Work in progress: How building informational modeling may unify IT in the civil engineering curriculum

IT in the civil engineering curriculum is often fragmented into courses that emphasize either design tools (e.g., CAD), or packages for analysis, planning and modeling. Graduating students often report a lack of coherence in the IT tools used in their courses and a distinctive gap in their junior years where technology skills are under-used or forgotten. Building information modeling (BIM) may offer the opportunity to unify disparate technologies to provide a coherent IT skill set for civil engineering students to address the range of problems in the infrastructure and facilities life cycle. BIM is a framework that combines visualization and parametric modeling in a way that allows students to simultaneously consider the interdependent processes of planning, analysis, design and construction. This research will evaluate the feasibility of embedding BIM in the civil engineering curriculum with the goal of defining and promoting an extensible skill set that is reinforced through a comprehensive transportation design problem.