Integration of building information modeling into the undergraduate curriculum: case of Eastern Mediterranean University

One of the essential requirements of construction education is to remain up to date and current. It is quite important for universities to adopt 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. The function of BIM as an advantageous course and also an educational assistant in Civil Engineering education at universities is not completely understood to date. Many construction companies prefer to employ BIM enabled graduates nowadays. Thus the question is to what extent students are aware of BIM and are ready to begin learning such a new technology. In order to answer this question, a survey was conducted among different undergraduate students at Civil Engineering Department of Eastern Mediterranean University. Focus of the survey was on AutoCAD knowledge and students’ abilities together with their awareness of BIM. Adding BIM as a standalone course in the curriculum of the Civil Engineering Department was also studied. The outcomes of the survey proved students’ interest in integrating BIM as a separate course in undergraduate curriculum. Details of such an integration including how and when to consider BIM were also proposed. The authors suggest including BIM in the Civil Engineering undergraduate curriculum to have knowledgeable and up to date graduates while it is also recommended to be used as an educational assistant in other Civil Engineering courses

An Investigation on Success Factors for Scan to BIM Process

The operations and maintenance spent about 90% of the total life cycle cost of a building. The saving in these tasks could result in a huge saving of time and cost. Since the utilization phase starts after completion of the construction, this phase is significantly affected by the construction phase. One of the most recent technologies which were introduced into the construction industry in last decade was Building Information Modeling (BIM). Beneficial use of BIM by construction practitioners encouraged the Facility Management (FM) organizations to achieve benefit from this beneficial technology. In order to gain benefit from using BIM within FM, it is essential to create the 3D model of the existing buildings. The new technologies in laser scanning have been used to overcome this barrier. For this reason, a process called Scan to BIM was established to create an accurate 3D model of the buildings using the laser scanning technologies. In recent years, many types of research were done to find the methods for converting the captured data from laser scanning machines (so called point cloud) into BIM model. However, the whole Scan to BIM process has not been studied yet. The aim of this study is to investigate this process and find out which factors should be considered in order to perform the Scan to BIM process successfully. For this reason, a comprehensive review of the literature was done through the 75 research papers from different databases. The total amount of 28 factor was found. The findings of the literature review were tested by two experiments include an HVAC plant building and an office building. Based on the experiments, three additional factors were found. The findings are concluded into four main categories to help the managers for successful completion of the Scan to BIM process