Automation in Construction 20 (2011) 115125

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Automation in Construction
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / a u t c o n

Teaching construction project management with BIM support: Experience and lessons learned
Forest Peterson a,, Timo Hartmann b, Renate Fruchter a, Martin Fischer a
a b

Stanford University, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, United States Twente University, Department of Construction Management and Engineering, Netherlands

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
This paper presents experiences and lessons learned during the introduction of Building Information Models (BIM) in construction engineering project management courses. We illustratively show that the introduction of BIM-based project management tools helped the teachers of two courses to develop more realistic project-based class assignments that supported students with learning how to apply different formal project management methods to real-world project management problems. In particular, we show that the introduction of BIM allows educators to design a class project that allowed the use of more realistic cases that better simulate real-world project conditions, helped students to learn how different project management methods integrate with each other, integrate change management tasks in a class assignment, and learn how to optimize project plans. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Accepted 21 July 2010 Available online 4 November 2010 Keywords: Building Information Model (BIM) Scopetimecost Estimate Schedule Quantity takeoff Construction design Project management Project-based learning Situative learning Virtual learning

1. Introduction Knowledge of project management theory is important to participate on a project. While mistakes in the classroom result in lower marks, mistakes in the eld can affect morale, waste resources, and in the worstcase scenario cost someone's life. Academics universally agree that practically applicable knowledge about construction management tools and methods is difcult to learn. This is mainly because explicit understanding about how to apply formal methods and tools within the unique situations encountered on most construction projects is hard to gain. The application of most formal tools and methods requires project managers to have an in-depth understanding of project-specic information. For example, if a critical equipment or subcontractor fails to perform as anticipated what impacts will this have on time and cost and what impact will potential alternative operation methods have. Answers to such questions cannot be generalized and trivialized; they cannot be developed through the formulaic application of the necessary project management concepts, but depend greatly on project-specic information. This provides a problematic situation that universities face during the development of construction management curricula. In the past, students had to learn practical application of methods on very simple abstract examples because of the limited time available. This approach

Corresponding author. E-mail address: granite@stanford.edu (F. Peterson). 0926-5805/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2010.09.009

did not allow students to learn how to adjust the application of project management methods to specic real-world project contexts. To overcome this shortcoming, educators complemented their formal illustration of the method through abstract examples with stories of how project managers applied the methods successfully on past projects. While this learning approach is an improvement to only learning the formal working of the method, the retrospective character of storytelling does little to help students to build up an understanding about how to apply a certain method to solve a practical problem. In hindsight, a story of a successful application of a method to a project management problem, in particular, if told well, sounds obvious, while applying a method to solve a problem that one faces is not so easy. To overcome this dilemma a combination of the two learning methods is necessary, during which students apply formal methods within simulated contexts of realworld construction projects. The design of such projects within the tight boundaries of construction management classes is not easily possible because it simply takes too much time for students to understand the method and all the project-specic information to apply the method. Due to this problem, construction professionals still acquire much knowledge through learning-by-doing [1] with on-the-job training activities, and it is not surprising that many criticize construction management university programs as ineffective [2]. In this paper, we argue and provide rst illustrative evidence that the integration of project management tools based on Building Information Models (BIM) can help educators to develop project management class projects that simulate realistic practical situations, such as the

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generation of a complete bid package based on a complete set of bid documents. In particular, we show that BIM supports project management learning activities with two distinctive features. First, BIM allows the storage and generation of project-specic information in a structured way. This structured way of working allows students to understand the in-depth information of a specic project's context relatively quickly. Additionally, BIM allows the storage of project-related information in a central database. This central storage allows for the automation of many tedious work tasks that are required during the execution of formal project management methods and the reduction in repetitive tasks that students traditionally had to do redundantly. These two advantages allow educators to design class project assignments that simulate real project conditions more realistically than before. The structure of this paper is as follows: First, we elaborate theoretically on the earlier-described practical dilemma that construction management educators face today using education theories and develop a theoretical hypothesis of how BIM can overcome this dilemma. After briey discussing our research methodology, we then provide rst illustrative evidence for our hypothetical claim by qualitatively analyzing two project management classes that applied BIM-based applications. Afterwards, we discuss the theoretical implications of our ndings from analyzing the two classes. We close the paper by briey suggesting directions for future research and by providing a summarizing conclusion. 2. BIM to support project management education Project planning and execution depends on the valuing and trading-off of the scope, time, and cost of the project [3,4]. Plans and specications represent the project scope. Scope denes the work that is required to complete the project successfully. Based on the scope, project planners estimate the time it takes to carry out the work and the costs of doing so. In practice, whether practitioners are aware of it or not, project planning and execution is integrated project management. In practice, the plans, specications, quantity takeoff, schedule, and estimate document the scope, time, and cost. Project managers constantly translate information from these documents to understand how the scope, time, and cost relate. While a number of formal project management methods exist, such as, Earned Value Management [5], AIA Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) [6], and ConsensusDOCS 301 series BIM addendum [7], that promise to allow for the generation of project plans that integrate scope, time, and cost, the application of these formal methods in practice still depends heavily on the experience of the project manager. Projects operate in drifting environments [8] and, thus, it is an art, based in tacit-knowledge, to understand when and how to apply a specic project management method during the planning and production processes. To help students learn how to generate integrated project plans, educators usually base their project management courses on two underlying technical approaches: The cognitive scheme approach and the behavioral approach [9]. The cognitive approach focuses on learning standardized project management methods in a formal way. Educators try to identify the most important methods and assume that students mainly need to internalize the theoretical working of these methods to be able to generate professional project plans. The cognitive learning approaches consider the psychological learning behavior of students, but they hardly help students to learn how and when to apply the learned project management methods in real-world situations. At best, educators help students to learn about possible applications of those methods using relatively basic and abstract assignments. On the other hand, educators who apply the behavioral approach base the students learning on the assumption that it is possible to learn integrated project management practice by imitating the successful behavior of others. To do so educators gather experiences, critical incidents, and specic occurrences from practice. Educators assume that telling students these stories helps them to learn how to apply project management methods

in real-world contexts. In terms of successful learning, these approaches often fail because they neglect the complexity of the multiple intertwined factors that even for the most experienced project managers require some time to understand for a specic project context. Stories cannot provide the thick context needed to understand how project managers in the past successfully applied the method. To be successful, educators need to integrate both of the traditional learning methods. Such integration requires complex teachinglearning assignments that enable the application of formal project management theories through role-play in simulated environments of real-world project settings [9]. Only with such assignments, students can develop the voluntary intuitions [10] that help them to not only learn formal project management methods, but also to develop strategies that allow them to understand when and how to apply these methods in practical contexts. So far, developing such complex real-world situations for learning integrated project management is not easily possible [11]. Due to time and resource constraints it is not possible to design assignments during which students would need to create a project plan that integrates scope, time, and cost with project data that represent real-world detail. The manual generation of an integrated project plan is a labor-intensive task. Students need to understand the project drawings and specications, take off the quantities, nd matching data about costs and productivity rates in standard databases, and nally, establish a schedule and a cost estimate to show the relation between scope, time, and cost. Within the scope of most construction management curricula the workload of project planning makes it impractical to learn cost and time management as an integrated topic [12]. If integrated project management is presented to the students, the case project details that practicing project planners need to account for in the eld must either be simplied to a large extent or the case focused on challenging niche scenarios that students would encounter as construction engineers. Educational researchers have long established that computer technologies are an important component to support project-based learning [13,14]. The advancement of BIM-based project management tools has the potential to overcome these practical educational problems and, with further advancement, additional practical educational problems, such as learning rates. This is no different with the introduction of integrated BIM-based tools in project management courses. There have been signicant achievements made in the use of BIM software tools to teach architectural design and quality analysis [15,16]. An adaptable BIM system has taken form [1720] since the introduction of computers into the construction industry. The construction industry has applied BIM in practice. Engineers and project managers are applying BIM-based tools on a number of projects [21]. While general issues with collaboration and representation of context are still stumbling points [17,22], several key changes supporting BIM tools' capacity to structure and centrally store data has allowed for their introduction in university classes. In particular, such an introduction is now possible because: the availability of tools from multiple vendors provides robustness. the sufcient support for integration and interoperability provides adaptability of the tools. the widespread adoption of BIM provides a suitable selection of case material. the level of detail transition functions built into most BIM tools resolves issues with representation across inherently different abstractions of scope, time, and cost, and the improved function for storing and linking information with BIM components provides integrated data reuse. These recent improvements in BIM tools allow educators to provide their students with off-the-shelf software tools that offer them structured support with integrating scope, time, and cost of a project plan in a way that was not easily possible earlier. First, the application of BIM-based

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tools reduces the time that students need to spend on some of the labor-intensive tasks. BIM-based tools, for example, decrease the time for students to take off the quantities to generate the bill of materials, schedule, and estimate [23]. Further, the integration of modern BIM-based tools with existing standard cost and productivity databases reduces the time that students need to spend on collecting and keying these data manually. Additionally, BIM-based tools theoretically allow the integrated application of several project management tools for one project. For example, BIM-based tools allow the integration of traditional CPM Gantt chart visualization methods of schedules with 4D visualizations and line-of-balance visualizations [24]. With traditional tools that did not rely on an integrated BIM database to accommodate iterations in design or optimization checks, students had to adjust changes in the underlying project data in each of the representations manually. Due to these workload constraints, it was difcult for educators to facilitate the learning of different methods in an integrated fashion. Hence, educators traditionally introduced and presented each method in isolation and designed assignments that only addressed one of these methods. With BIM-based project management software, it is now possible to use different methods that all use data from one data source. This allows students to learn how to use different methods in an integrated fashion. Another advantage of the use of BIM-based project management tools during project management class assignments is the possibility to introduce teaching of change management methods and principles. Incorporating changes in project plans is one of the most important tasks of project managers in practice. Since construction projects exist in drifting environments they require the frequent adjustment of project plans to reect changing conditions. In current project management class projects, change management, however, plays a rather minor role because the incorporation of changes in already established project plans is a very time-consuming and labor-intensive task. BIM-based project management tools allow for the storage of once established relations between scope, time, and cost and thus enable the automatic update of most parts of a project plan when changing one of the sub-parts. All these advantages together allow educators to design better class projects that allow students to learn how to optimize project plans. Having an integrated BIM that allows different applications to calculate schedules and estimates and to visualize project plan information, BIM should allow students to nd bottlenecks, wrong assumptions, and other deciencies in their project plan. Additionally, with the help to change one part of the integrated project plan and automatically see the consequences on the other parts, students are theoretically able to evaluate, even within the restricted time and resource constraints of a project management course, different alternatives to mitigate discovered deciencies. Overall, this functionality should allow students to understand how to optimize project plans, something that was not possible before. Concluding, we hypothesize that the application of BIM-based project management tools allows educators to design class projects that allow for: 1. the use of holistic real-world cases. 2. the combined teaching of different integration methods for project planning information. 3. the incorporation of change management tasks in assignments, and 4. increased opportunities to teach project plan optimization. 3. Research methodology To provide evidence for the aforementioned hypotheses, we qualitatively analyze how BIM supported the learning of project management methods in two construction management university classes: The Managing Fabrication and Construction class at Stanford University and the Integrated Project Management class at the Twente University in The Netherlands. This multiple case study allowed us to investigate the phenomenon of how BIM can support

construction management education within a real-world educational context [25]. We selected both cases mainly because of our familiarity with the classes. The rst author of the paper worked as a teaching assistant for the Stanford University class for two years. The second author also assisted the Stanford class for one year and since has designed the class at Twente University based on the experiences gained teaching the class at Stanford. The third author routinely selects from the Stanford student pool of knowledge for another course and provides the opportunity to observe the students utilizing the skills they gained the previous quarter compared to students from other universities [26]. The fourth author of the paper was the driving force behind developing a class that integrates BIM-based technologies at Stanford in the rst place. The observation of students in a consistently presented classroom environment provides some degree of a repeatable context and therefore allows some comparison of observations across multiple academic years. Both classes are well suited to replicate ndings across two quite different educational settings. While the one class allowed us to provide evidence for the paper's hypotheses using the setting of a research school in the Silicon Valley with many non-local students, the second case allowed us an opportunity to replicate these ndings in the setting of a Western European school with a mainly local student population. The experimenters collected data, as will be described later, to allow analysis that will lead to improvements in the classes, to allow comparison between classes and to share results with others that want to implement a similar class. Our close participation with the two classes allowed us to collect detailed data from a number of sources. First, and maybe most importantly, we were able to observe the students and their progress closely. Additionally, we collected other class-related information such as lecture notes, slides, assignment texts and solutions, and intermediate and nal grades. Additionally, throughout teaching the classes, students were encouraged to provide feedback on the learning process and the class design. The different data sources together allowed us to increase the reliability of our research results through the triangulation of data [25,27]. One tool that proved helpful to provide structure to these rather messy and ad-hoc data collection efforts was the generation of a number of research reports during our early and ongoing problem denition and during our later data analysis [28]. Those drafts helped us to understand the data and observations from the classes better and served, as mentioned by Jorgensen [29], as a valuable addition to the often irregular and unsystematic data collection. A comparison of the nal grades from one class (the other class followed a stricter problem-based form and so did not include an examination) with previous and successive class quarters compares the affect of the BIM-based environment on the students' examination scores and provides insight into any changes in the patterns of strengths and weaknesses in knowledge. The participant research set-up allowed us to gain insights into the classes and collect data from different sources without inuencing learning processes by articially introducing outside observers that most likely would have inuenced the natural behavior of both educators and students. We can assume that students and educators behaved in a normal classroom manner. While the direct involvement with the design and execution of the two classes allowed us to gain deep insights into the learning activities and progress of the students [29], it might have caused observer bias during data analysis. To counteract the inherently biased analysis of data, we engaged the third author of the paper, who did not actively participate in the classes, to review the ndings from an outsider's perspective [30]. In this way, we were hopefully able to counteract some biases during the analysis of our observations from the classes. To provide evidence for the four hypotheses the next sections describe illustratively two different project management classes that incorporated BIM-based project management tools in their class assignments. We provide background about the classes, describe the data we collected, and provide evidence for the hypotheses.

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4. Case description 4.1. Managing fabrication and construction class Stanford University 4.1.1. Class background The rst example of a BIM supported project-based learning format is the graduate-level Managing Fabrication and Construction course taught at Stanford University. The class has been incrementally moving towards the BIM-based format as permitted by software tools since 1994. The class consisted of a mixture of lectures, in-class exercises, assigned labs, team projects, presentations, discussions, and examination. With parallel coursework in cost estimating, expected undergraduate coursework in a dedicated scheduling course, and the practical experience that graduate students typically have from internships and employment, most students were already procient in the nonintegration aspects of project management. To extend the prior knowledge of the students, the course's goal was to provide an environment for students to learn advanced project management topics, such as the signicance of integrating scope takeoff, time process scheduling, and cost estimating; as well as less easily observable issues, such as accounting for time-variable cost, identifying the driving production rates, understanding the implications of large and small batching of work operations, and minimizing wasted resources. In general, throughout the course, the students should have gained an intuition for maximizing productivity, ensuring feasibility, and minimizing risk. Through the introduction of BIM-based project management software tools into the labs and a team project, the students had the opportunity to engage in holistic real-world cases in a learning-bydoing environment. In this environment, the students applied several project management methods to develop and optimize a project plan with the goal that they achieve an intuitive understanding of when to apply these methods. The course format relied on documents from recently constructed projects as case study material. The use of real documents from a recent or ongoing project presented the students the same medium they will encounter as construction managers, therefore representing real-world conditions closely. The case project's project manager provided the students with the architectural scope and specied quality in the form of a BIM. Hence, the students were not responsible for BIM modeling themselves. The autumn 200809 quarter serves as the case example used here, while previous and subsequent quarters provide comparative context. The 39 enrolled students divided themselves into 13 project teams of three. In the autumn 200910 class, rather than use a pre-designed BIM system, each group designed the system integration from a selection of available software tools. Accompanying the software set-up, lectures presented the underlying theories for the use of ontological breakdown structure languages to convey context, the inherent trade-offs between scope, time, and cost, and the strengths and weaknesses of these abstract concepts. The class started with the introduction of the case project, a simplied BIM, and several BIM-based applications that manage scope, time, and cost. The goal of this introduction was to allow students to form their teams, visit the project, gain familiarity with the project documents and the lab environment, install the BIM software tool, and acquaint themselves with the software's user interface. During the rst lab, students learned to use the software tools and generate an initial project schedule using the critical path method at an operations level of detail without consideration for a feasible location breakdown. The students developed a time plan using the software tools as individual components without integration. The student teams relied on spreadsheet software and paper notes to represent calculations for quantities and durations. In this stage, the students typically found that the limitations of the system were in the one off trait of the nonintegrated system. Changes in non-integrated plans resulted in rework of nearly the entire plan. The students presented the results using the provided simple BIM integrated with their time schedule as a 4D model.

This simple integration served as a rst introduction of the integration concept. Lectures at this phase emphasized case studies that illustrate misrepresentations and context breakdowns of project management typical of non-integrated project plans. After the initial introduction and lab, the teaching assistant introduced the students to the three integration software tools necessary to complete the integrated project plan (Table 1). In the second lab, the students used the actual project case study material to complete one full cycle of passing data through the integrated project plan BIM system, resulting in an initial integrated project plan. The baseline was a signicant turning point in the course as students spent a signicant amount of time intensively learning the integration details necessary to complete an iteration or rst pass. Lab assistance and sometimes vendor technical support was necessary to complete this lab. The students used the line-of-balance project management method and iterated several times to nd a solution with a consistent workow and labor resources. Professor Fischer provided the students international project contacts after the second lab. From this list, the students selected a project and contacted the project manager to obtain project documents and collaborate to develop a BIM for the project. The students identied contradictions and opportunities for optimization. The students then shared the results with the class and sponsor through a presentation and written report. Overall, the students' learning process replicated to some degree practical experience in a controlled environment. 4.1.2. Case analysis The students were able to create a completely integrated project plan with a mix of software from multiple vendors within the constraints of a lab assignment. The students could not have produced a comparable project plan without BIM in the same or less time at the same level of detail and with the same completeness. The completeness and detail in the integrated project plan then provided the holistic and thick context that created a more realistic environment for the students. The student preparation for this lab took several weeks and the after-lab reports and presentations required a similar period. No one vendor specically supported the integrated system, but most software had import/export functions that coupled with interoperable formats and software specically intended to allow universal import/export functionality and provided for a non-vendor-specic integrated system. To provide context, the case study material provided a 40 MB BIM (does not include the quantity takeoff, schedule or estimate). Student teams consistently required over thirty lab hours to iterate through the fully integrated system of scope, time, and cost. This duration is with support from a couple of lab assistants and sometimes vendor technical support; with less support the students would have taken longer. Compiling the integrated project plan consisted of seven steps: (1) operation selection, (2) takeoff or linking of BIM components to the operations, (3) deriving recipe-formulas for operations without a corresponding component in the BIM, (4) scheduling, (5) compiling a 4D model check, (6) cost estimating, and (7) an audit review. The operation selection took the students two hours, presumably longer than typical, since they were learning the software tools at the same time. The students used a standard database with a work breakdown structure the BIM represented automatically in each component; therefore, the operation selection included dening the work breakdown structure. The linking of BIM components to the operations list for the takeoff took about nine hours (the hours given are team hours) to complete 240 distinct links to component groups for a BIM with 15 element types and 66 locations to dene the foundation, eight oors, and six structural and two architectural workzones. The next step was the derivation of specic recipe-formulas for each input to, in this case, thirty output quantities; this step took about six hours. The schedule calculations of duration, network sequence, and resource leveling turned out to be signicantly faster using the line-of-balance software than Gantt chart or CPM software. Compiling activities from operations, determining the driving production rate, linking network logic, assigning crews, and optimizing

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Table 1 Software used in the Stanford University class. The relative sequence that software tools are listed represents the integration path, there are multiple integration paths, in particular the 200910 class. Year BIM (pre-made) Scope Time Cost and database Integration| interoperable Navisworks JetStream v5.5 Common Point 4D Tocoman Express v2.0 Tocoman Quantity Manager Navisworks Manager 2009.1 Tocoman Express v2.0.3 Tocoman Quantity Manager Navisworks Manage 2010 Tocoman Express v2.0.3 Tocoman Quantity Manager Vico Presenter Ontology language CIFE WBS [28]

200607 AutoCAD 2006 Architectural 10 teams Desktop (ADT) 200708 AutoCAD 2007 ADT 17 teams Tocoman iLink3 2007 ADT v3.0.9.1

Primavera P5.0 Graphisoft Control 2007 v2532 Primavera Project Manager Sage-Timberline Estimating P5.0 Extended v9.4.3 Vico Control 2007 v2614 Sage-Timberline RSMeans Commercial Knowledgebase

AROW [31]

200809 Revit 2009 Archi. 13 teams

Tocoman iLink3 2009 Revit Beta v3.0.10.4

Primavera Project Manager P6.1 | P6.2 Vico Control 2009 Beta v47284 Microsoft Project

Sage-Timberline Estimating Extended v9.5 prerelease Sage-Timberline RSMeans Commercial Knowledgebase

MasterFormat 2004 [32]

200910 Tekla 15.0 10 teams Revit 2010 Archi.

Tocoman iLink3 2009 Tekla Microsoft Project 2007 Autodesk QTO Vico Constructor Vico Control 2009

Vico Estimator

Varies per student team

took twelve hours to complete. The scheduling tool imported the quantities by location through an XML interface from the recipeformulas. The students calculated durations from the product of the quantities, production rates, and crew assignments. At this level of detail and stage of iteration in optimizing, it would have required signicantly more time with common CPM tools. A preceding class attempted a detailed location-based schedule with a CPM software tool and considered the task impractical. The students compiled a 4D model from the BIM and the corresponding schedule; the students corrected the errors in the schedule they noticed and made iterative checks of workow, resource leveling, key milestones, and total duration. The 4D model required 400 distinct links between the activities and BIM components, requiring about two hours. The number of distinct links in the quantity takeoff (240 links) and the 4D model (400 links) differ because of the method that each software tool's link function works. The quantity takeoff tool represents locations in the operations list and links the BIM components by location automatically, therefore resulting in a reduction of one-sixtieth in the linking effort. The 4D modeling tool does not automatically recognize location (unless the students use a perfectly precise BIM component and schedule activity naming standard) but the increase is not sixtyfold. This is because the schedule is at a lower level of detail than the quantity takeoff so there are fewer items to link to an equal number of BIM components, overall still resulting in more links than the quantity takeoff. The next step was to pass the quantities from the recipe-formulas and the time-variable quantities from the schedule to the cost estimate. This step took one half hour. Professionals and students alike often ignore or at best abstract the time-variable quantities in non-integrated plans. This is likely because they must complete the schedule rst and then update the estimate if the schedule changes. The reuse of quantities for the estimate removed a data entry task and reduced the data entry error rate typically 10% or greater reducing rework and mistakes. The last step was to audit for mistakes and pass through the process again. Since the students had previously formed the links the corrections did not require linking or derivation of recipe-formulas, the most time consuming steps, and so was nearly instant. This last task usually took one half hour. The students performed these steps sequentially. This thirty hour duration includes assumptions. The teaching assistant checked the project plan in depth only for completeness, total cost, and a quick review for quality. He assumed that the quality of the plan is suitable, that student teams applied their

resources equally, and that the team efciency and coordination was perfect. Therefore, in reality, the true duration to complete the integrated project plan may have been greater or smaller than observed and the true experiences of students we observed may have been inconsistent. This would result in a false measure of performance. For a given level of effort to create the project plan, with BIM the students could better document their work for future reference or iteration. For example, the students produced six les for the integrated system: takeoff, estimate, recipe-formula, schedule, 4D, and BIM. Some students with professional experience in estimating intuitively understood the value of the BIM-based system, but believed that they could complete an estimate in less time using a non-BIM format. To them, the value of BIM lay in the repeatable aspect. Non-BIM iteration often takes an equal amount of time since the students must mostly reconstruct the schedule and cost information each time. The students with professional experience perceived that with BIM, the rst iteration took longer, but all subsequent iterations reduced the workload signicantly. The students' experience with learning project management practices through a BIM-based system resulted in key observations made by the students of how they were able to save time by the following advantages that BIM offered during the process of generating an integrated project plan: BIM System workow With the BIM system, corrected mistakes propagated throughout the integrated project plan and signicantly reduced rework delays (non-integrated formats tend to fall apart if students do not nd their mistakes prior to progressing to the next component of the plan). Integrated functions (recipe-formulas) for the quantities of BIM components that were not included in the BIM allowed reduced workload and facilitated the integration of the project plan across multiple levels of detail. Reduced data entry allowed increased levels of detail, allowing greater accuracy per item. The BIM-based process contributed to reduced waste of project resources often attributed to miscommunication between the quantity takeoff engineer, the scheduler, and the estimator. The students accomplished this reduction through BIM-enabled crossfunctional communication.

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With these time savings, students were able to learn advanced project management concepts, such as: Time-based quantities: Among the quantities that are most difcult to derive for project managers are time-based quantities, for example, the quantity takeoff unit for a crane. The students derived this quantity from the schedule rather than the BIM. Intuition for workow: Another difcult concept to learn in a classroom environment is an intuition for workow. With the line-of-balance project management method students gained this intuition through observation of scenarios where slowing an operation to better align the workow resulted in reduced project duration. Project monitoring: The BIM-based system provided the expected quantities by location and time, therefore providing a better understanding of project monitoring. Project management fundamentals: Most eld hands can intuitively explain the fundamentals of project management; they learn this through years of practical experience. The BIM-based process represented the same knowledge through a formal representation of context and relations. The learning-by-doing format exposed the students to a less predictable environment than typical of a classroom. This was an important point to providing a practical experience. To help counter inherent issues with software, the teaching assistant established a relationship with a specic IT specialist at each vendor. In this way, when necessary, support and patches were available within hours. As BIM becomes an increasingly common component of project management tools, the skills to set up and maintain the BIM system will become increasingly important. Through this dynamic unstructured experience, the students learned to adapt to and mitigate issues as they appeared. This same skill should prove useful when dealing with longstanding project management issues identied through early applications of BIM [17], such as model-sharing, process knowledge, stakeholder motivation, human computer interface limitations, information ow, and the lack of generally accepted exchange standards [22]. The BIM-based format helped students to form an intuitive understanding of the critical path (CPM), location-based scheduling (LBS), and 4D visualization project management methods. These methods helped to illuminate the need for greater interaction between the BIM modeler, takeoff engineer, scheduler, and estimator. Often, once students had completed the scheduling sub-part of the integrated project plan, having then fullled the two roles of BIM modeler and scheduler, they grasped the signicance of integration and became aware of the reduced workload and signicance this would have on the completeness and detail they would be able to represent. The BIM-based system helped the students to learn optimization of the schedule, a goal when maximizing productivity while ensuring constructability. The optimization was feasible with the location-based scheduling application using the line-of-balance view. The students optimized for workow, resource leveling, and duration. They iterated through these three optimization foci until changes were negligible. Without the BIM the connection between the quantities and the schedule and from the schedule to the costs would have been lost, and the students

would not have gained as holistic an understanding of the scope, time, and cost relations. 4.2. Integrated project management Twente University 4.2.1. Class background The second case example is the Master class Integrated Project Management at Twente University in The Netherlands. The class introduced BIM-based technologies to support students with efforts to integrate the three project management aspects of scope, time, and cost using an in-class project that closely resembled realistic conditions. In particular, students had to explore the current technological possibilities to integrate project management data by learning the functionality of BIM-based applications and applying them to establish an integrated project plan for a real-world project. During the 2009 class, students successfully developed an integrated project plan for a two storey mixed use building for a local theater company in Hengelo, The Netherlands. The functions of the planned building comprise the storage of the group's theater props, the hosting of the group's ofces, and the provision of a recital room. The project was in close proximity to the university which allowed students to visit the building site to obtain location-specic site information. The educator provided the students with the complete set of bid documents for this project as the information basis for the generation of the integrated project plan. Therefore, we can very well state that the class project resembled real-world conditions very closely. Overall, 14 Construction Management and Engineering graduate students participated in the class. For the project assignment, the instructor divided these 14 students into three groups of ve, ve, and four students. In the rst two weeks of the class, the instructor introduced the students to the concept of BIM and gave them the task to evaluate a number of BIM-based project management applications (Table 2) and choose an initial application suite for establishing an integrated project plan. At the beginning of every consecutive week, the instructor then addressed one aspect of integrated project management during a one to two hour lecture. In the rst week of generating the integrated project plan, the students generated a 3D BIM from the project drawings and specications. Each student group selected a hierarchical modeling approach by dividing the different components of the building into a product breakdown structure (PBS). The groups then assigned the responsibility to model in BIM the different components of the PBS to different group members. During the 3D building information modeling, all groups reported struggles with missing details in the 2D drawings. This forced students to make assumptions about the scope of the project to allow them to generate a complete BIM suitable for project management. In the second week of the project planning effort, the students then created an initial cost estimate using quantities extracted automatically from their BIM linked to cost recipes. If the vendor provided standard recipes the students used these, else, the students created their own. Such recipes, or assemblies, expand from the BIM the required representation of the construction steps and resources in the production information to allow the calculation of costs based on the BIM components quantities extracted from the BIM [33]. Within one week, all groups were able to

Table 2 Software used in the Twente University class. Year 200809 5 teams BIM Revit 2009 Archi. Vico Constructor Scope Tocoman iLink3 2009 Revit v3.0.10.4 Vico Constructor Vico Estimator Time Microsoft Project Vico Control 2009 Cost and database Tocoman Excel Estimator Integration Navisworks Manager 2009.1 Tocoman Express v2.0.3 Tocoman Quantity Manager Vico Presenter Ontology

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produce a cost estimate that was closely integrated with the scope modeled in the BIM. Based on the chosen recipes the students then developed a construction schedule in the next week of the class. During the nal two weeks of the class, students then optimized their project plan. In week ve, students analyzed and improved their construction sequence by linking the geometrical scope of the project with their construction schedule using 4D technology [21,34]. This technology allowed them to visualize their planned construction sequence spatially and to encounter and solve technical and spatial conicts inherent in their initially planned construction sequence. In week six, students used line-of-balance diagrams [24] in an effort to optimize the schedule to ensure the balanced use of all the required resources over the project duration. To track the progress for each week, the students summarized their week's work within a weekly report. The report outlined the strategy they used during the week, described the new parts of the integrated project plan, and evaluated the usefulness of the BIM-based software the group had chosen to support the generation of that aspect of the project plan. At the end of the class, the students incorporated a number of changes into their nal integrated project plan. Students had to change their integrated project plan in consideration of a number of hypothetical events. The main objective of this last assignment was to assess how well the students had integrated each of the project management sub-concepts into their overall project plan by testing how good each group was able to quickly change any of the integrated aspects of scope, time, or cost and determine the effects of changes on one of these aspects on the other two. The change scenarios for the students were: Task 1: The client company requests a change in the design of the facility. Enlarge the area of the storage space by 30%, change your integrated project plan accordingly and generate a report that clearly communicates the inuence of this design change on the overall cost and duration of the project. Task 2: Due to a strike of all workers, all construction work stops during weeks three and four after the start of your project. What are the effects of this stop on the costs and on the schedule in your integrated project plan? Task 3: The client asks you to accelerate work to make up the time you lost during the strike. He offers to pay an additional Euro 50,000 if you manage to bring the project home at the originally planned completion date. Please assess whether you are able to accelerate your project plan within this additional budget to reach the initially planned completion date. 4.2.2. Case analysis In summary, each of the three groups was able to develop an integrated project plan within the class duration of less than ten weeks. The value of their integrated project plans became particularly evident when each of the groups was able to complete the three nal project tasks that required them to incorporate scope, schedule, and resource changes into their project plan. It would not have been possible for the students to nish this assignment without the availability of a truly integrated project plan. It is questionable whether the students would have been able to generate the integrated project plan without the help of BIM-based applications in the rst place. In particular, the quantity take-off task would have probably been too labor intensive. Despite the inexperience of the students with cost estimating and the unfamiliarity with the specic project, all student groups were able to generate a reasonably detailed and complete estimate within a week. We can attribute this increased productivity during the estimating task of the second week to advantages discussed in the next paragraph that BIM provides the students during their work.

These advantages relates to the general requirement of a cost breakdown structure for estimates that categorizes the components of a building into different cost categories. To develop such meaningful cost categories estimators require a good understanding about the technical functions of the building design. Students reported that modeling the project in BIM helped them to understand the important technical and geometric aspects of the building. This hints towards the possibility that the structured way of modeling a project in BIM supported students with their efforts to understand project drawings and speci cation at the start of a class project. This better understanding, in turn, allowed students to develop different cost categories that helped them to structure their estimating effort. In addition to the time savings due to a faster understanding of the building design, the automated functionality of taking-off quantities directly reduced the time that students had to spend manually counting and measuring the quantities for each of the cost categories dened previously. Overall, the time saved allowed students to focus on more important conceptual tasks related to project details that they would probably not have been able to account for without the use of BIM-based project management tools. Next to the overall success with generating an integrated project plan, students were also able to apply different project management methods simultaneously using the integrated project information. All groups created a 4D model, a line-of-balance schedule, and a cash ow diagram that allowed for a meaningful analysis of their project plans. However, even with these advanced project management tools at hand, students were not able to optimize their integrated project plan on a global level. The advanced tools used project information in different formats and levels of detail than the integrated project plan. To use these tools, students, therefore, had to change and enter information that they imported from the integrated project plan manually within the advanced project management tool. This required change with respect to the level of detail making it difcult for students to understand how the problems they identied using the advanced tools would affect the integrated project plan on a global level. While students were able to understand a part of their project plan better using these advanced methods and nd deciencies of the plan at the detailed level of functionality of the advanced project management tool, they were not able to optimize their project plans globally according to the problems they realized. This nding might point to a general trade-off that project managers have to make when planning with integrated project management software. On one hand, a completely integrated project plan can save much time and effort during the planning phase and allow for quick adjustment of specic information. On the other hand, there are situations when an integrated project plan cannot display information in a meaningful way to enable sound project management decisions. In this case, project managers should recreate some information using another format making it likely that the format is not directly interoperable with the rest of the project plan and, thus, obstructing the core benet of BIM to store all project related information in a central data repository. In the next section, we will describe the ndings from the two cases. 5. Case analysis, ndings, and implications 5.1. Comparison of the Stanford class exams The grades of the course's nal exams provide an indicator of the students' knowledge at the end of the class. The class exam is paperbased. To provide as transparent a representation as we could, we chose to compare the exam results for the four years of available exam results, starting with 2006: 2006: the last time the class was taught without the use of BIMbased project management tools for all students and all aspects of

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scope, schedule, and cost management (called non-BIM in this paper) 2007: the class was taught with a number of BIM tools, but not yet as a completely integrated project plan. The students built an integrated project plan as a nal project but could not integrate the cost sub-part and so completed this separately. 2008: the rst time students used BIM to integrate all parts of their project plan. 2009: the BIM format was changed from a single system compiled from multiple vendor tools prior to the class to a format allowing the students to design a system or select a system provided by a vendor. While the overall structure of the exam did not change over the years, the 2006 non-BIM exam did not include integration-based topics, such as the work breakdown structure ontology, theories of different planning methods, and integrated project modeling. A comparison of scores in the main project management topics can provide answers to how the introduction of an integrated project plan allowed by BIM-based tools changed the learning patterns of students compared to the students that did not learn with an integrated toolset for topics like project task networks, critical path method, location based scheduling, and schedule oat. To account for differences in the exam questions for each of the main topic areas over the years, we chose to compare the questions for the areas that did not change. To allow for a quantitative comparison of the scores we present the average scores of students for each of the four years as percentages of the maximum number of possible points. As would seem intuitive, overall, the students who learned with BIM were better at concepts related to integrated scope, time, and cost, but were not as good at calculating scope, time, and cost manually (Table 3). They performed equally on qualitative schedule network logic analysis, that is, dening where critical activities, activity oat and total oat reside, scheduling best practices, and planning. The scores from the resource-leveling question do not show any change in understanding. This may be due to the use in all four classes of a line-of-balance tool that included resource leveling as a core component, possibly some students intuitively grasped this concept well while others did not. Therefore, the students in the baseline course may already have realized the benets of learning the resource-leveling as an integrated topic. The comparison shows that students instructed without BIM appear equivalent or better at computationally preparing a critical path method (CPM) schedule, are better at location-based scheduling (LBS) concepts, and better at calculating oat. We must be cautious with this conclusion since the overlap in scores indicates that the difference between the means may not be signicant. Students that learned without BIM appear better at ontological work breakdown (WBS) concepts and their scores indicate a more cohesive group. Without a baseline this trend is not precise. One trend that may be a factor is software vendors have increasingly included the WBS in their software as an automated function, removing the students' focus on this item. For example, Revit automatically associates components with the work breakdown structure ontology from MasterFormat, Uniformat, and OmniFormat. The main conclusion for the impact of advanced planning methods we can draw is that the

range of student scores appears to have tightened, indicating a more cohesive learning experience for the students. The shift in advanced planning scores may be due to the multi-BIM format; the tradeoff could be that while the students become more competent in building the BIM system itself they may not be building a BIM system that covers all the methods and topics. The single-BIM and non-BIM course material was selected and specically checked that it provided a complete context to the course topics. The exam comparison indicates that with respect to the class that partially integrated BIM, the class that completely integrated the BIM had a deeper knowledge about how to use multiple methods, such as line of balance, CPM, and 4D scheduling. In contrast, the class that used multiple BIM tools lost some of this understanding, although the best and average students had gained an understanding comparable to the previous two years, but understood integrated project modeling topics better. It appears that students did better on conceptual questions and questions about how to best optimize a project plan and worse on questions about standard CPM procedures, such as CPM network scheduling or calculating project oat. The exam results reect a shift from a quantitatively technical understanding to a qualitatively holistic understanding of project management methods. The advanced and integrated project management tools remove the repetitive and predictable tasks, which are typically computational and can be tested more easily, while those tasks that are holistic and difcult to dene and test remain as manual tasks. Therefore, students exposed to a series of advanced BIM tools showed some degree of strength in these manual, more conceptual tasks over understanding the detailed mechanisms of the computational and repetitive tasks that are now automated.

5.2. Cross case analysis The case studies at both universities, while including a different student demographic and being conducted independently by different experimenters, found similarities (Table 4). Both student groups were able to compile an integrated scopetimecost project plan within the constraints of a class. The Twente format allowed the students to complete the BIM process on a different timeline than Stanford's, Twente presented the material with a linear series of weekly deliverables compared to the Stanford approach that emphasized the nal generation and presentation of the integrated project plan. Both experimenters found the inclusion of either a product breakdown structure or a work breakdown structure to represent the integrated project plan sub-parts and their level of detail as a critical attribute. Both cases included the use of multiple project management methods, with parallel implementation of 4D modeling, location-based scheduling, and CPM. Student teams in both classes delivered reasonably detailed project plans at the unit cost and master schedule levels of detail. Both experimenters believe that it would not be possible to achieve the level of detail and the plan completeness without the use of BIM. The failure or breaking points of both cases were also consistent. Neither class was able to include the goal of a meaningful global optimization iteration, something that has not been attained by any of the class observed. It still requires a signicant effort for the students to deliver the level of detail and completeness; hence, the students were exhausted at the end of

Table 3 Historical comparisons of the nal exam grades for Case 1. Percentages indicate the average ratio of exam score to the maximum reachable score for selected questions in each of the exam topics; standard deviation is indicated in parentheses. Task network Non-BIM Partial-BIM Single-BIM Multi-BIM Average 86% 82% 82% 88% 85% (18) (13) (13) (15) ( 3) Resource leveling 83% 91% 86% 50% 77% (13) (18) (14) (23) (19) Critical path method 85% (23) 70% (21) 78% (17) 75% (30) 77% ( 6) Location based scheduling 91% (13) 89% (26) 73% (26) 69% (27) 80% (11) Float analysis 82% (10) 53% (16) 74% (22) 70% (15) WBS ontology 78% 61% 49% 63% (15) (18) (27) (15) Advanced planning methods 76% 87% 48% 70% (10) ( 9) (13) (20) Integrated project modeling 79% 77% 90% 82% (21) (10) (10) ( 7) Overall 85% 77% 77% 67% 76% (3) (12) (8) (18)

F. Peterson et al. / Automation in Construction 20 (2011) 115125 Table 4 Evidence how the use of BIM increased our ability to teach. School Stanford University Use of real-world case Integration of different PM methods Students learned how to apply critical path, line-ofbalance, and 4D scheduling techniques. Change management No evidence.

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Project plan optimization

Multi-story steel framed structure with concrete foundation. BIM modeled from the original contract documents. University of Two storey mixed use building for a Twente theater company. BIM modeled from the original contract documents.

Local optimization of workow, time duration, and resource leveling. Students learned critical path, line of balance, and 4D On the nal assignment, students No evidence. scheduling techniques. Additionally, students used resource integrated changes with respect leveling and cash ow time series visualizations. to scope, time, and cost.

their marathon BIM modeling, quantities scoping, and planning, scheduling, and estimating sessions and were not interested to push the assignment boundaries. In earlier non-integrated assignments, exploration outside the assignment bounds was common amongst the top ten percent of students, but the experimenters did not observe this activity on the integrated assignment. However, the average project plan delivered in the BIM classes was comparable to the solutions delivered by the top students in the non-BIM class. Both classes also had trouble with format and level of detail in exchanged data that additionally restricted the optimization of the project plan. The core differences between the Stanford University and Twente classes were the inclusion of BIM modeling, change management, and a cash ow analysis at Twente. While the BIM modeling and cash ow were important inclusions that the Stanford teaching assistants should adopt, it is the change management aspect that is truly interesting. If the change is in project scope or method of construction, for example, due to a changed quality specication, then this is the catalyst for iterative global changes to the integrated project plan. Incorporating changes as a simulation of typical post-award project work is an important component to move the experience of the students from the typical class exercise replicating an estimating ofce to the holistic representation of the eld ofce environment.

5.2.1. Findings The aforementioned cases clearly show that the introduction of BIM-base project management tools allows the integration of more realistic project situations in project management classes. This integration, in turn, allows the students to learn theoretical project management methods, such as estimating and scheduling using complex real-world project scenarios. The cases illustrate that BIMbased project management tools allow students to generate integrated project plans for real-world complex projects. Our ndings, in particular the comparison of the rst case with earlier classes that did not use BIM-based tools, show that this generation would not have been easily possible without the use of the BIM tools. The cases show that BIM-based project management tools provide students with a structured way to understand project documents and automated many repetitive tasks and thus helped students to focus on more in-depth project planning details. Hence, the cases illustrate that BIM reduced the workload on students with respect to traditional project management tasks like quantity take off and thus freed time to include more realistic project details, therefore exhausting the students with this level of detail on such a scale. The reduced workload, in turn, made the introduction of realistic project assignments into the tight time frames of the above classes possible. Overall, though, the workload for the students has increased from the more formulaic version of the class. However, it would be inconceivable to ask students to deliver an integrated project plan for an actual project with the traditional, fragmented project management methods. The ndings from the two cases also show that the integration of BIM-based project management tools improved the learning activities of the students relative to integrated project management. By using BIM tools in class, the students of the class could go beyond learning project management methods theoretically and then applying them on small

independent examples. In both cases, the educators were able to design assignments during which students needed to generate detailed integrated project plans. Hence, the two classes allowed their students to learn about the true application of different project management methods in an integrated and realistic real-world case. For example, Twente students in the second case used the same projects to apply 4D line-of-balance scheduling and cash ow diagrams to optimize their project plans. Learning project management with BIM tools allows students to understand the complex relation and interplay between the advantages and disadvantages of the project management methods and to see how and when they help to optimize project plans. Additionally, the ndings from case two show that the integration of BIM-based tools in a project management class project allows for the integration of change management tasks in class projects. The students of the second case would have hardly been able to complete the nal change management assignment in one week without having an integrated project plan that allows for the automatic update of the impacts of changes in one of the factors scope, time, or cost on all others. In this way, the BIM-based project management tools allow students to learn how to react to changes and how to adjust project plans to counteract unwanted consequences of project changes. In summary, the cases provide illustrative evidence for our hypothesis that the integration of BIM-based project management tools in project management class assignments helps to use projects that are more complex, increases the opportunity to learn how to use different project management methods for a single project, and how to incorporate changes. However, the cases do not sufciently illustrate that the integration of BIM tools allow students to learn how to optimize their project plans using advanced project management methodologies. Despite the integrated application of 4D and line-of-balance methodologies, we could not determine if students were able to optimize their project plan and to detect deciencies in an existing plan. We assume that despite the use of modern tools, the true optimization of project plans still relies on work experience and that we still fail to support our students to acquire this knowledge through action-based learning methods.

6. Limitations and suggestion for future research Overall, we observed similar characteristics in both classes and are condent that the reported observations are real. While our observations provide a degree of predictability for other classes that the integration of BIM-based tools will also allow for the integration of more detailed and realistic class projects, we must caution for the overall generality of the ndings for all project management classes. It is necessary to review the inherent weaknesses in spite of this intuitive condence in the results. A study that is based upon only two case studies opens discussions about the generality of the ndings. Therefore, throughout this paper, we cannot and do not claim that our observations are applicable for the implementation of BIM-based project management tools in other educational settings than the two we provide exemplarily here. However, the insights of the two cases clearly show how the application of BIM improved specic learning activities within

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these classes, which might serve as a strong indicator of the general applicability of the ndings beyond the specic two-class settings of the paper. Nevertheless, to improve the ndings' generality we suggest that future research explores empirically to what extent the application of BIM can increase the opportunity to design more realistic project management assignments. One way to gain more in-depth insights into this area is the application of a more sophisticated case study research plan, for example, a standardized and validated exam or questionnaire. To resolve the exam format issue of learning through a virtual environment and the examination in a paper-based format, we suggest researching a method to administer the exams virtually. We suggest that researchers conduct structured experiments using control groups and intervention groups that do not use BIM-based tools and that work on the same project case, with the same tasks and deliverables. Such a study will allow for the direct comparison of the effect BIM-based tools have on the amount of realistic project detail educators can integrate in their class projects. Additionally, we suggest that researchers develop survey instruments that allow the collection of data for more formal statistic data analysis. Such research can then provide quantitative results for the improvements that BIM allow with respect to different factors, such as the level of detail of the case used in class settings or the understanding for which types of project management tasks BIM saves time and for which tasks it increases time in educational settings. In addition to a more structured case and survey studies, we suggest that researchers also evaluate how other advantages of BIM can improve the design of university classes. One often-discussed advantage of BIM in the literature is the benets that BIM offers to improve the communication between different project participants, see for example [34,35] and [21]. Future research could, for example, show how BIM supports the design of classes that facilitates students to learn multidisciplinary distributed project management. Finally, we also suggest that researchers conduct longitudinal studies that not only show how BIM can support the design and learning within educational settings, but also provides evidence that students (or continued education of project teams to tackle anticipated niche project scenarios) who learn with BIM perform better within their practical job. The question is, to what degree can the presence of BIM-competent engineers be expected to reduce project risk, that is, contingency. Our claim that more realistic class projects support the education of better project managers is, while logically convincing, not based on any empirical evidence about better long-term performance in practice. Researchers should also test the application of BIM-supported projectbased learning within other cultural settings than the presented Western United States and Western Europe situations. Different cultures respond differently to various learning styles and the assumption that an action-based learning style improves project management competencies of students varies to an unknown degree between cultural contexts [36]. 7. Conclusion In this paper, we show that the introduction of BIM-based project management tools helped educators of two project management courses to develop class assignments based on more realistic project settings and information to support students with learning how to apply different formal project management methods to real-world project management problems. In particular, we show that the introduction of BIM allowed the educators to design class projects that include more realistic cases that better simulate real-world project conditions, helped students to learn how different project management methods integrate with each other, and integrate change management tasks in a class assignment. We analyzed the learning activities of two project management classes that integrated the use of BIM-based project management tools in their learning activities. In general, we believe that the advantages illustrated here show that BIM-based project management tools can signicantly increase the

quality of education delivered by project management programs that are more in tune with the challenges the students will face in practice over the next few years. By integrating more detail and reality in class projects, students will be able to learn better how to apply different formal project management methods to specic project contexts. The better education of students, in turn, should reduce the time that newly hired professionals need to spend on learning-by-doing assignments in the eld until they become valuable contributors to a project team. In conclusion, we believe that the integration of BIM-based project management tools into university curricula already has the potential to increase project management skills.

Acknowledgements We appreciate the software tools and support provided by the vendors: Autodesk, Vico, Tocoman, Primavera, Sage, and Tekla. We are also thankful to the students that took the courses and provided the feedback on their experiences. We thank the reviewers of this paper and its earlier drafts, including Tobias Maile, Amir Kavousian, Jung In Kim, Tony Dong, Olli Seppanen, Tomi Tutti, Richard See, Dana Probert, and Thomas Wingate. We are thankful for the BIM modeling provided by Sangwoo Cho. In earlier classes, Atul Khanzode developed a substantial portion of the course material that eventually became the integrated BIM component. We are also grateful for the course material contributions of teaching assistants Maria Brilaki and Mauricio Toledo and their willingness to share the results from the classes they supported.

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