Ibrahim and Abdullahi (2016) Prominent schools of architecture and civil
engineering have already begun teaching BIM to undergraduates in their first year, and that trend
is likely to spread in parallel with the adoption of BIM in the design professions.
According to Solonski and parfit (2015), Researchers have identified the need to incorporate
BIM into university education to equip AEC graduates with an adequate understanding of BIM
concepts and they identified BIM skills as a means to help achieve the successful uptake of BIM
within the AEC industry. BIM can be incorporated into university education in four different ways.
The options are as follows: (1) introducing a BIM elective or organizing a workshop, (2) introducing
an advanced BIM focused degree program, (3) restructuring the existing curriculum to include BIM,
and (4) integrating BIM into the existing construction management (CM) curriculum (Ghosh et al.,
2011).
Some researchers have highlighted the strong points of introducing and integrating BIM into
the CM curriculum in the engineering universities. According to Gier (2007) Researchers, have
concluded that BIM is a helpful teaching tool for construction estimation and quantity take-off skills
and highly contribute to design comprehension skills and understanding of construction materials,
methods, and processes.
The National Building Specification report 2015 has established that BIM education is at
different levels of implementation around the globe. Some countries have successfully
implemented this integration while the others are in the process of integration. In Australia, many
Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions are providing BIM courses within AEC
programs. However, this education is inclined towards the use of particular BIM software packages
with little consideration to BIM management topic or the procedures for working in a collaborative
environment NATSPEC (2015).
In the UK, the government has mandated that all public building projects will be required to
use BIM design processesa fully combined 3D BIM, or higherfrom the year 2016 (McGough et
al, 2013). Due to this reason and to satisfy the AEC industry requirements, many of the UK
universities have started integrating BIM concept into AEC education.
(Adamu and Thorpe, 2015) highlighted that a few UK universities like Westminster
University, Middlesex, Salford, Liverpool (in London), the University of West of England,
Northumbria University, and the University of South Wales are offering several BIM-related courses
in their AEC programs.
In the US, there are several degree programs at various levels to support AEC industry which
include Civil Engineering, Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Construction Engineering, and
Construction Management, and Sacks and Pikas (2013) highlighted that very few of them have
incorporated BIM content into their curricula. The challenge is that most of the universities lack
understandings of what skills are needed in the industry. Moreover, little research has been done
on BIM-teaching methods, course contents, and BIM-teaching objectives and outcomes.
Panuwatwanich (2013) carried out research in which majority of the respondents were from
the US, the UK, and Australia. The respondents agreed that the main obstacles to integrating BIM
into higher education are the lack of time and resources to prepare a new curriculum, lack of space
in established curriculum to include new courses and a lack of suitable materials for BIM related
training.
The identification of problems about the integration of BIM in AEC education has helped
some institutes, and that is why, many institutes in the USA are interested in resolving these issues.
The findings of Wu and Issa (2013) indicate that 54% of the programs had dedicated and fully
developed BIM classes in their curriculum. To learn more, the authors studied BIM education status
in the US, i.e. BIM courses in Construction Engineering and Management programs (CE&M).
This review of the best practices in AEC universities supported the foundation for
integration of BIM into construction education. Han and James (2015) also highlighted that some
countries have already prepared to deal with the integration while others have yet to start this
integration process into CM programs.
Usman et al. (2016), recommended that there is need to investigate whether the
curriculum of Built Environment courses (in Nigeria) include training students on BIM, and whether
enough enlightenment has been carried out to educate the project managers and the law
enforcement agents on the benefit of BIM adoption.
The curriculum for the various built environment programmes in Nigerian Universities
should be revised to adequately capture BIM in the training of construction professionals (Yahaya
and Abdullahi, 2016).
AIM AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this research shall be to assess the current state of AEC curriculum regarding BIM in the
universities of Nigeria.
The following objectives were formulated for this study:
1. To study the current state of CM curriculum with regard to BIM.
2. To assess the level of preparedness for the integration of BIM in the curriculums
3. To identify the barriers to integrating BIM into CM curriculum.
METHODOLOGY
Collection of Data
A detailed literature review shall be carried out. Based on the gathered knowledge, online
questionnaire shall be developed and distributed online for collecting the data regarding the
current state of BIM education and the barriers to integration of BIM into AEC programs. The link
to the questionnaire shall be sent to Environmental faculty members of Nigerian universities. The
email addresses of the potential respondents shall be acquired from the websites of the
universities or direct contact.
The questionnaire shall consists of the following subsection:
1) Personal Information,
2) University Information,
3) Evaluation of current state of BIM integration in the CM curriculum, and
4) The barriers to integrating BIM into CM curriculum.
Analysis of Data
Data collected shall be analysed by descriptive analysis using Pie chart and histogram.
Time Table
Major Tasks Month
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Literature search and review
Fieldwork planning and contact
Interview and survey planning and
sampling
Qualitative policy analysis
Survey questionnaire design
Residents surveys
Data processing and analysis
Reporting and dissemination
References
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