Bim4WARD – Development of digital competencies in the field of building technology and simulation on the basis of BIM

The Green Deal introduced a new European growth strategy to the transition to a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy. The action plan includes measures to further decarbonize the energy system and decouple economic growth from resource use. Due to the high optimization potential of buildings, this is associated with increasing requirements in terms of sustainability, energy efficiency and energy flexibility. In order to meet these future requirements, the use of new, digital methods in planning, construction and operation of technical building systems is necessary.

In this context, Building Information Modeling (BIM) is seen as having great potential. However, the degree of maturity and implementation in practical application falls far short of the industry’s expectations. Although BIM is seen as a working method of integral planning, the current range of education and training is reduced to the classic fields of civil engineering and architecture. The application of BIM-integrated analysis and simulation tools (building and facility simulation, numerical optimization, data exploration, etc.) are hardly addressed. In practice, the possibilities of BIM to holistically optimize building services plant concepts can often not be fully exploited.

Within a so-called innovation camp, the necessary knowledge, skills and competences are to be imparted in order to plan, construct and operate sustainable, technical building system solutions cost-efficiently by means of BIM-integrated simulation processes. In order to cover all life cycle phases of a building in the best possible way, all relevant stakeholders (architects, planners, constructors, operators, etc.) are synergetically integrated in the project. The methodical-didactical implementation of the teaching content is based on the T-profile method, which is applied and further developed in this project. Furthermore, the BIM method is used as a pedagogical tool for teaching and learning in order to force interdisciplinary cooperation between individual disciplines and also to integrate innovative learning methods such as gamification.