Evaluating the benefits of introducing “BIM” based on Revit in construction courses, without changing the course schedule

Abstract

Recently, the building industry has shown great interest in building information modeling (BIM) due to the many benefits BIM provides. During the last decade, the government of Dubai has been working toward a BIM environment, where any new building project that is ten floors or higher shall be submitted in BIM format. The need for BIM creates more job opportunities for technicians with BIM skills. This inflates the need to prepare related field engineers with BIM background before graduation. This report analyzes the implementation of BIM in a construction course, which is currently using AutoCAD, by splitting the laboratory skills. Through this implementation, we will test whether adding BIM based on Revit to a currently existent course will improve the students’ motivation, performance and satisfaction. The authors use the results of the Architectural Engineering (AE) students at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) in construction courses to study the performance before and after implementing BIM. The authors found some issues, which can decrease the students’ performance with a 97% certainty. The students’ motivation and satisfaction was tested using a pre-test/post-test quasi-experiment design. The tests showed that BIM based on Revit reduces student performance time while increasing student motivation and satisfaction. The causes behind the last statement were analyzed with the use of interviews with related students. © 2017, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.