Successful education of professionals for supporting future BIM implementation within the architecture engineering construction context

Scientific advances and innovative technologies in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) projects are shaping the way in which decisions are made. These decisions are forming the governing foundations for determining and delivering progressive changes in order to address issues pertaining to Society, Knowledge, Economy, and People. These central tenets help support, underpin and drive societal drivers. However, whilst the AEC sector as a whole has been categorised as ‘fragmented’ (Egan, 1998; Latham, 1994; Hampson and Brandon, 2004; Wolstenholme, 2009), the consequence of this has somewhat hindered progress in the use of such innovative technologies (Pour Rahimian et al., 2011). That being said, from a United Kingdom (UK) perspective, there has been a resurgence to address these challenges in order to exploit the full potential of such technologies. In doing so, the UK Government mandated the implementation of Building Information Management (BIM) Level 2 in all public projects from 2016. This required AEC firms to use exchangeable digital building models amongst project parties to enable 2D/3D spatial compliance with British Standard BS1192:2007.