BIM-Enabled Virtual and Collaborative Construction Engineering and Management

TLDR

Construction engineering and management graduates need strong communication, teamwork, and practical engineering, management, and computer skills, yet traditional education fails to prepare them for these demands. The course aims to combine experimental and experiential learning into a research‑driven experience. The course is codesigned and co‑taught by instructors from two universities, employing virtual collaboration, problem‑oriented project‑based learning, and role‑based learning. The BIM‑enabled virtual collaborative course improves learning outcomes by providing realistic scenarios that teach students how construction projects are executed, how disciplines interdepend, what information is needed, and how it is exchanged.

Abstract

Today’s construction engineering and management (CEM) graduates must have strong communication and teamwork skills; they must have the ability to work efficiently within colocated teams; and finally, they must know how to apply fundamental engineering, management, and computer skills in practice. However, the traditional CEM education does not equip future engineers and managers to deal successfully with such issues. The authors describe experiences from a course that focuses on modes of learning involving virtual collaboration, problem-oriented project-based learning, and role-based learning. The aim of this course is to combine experimental and experiential learning into a research driven experience. The course was codesigned and cotaught by two instructors from two universities. The learning outcomes and lessons learned during the introduction of this building information modeling (BIM)-enabled virtual and collaborative construction engineering and management course are discussed. Specifically, it is shown that the introduction of BIM in a virtual collaborative setting allows instructors to design a course that incorporates the use of more realistic scenarios that better simulate real-world challenges. Such experiences teach students how construction projects are executed in practice, how different disciplines rely on one other for information, what type of information is needed from relevant disciplines, and when and how this information could be exchanged/shared between tools and processes.