Working Paper Proceedings

Engineering Project Organization Conference

The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
June 24-26, 2015

Development of BIM-supported Integrated Design

Processes for Teaching and Practice
Iva Kovacic, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Michael Filzmoser, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Dragos-Cristian Vasilescu, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Proceedings Editors
Carrie Dossick, University of Washington and Gretchen Macht, Pennsylvania State University

© Copyright belongs to the authors. All rights reserved. Please contact authors for citation details.
 Proceedings – EPOC 2015 Conference

DEVELOPMENT OF BIM-SUPPORTED INTEGRATED DESIGN PROCESSES

FOR TEACHING AND PRACTICE

Iva Kovacic,1 Michael Filzmoser 2 and Dragos-Cristian Vasilescu 3

ABSTRACT
Building Information Modeling (BIM) bears promise to bring integration into the fragmented
architecture, engineering and construction industry, as well as large potentials for optimization
and management of building performance along the whole life cycle. To support its adoption in
the practice, BIM capabilities and experience have be developed already in university teaching.
This paper presents the development of BIM-supported interdisciplinary design labs with student
participants from architecture, civil engineering and building science in two consecutive years.
Performance and satisfaction with the integrated planning procedure and the functionalities of
the BIM-software were evaluated time assessments, surveys and focus group discussions. The
standardized evaluation procedure employed allows for the comparison of both courses and to
assign different results directly to the changes in course design. The first course was dominated
by the lack of interoperability of BIM-software. Fixing this for the second course by restricting
software combinations to compatible ones the focus shifted to collaboration and teamwork
issues.
Our results are not only informative for the design of interdisciplinary BIM-supported university
teaching, have implications for practice as well. Especially lessons learned in the areas of project
management, software usage, modeling conventions and incentive mechanisms knowledge can
be transferred to the design of BIM supported planning procedures in practice.

KEYWORDS: building information modeling, integrated planning, experiment, BIM teaching

INTRODUCTION
Despite a very long and renowned Central European building design and construction
culture, today’s architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry stands at a tipping
point. Traditional design and engineering methods cannot address the numerous challenges
industry faces, such as climate change, scarcity of energy and resources, an ageing society, the
economic crisis, and global competition. The development of novel, collaborative planning
methods and approaches, that better exploit domain specific knowledge and expertise, is
therefore necessary to address these challenges, and to enable sustainable construction and
refurbishment, while preserving economic, environmental and social assets.
The construction sector is Europe’s largest employer. It is responsible for 11% of gross
national income, and is a leader in world export markets. However, it is also renowned as one of

1
Assistant Professor, Institute of Interdisciplinary Construction Process Management, Vienna University of
Technology, Vienna, Austria, iva.kovacic@tuwien.ac.at .
2
Assistant Professor, Institute of Management Science, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria,
michael.filzmoser@tuwien.ac.at.
3
Research Assistant, Institute of Management Science, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria,
dragos.vasilescu@tuwien.ac.at.

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the least innovative industries, while having a large environmental impact. The reasons for this
low-innovative culture are numerous. The industry uses highly durable products (required to last
50 years or more), so that consumers tend to prefer conservative solutions, to avoid risks.
Additionally it is a ‘low-profit’ sector, with limited R&D budgets and, finally, it is typically a
fragmented industry – out of two million enterprises, 92% have fewer than ten employees
(Geissler et. al, 2005).
Although the Austrian AEC industry is characterised by high levels of planning and
engineering expertise, it exhibits the similiar characteristics as the larger European industry
characteristics – a very fragmented, small-or-medium enterprise industry, lacking experience in
collaboration –which are seen as major obstacles to improve innovativeness. The expertise is
segmented, lacking synthesis, and cannot be transferred to other stakeholders or even future
users – all of which is necessary for resource-efficient, whole-life optimized construction.
The majority of Austrian construction companies have one to nine employees (Statistik Austria,
2014a). The largest Austrian construction company, STRABAG, employed 5.600 people in
2003, whereas global players, such as SKANSKA or Hochtief, employ over 12.000 (Achammer
and Stöcher, 2005). The majority of architecture and engineering offices have between even
fewer – between one and four – employees. Based on the EU definition, 96,5% of Austrian
architecture offices are micro-enterprises (Statistik Austria, 2014b). Only four architecture
offices employ more than 50 people, and only 21 offices (2,1%) have revenues larger than € 5,1
Million (Eichmann and Reidl, 2006).
Innovation is linked to the size of an enterprise: 84% of large Austrian enterprises are
involved in innovation activities, whereas only 49% of small enterprises (10—49 employees)
report innovative activities (Statistik Austria, 2014c). Austrian architects and engineers, as
micro–enterprises, are able to engage in even less innovation activities than small enterprises.
Integrated building design, supported by building information modelling (BIM), as an
appropriate facilitating technology, is advocated to be capable of addressing the challenges of
fragmentation, supporting a more integrated planning process and thus accelerating innovation in
the AEC industry (Succar, 2009; Linderoth, 2010). However, both integrated design and BIM are
not as widely used in Central Europe as they are in the US, UK or Scandinavia (McGraw-Hill
Construction, 2010; Kiviniemi et. al, 2008) Especially the lack of knowledge of the BIM-related
interoperability functions and still underdeveloped interfaces, lack of standardized modelling
conventions as well as insufficient experience with integrated planning procedures could cause
their low acceptance by professionals.
The capabilities and experiences with integrated planning procedures and
interdisciplinary usage of BIM, which are relevant for practice, have to be established already in
university teaching. This paper presents an attempt to explore the possibilities and potential for
raising the level of integration in the domestic and Central European AEC industry, in order to
foster process innovation and optimization, and to guarantee a more sustainable, high quality
built environment as its legacy, through introducing and evaluating the interdisciplinary BIM
supported design in university teaching. The guiding research question is how to design
interdisciplinary university courses to effectively develop integrated modeling and BIM skills
and to also link these finding to challenges in practice. For this purpose, design labs with student
participants from architecture civil engineering and building science set-up, run and evaluated in
two consecutive academic years. Differences in the results are analyzed in the context of the
changed course design between the two experiments and implications for university teaching and
practice derived.

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The reminder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides an overview of the
course design in the two years, Section 3 the data collection and analysis methods applied to
gather the results presented in Section 4. We discuss the implications of our finding for academia
and industry in Section 5. Section 6 summarizes the major findings and concludes the paper.

COURSE DESIGN
The development of interdisciplinary BIM-courses is part of the research project
“BIM_sustain” at the Vienna University of Technology. This project has the aim to introduce
and promote BIM-supported design in the curriculum as a new skill and competency and to
explore the BIM possibilities and limitations within interdisciplinary planning process and
finally to improve the software performance in collaboration with the industry. Furthermore, a
development of domain specific knowledge, considering specific needs and requirements as well
as AEC culture of Central European market were intended goals of this project.
In the winter term 2012/13 and the winter term 2013/14 researchers and lecturers of the
Vienna University of Technology accomplished interdisciplinary BIM-supported design labs
with student participants from the master programs of architecture (ARCH), civil engineering
(CE) and building science (BS). The teams used different modeling and simulation software
constellations for building design and analysis. Due to the inter-faculty character, the course had
to be placed differently within the specific curricula, which resulted in the difference in
accredited ECTS points in the respective study programs. In the winter term 2012/13 the course
was named ‘Integrated Planning Concepts using BIM’, with the task to create the integrated
design of an energy-efficient office building with 7.500m2 GFA. In total 11 teams (35 students)
took part (Table 1).

Table 1: Course details of winter term 2012/13

Discipline Course/ECTS No. of Participants

Civil Engineers Project Course 11
6,0 ECTS
Architects Elective Class 9
6,0 ECTS
Master of Building Science Project Course 15
8,0 ECTS

The participants of the teams had various tasks and deliverables:

ARCH:
• Development of formal and functional concept, based on provided spatial program and
the given site
• 3D translation of the design in a BIM-software, based on the provided sample-files
• Development of a rough facade- and structural concept in collaboration with CE/BS

CE:
• Design and dimensioning of the relevant structural elements, the verification,

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• Load setting, calculation and simulation of loadbearing structure with the proposed
software (RFEM, SCIA, SOFISTIK)
• Detail Level of design and permit drawings (detailing not required)

BS:
• Thermal simulation of building performance
• Analysis of potential optimization possibilities
• Calculation of energy certificate
• Development of acoustic concept

The teams used software constellations predefined by the tutoring team in order to test
interoperability of all possible software combinations, consisting of following software:
Archicad, Revit, Allplan, REFM, Sofistik, Scia, Plancal, TAS, Dialux and Archphysik.
In the winter term 2013/14, the lessons learned from the first experiment were applied to
the course design. Therefore we decided for a less complex design task - an energy efficient
cultural centre (theatre and artists studios), GFA= 3.000m² - allowing for more freedom in
design. In this term 12 teams participated, with 44 students in total (Table 2).

Table 2: Course details of winter term 2013/14

Discipline Courses/ECTS No. of Participants

Civil Engineers Project Course 8
6,0 ECTS
Architects Design Class 13
5,0 ECTS
Master of Building Science Project Course 23
8,0 ECTS

Major insights from the first interdisciplinary BIM-supported design lab in winter term
2012/13 where among others, that the usage of BIM does not guarantee integrated planning –
rather teams worked together in the traditional sequential manner – nor the usage of a common
model – due to tremendous import and export problems, the distinct disciplines tended to redraw
the models for their purposes. Furthermore the late completion of the architectural design posed
pressure on later disciplines and tensions in the team climate. All these factors negatively
influenced the quality of the results of the interdisciplinary teams. (Kovacic and Filzmoser,
2014).For the second interdisciplinary BIM-supported design lab 2013/14 we derived several
approaches to improve integrated design and BIM-usage in the student teams. First, the standard
software support by software firms was extended through sessions that explicitly focus on import
and export functionalities. Secondly, the design lab was accompanied by a lecture on “How to
BIM” that discusses common problems and modeling conventions across disciplines when
working together on a common model.
A strict schedule was given to externalize time management to some extent, and to
provide for “designed process” alternating intensive collaborative, with more focused
introspective design phases. A kick-off and team building workshop was introduced, as well as
intensive follow up project-design week, where architectural, structural and energy concepts
were developed and presented in a collaborative manner; rather than a specific presentation on
each of these disciplines, as it was the case in the previous design lab. These last measures were
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introduced to create team spirit and an early involvement of the other disciplines early in the
project to facilitate integrated planning. Furthermore, the software constellations where restricted
to those we learned to support data exchange via functional interfaces. Finally, the ECTS points
for the courses of the different curricula were increased (for architects) to balance the incentives
and therefore the motivation of the participants in the design lab.
Also the tasks for the team members of the different disciplines changed slightly, and were
specified in more detail:

ARCH:
• Development of urban planning concept (1/500)
• Development of formal and functional concept (until 1/100)
• Development of 3D model
• Development of façade and structural concept
• Facade cross section

CE:
• Development of structural concept
• Design and dimensioning of the relevant structural elements and verification
Load setting, calculation and simulation of loadbearing structure with the proposed
software (RFEM, SCIA)

BS:
• Building energy Model (BEM)
• Analysis of potential optimization possibilities
• Calculation of an energy certificate
• Development of ventilation concept
• Development of energy concept
• Development of light concept – GASTRO UNIT
• Development of acoustic concept - EVENT UNIT
• Energy concept

In this experiment a team-building workshop was introduced based on our observations

in the first experiment – where the integrated planning only emerged towards the end of the
course – and the students were allowed to chose the modeling software on their own. The
software used in this semester included: Archicad, Revit, Allplan, REFM, Scia, Plancal,
Energyplus, Dialux, Odeon and Archphysik.
The teams were evaluated according to a weighting system that included the grading of
discipline specific aspects as well as the holistic team-performance (Table 3).

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Table 3: Weighting of evaluation criteria

Weight Criterion Deliverables

25% Joint model Joint BIM File
(as Tekla BIM sight file)
25% discipline Architectural file – design in Revit, Arcicad or Allplan,
related model Structural file – structural model in Dlubal REFM , Tekla or SCIA
BEM files – simulation, energy certificate
25% integrated (Functionality, Energy Efficiency, Structure)
concept quality
25% interdisciplinary Protocols
collaboration Pre- and Post Questionnaire Workload (Time Sheet)
Participation in Focus Group

After the team-building workshop there was an intensive one-week design workshop, a
contact class time each Friday for the whole team, as well as two intermediate and one Final
Presentation at the end of the semester.

DATA AND METHOD

The integrated planning process and the BIM-software were evaluated with two
questionnaires at the end of the semester. Concerning the integrated planning process the three
constructs ‘satisfaction with the process’, ‘satisfaction with the outcome’ and ‘satisfaction with
the cooperation’ were elicited each with four questions on a 5-point Likert scale (1 low to 5
high). Concerning the BIM-software we used the two major dimensions ‘ease of use’ and
‘usefulness’ of the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989). Moreover we developed an
‘interoperability’ construct to evaluate the import/export and data exchange functionality of the
BIM-software. Each of these three software constructs was elicited with six questions on a 5
point Likert scale (1 low to 5 high).
Besides the quantitative evaluation of the planning process and the BIM-software focus
group discussions were used for a qualitative and detailed analysis of the experiments (Krueger
& Casey, 2009). Focus group discussions collect qualitative data from discussions of a relatively
homogeneous group on a specific topic. This data is deeper and broader than that resulting from
interviews or open questions in questionnaires due to group dynamics. The discussion groups
were formed by roles to enable exchange of experience and information across the borders of the
teams the students worked in during the semester. Discussions were initiated by a general
question of the moderator (‘How did you experience the interdisciplinary BIM course’).
Questions from a topic guideline covering the collaboration with other roles during the planning
process and the experience with BIM software, which were not addressed by the discussion
participants themselves in the discussion, were asked only in case the discussion stopped.
The discussions were audio recorded, transcribed and then analyzed by means of
quantitative content analysis (Srnka & Koeszegi, 2007) by two independent coders. The content
of each discussion was split into thought units (the unitizing step) that convey one single and
coherent information, in a next step a category scheme was developed based on theory and the
analyzed data (the categorization step) and in a last step the thought units were assigned to the
categories (the coding step). To avoid subjectivity the intercoder reliability for the unitization

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step (by means of Guetzkow’s U) and the coding step (by means of Cohen’s Kappa) are
controlled.
Time assessment was done by weekly questionnaires the participants had to answer via
an online survey tool. They were asked to indicate the total time spent in the previous week on a
set of eleven subtasks of the planning process. These tasks related to (i) process, (ii) software and
(iii) people and were identified in the analysis of the time spent during the semester and the focus
group discussions after the first course. For this data no representative from 12/13 is available for
comparisons:

• Process
o design – the actual design of the building
o technical planning – thermal and load simulations
o adaptation – change of the design based on feedback of other disciplines
o correction – feedback of and discussions with course supervisors
• Software
o interfaces – import and export of models between disciplines and software
solutions
o training – training in the functionalities of the modeling and simulation software
o external support – solving problems with software support
• People
o direct communication – face to face meetings of the project team
o indirect communication – communication via mail, facebook, skype, telephone,
sms, etc.
o project management – assignment of tasks, controlling of deadlines for
deliverables etc.
• Misc – time spent on tasks that cannot be assigned directly to the above activities

RESULTS
The course supervisors observed slightly improved design quality in the second course
and slightly better final grades, too. The remainder of this section, however, will analyze the data
collected from the participants in form of questionnaires, focus group discussions and time
assessment.
As the questionnaires remained constant between the first and the second experiment the
evaluation of the integrated planning process and the BIM-software can be directly compared.
However, small sample sizes do not allow statistical comparison of differences between
disciplines, so we focus on the level of all disciplines in our statistical comparisons. The box
plots in Figures 1 and 2 present an overview of the results for all disciplines aggregated as well
as for the disciplines architecture, building science and civil engineering specifically in winter
term 12/13 and in winter term 13/14 for the planning process questionnaire (Figure 1) and the
BIM-software evaluation (Figure 2). 32 of the 35 participants of the first (response rate 91,4%)
and 32 of the 44 participants of the second course (response rate 72,7%) answered the
anonymous questionnaires for the evaluation of the integrated planning process and the BIM-

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software. All six constructs yielded satisfactory validity values – Cronbach alpha above 0.7 for
all six constructs – so that we calculated the mean over the four items for the planning process
respectively the six items for the BIM-software for the remaining analyses.

Figure 1: Evaluation of satisfaction with the integrated planning

As can be derived from Figure 1 the satisfaction values of all disciplines aggregated
differ only marginally between the course in 12/13 and the one in 13/14. The satisfaction with
outcome of the planning project and the cooperation within the planning team seem to be a little
smaller in the second experiment, however these differences are not statistically significant. This
result is surprising to the course designers, as especially the team building workshop should have
had positive influence on the cooperation within the team and the design week and the tighter
schedule should have had positive influence on the process satisfaction. Additional negative
aspects of these interventions could have outweighed their benefits; the subsequent quantitative
and especially qualitative content analysis will shed light on this aspect.
Concerning the evaluation of the BIM-software similar results for the ease of use and the
usefulness of the BIM-software were achieved – which is not surprising as the as the software
solutions did not change significantly in their functionality during the half year between the two
experiments. However, interoperability of the BIM-software in the second course in 13/14 was

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evaluated as significantly better than in the first course 12/13 (t = -2.338, df = 89.54, p-value =
0.02162). This can be explained by the limitation of software combinations to those that the
supervisors knew that they interoperated relatively well from the previous experiment.

Figure 2: Evaluation of the BIM-software

Table 4 summarizes the participants in the six focus group discussions after the first and
second course on interdisciplinary building planning. The discussion took one hour on average.
The content analysis – methodically described in the previous section – revealed the discussion
contents presented in Figure 3. The categories of the coding scheme, similarly to the time
assessment can be subsumed under the three broad categories (i) process (ii) software and (iii)
participants. In addition to these categories, the context in which the BIM planning procedure
took place was discussed, i.e. the university course and suggestions were made to improve the
course design. An additional block of communication can be assigned to the medium of group
discussions (moderation – i.e. speaking time of the moderator for questions – and confirmation –
interjections like yes, mhm, exactly, etc.).

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Table 4: Focus group participants by year and role

winter term winter term
Role
2012/13 2013/14
ARCH 9 13
BS 15 20
CE 11 7
teams (total) 11 12

Consistently with the results of the questionnaire on the planning process we observe
significantly more statements that describe negative aspects of the collaboration with team
members than in the previous experiment and also than statements of positive cooperation.
Software in general became less of a topic, certainly because the participants could chose their
software instead of being assigned to the software they reported they are most experienced with
– which was the assignment procedure in the first experiment. Especially interoperability was not
a topic, which could be further explained with the limitation in the second experiment to use only
interoperable software combinations.

Figure 3: Content of the focus group discussions in the 2012/13 and 2013/14

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To further investigate the reasons for the lower process and collaboration satisfaction
reported in the questionnaires and the higher number of statements of negative aspects of the
collaboration in the focus group discussions, we applied qualitative content analysis to the
transcripts to gather detailed data on these aspects. These analyses revealed that the participants
in both experiments appreciated the interdisciplinary aspect of the courses. In the second
experiment building science and civil engineering students even more so, due to the insights
they’ve gained into the architectural design phase during their involvement in the team building
workshop and the design week. However, this higher satisfaction of the later disciplines in the
planning process comes at the cost of the architecture discipline. Architects consistently reported
a feeling of supervision, influence and restriction of the creative process and time pressure due to
the close interaction with the other disciplines in the early phases of the integrated planning
process. These aspects seem to account for negative evaluations that outweigh the benefits of the
interventions in the course design.

Figure 4: Activities of the disciplines (share of total time) in the second course 2013/14

Figure 4 presents the results of the time assessment based on the task identified in the
first experiment. Results are quite consistent across the involved disciplines. Technical planning
and analysis is the most important task of civil engineers while correction of the design and the
actual design are more time consuming for the architects of a group. The average total time a
group spent on the project in the second experiment was approximately 880 hours, which results
in approximately 160 hours per participant.

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DISCUSSION
In this paper we presented the results of a comparative explorative study carried out
within two cycles of BIM-supported interdisciplinary design courses. The paper builds up upon
insights from the first experiment (Kovacic and Fizmoser, 2014); where an extensive literature
review on BIM in teaching and student experiments (Peterson et al, 2010; Hyatt, 2010;
Poerscheke et. al, 2010; Plume and Mitchel, 2007) was carried out. This literature review
revealed that most of the BIM-studies using student-experiment are apply pre-modeled models or
are implementing BIM only in later stages. These studies are mostly based on the optimization of
already delivered architectural models in terms of cost, time, thermal and structural analysis. If
used in the pre-design stage for concept development, BIM is still used in a mono-disciplinary,
stand-alone manner; basically replacing CAD courses (Woo, 2006).
The novel aspect of this study is that BIM tools are integrated in the pre-design phase –
where the creation of the “concept” is initiated, which was not the case in previous BIM studies
with students. Hardly any of the conducted courses are evaluated in quantitative or qualitative
manner to gain insight and empirical evidence of the actual time-efforts, potential benefits or
problems. Woo (2006) identifies some pedagogical challenges from student feedback when
teaching standalone BIM such as lack of referential projects and lack of experience as difficulty
for grasping BIM – similar insights were also gained through our research.
The general issue in teaching BIM is an already known dilemma (Bercerik-Gerber et. al,
2011): Should BIM teaching revolve around acquiring the software skill itself or focus on data-
exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration, where students should bring along a certain level of
skills in the course. In our view, the second approach should be the case in the master studies,
since the full BIM potentials can be drawn from the interdisciplinary data–transfer, much less so
from mono-disciplinary modeling. The acquisition of standalone BIM software skills can be
introduced as a part of bachelor studies. Barison and Santos (2010) based on proposed
framework by Kymell, 2008 develop a proposal for a BIM curriculum consisting of three stages
for BIM teaching
• Introductory: digital graphic representation, acquiring software skill
• Intermediary: integrated design studio, acquiring conceptual skills
• Advanced: interdisciplinary collaborative design studio, acquiring social skills.
However, with BIM-teaching being a relatively young discipline, most of the regular
university schedules have not incorporated basic-BIM courses, where students would learn “the
first steps”, but BIM-based interdisciplinary design classes are used as platform for both teaching
BIM-software as well as for collaborative planning. This imposes a too ambitious aim and causes
too huge workloads for both the teachers and students to be managed within one semester.
Comparing the two experiments we can observe that the first design lab was
characterized by sequential work, where modelling was carried out in a consecutive manner, the
teams were not feeling as teams until the last presentation, where a joint model was finally
created. Therefore we introduced a number of team-building measures for process and team
integration in the second cycle, such as kick-off meeting, team-building workshop, one-week
design workshops etc. The main challenge of the first design lab was the technology – the issues
of interoperability and the non-functioning interfaces - whereas the main challenge of the second
cycle were the issues of collaboration, such as leadership and work organization. Despite the
introduced interventions like a team building workshop, a design week and in general a tighter
schedule to reduce stress for the later disciplines in the second design lab, the process and
cooperation satisfaction did not improve. These aspects were especially negatively evaluated by

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the architects - though it was honored positively by building science and civil engineering, as it
increases the influence of other disciplines in the design phase - as they were perceived as
reducing creative freedom and increasing time pressure. Software issues (like usefulness and
ease of use) were less important in the second experiment, which might be due to the fact that
participants could decide on their own which software to use. Moreover, interoperability
improved by limiting the software-combinations to the interoperable software that proved to
work in terms of data transfer in the first experiment. This was found in questionnaires as well as
in focus group discussions where interoperability was evaluated better and was not that much of
a discussion topic any more.
In the second design lab the design still centers on technological possibilities of the tools
to implement the ideas, a slightly higher design quality was observed. There were fewer
problems and less time spent on technical problems with the software. In most teams integrated
planning practices were also appreciated by the majority of the participants, especially civil
engineers and building scientist which were involved already in the conceptual architectural
design. Architects in some teams, on the other hand, experienced some pressure from the other
disciplines and restrictions in their creative expression.

CONCLUSION
The hypothesis that BIM supports process integration, reducing the fragmentation of the
AEC industry was evaluated in student experiment where the satisfaction with the process,
collaboration and result as well as various BIM software tools were evaluated, in terms of
usability and ease of use, and interoperability. Focus group interviews were conducted and
finally evaluation of the process via observation, time-sheets and protocols; in order to
quantitatively grasp the time and work-effort.
Based on the generally positive student feedback on integrated practice, we can conclude
that BIM can act as a catalyst for more integrative design practice and building a joint knowledge
base. However introducing BIM alone is not sufficient, a carefully designed process as well as
experience and skills in interdisciplinary design have to be developed in university programs. A
novel aspect in the curriculum - the interdisciplinary collaboration among disciplines - was
highly valued in student feedback. Since the regular curricula do not incorporate this kind of
courses, this is a novel impression for the students, interdisciplinary work and collaboration also
has to be “learned”, which is a time-intensive process.
Further aspect that needs closer attention is the interdisciplinary creation and transfer of
implicit, data-rich knowledge in the early design stages, an aspect which was negatively
evaluated as “collaboration inhibiting creativity” by the architects. This attitude is also shared by
the practicing architects in German speaking region, who are skeptical towards BIM, fearing the
limitations of creativity, expression, or the general way of work, as well as of financial burden
the adoption of this technology might pose on the mostly small offices.
As already reported by other researchers (Dossick and Neff, 2012) BIM tools are suitable
for transfer of explicit knowledge, however, are too rigid for the implicit knowledge. New tools
or methods have to be found for support of transfer of implicit-knowledge in interdisciplinary
teams in the earliest planning stages.
The BIM-supported processes are more time and coordination-intensive than the
traditional processes. A significant effort has to be invested in the pre-modeling and process-
design phase for establishment of modelling conventions and standards - a process-change for
which is questionable if the highly fragmented Central European AEC industry is ready for.

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Thereby as a future step, not only a change in education of future designers and engineers
towards more integrated planning practice, but moreover - raising an awareness of investors for
BIM benefits but also process-needs of BIM-supported design is necessary.

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