Abstract:

During the last decade, Qatar started an industry diversification strategy based on a knowledge-based economy for the next years. The ambition is to become a global "hub" in some key fields such as new technologies, finance, culture and sporting events. Such a diversification strategy requires massive investments, not only in physical and technical infrastructures, but also in the field of education. For instance, big sporting projects based on the use of advanced new technologies such as BIM (Building Information Modelling) are currently under development in new economic cluster areas in the country, such as QEZ (Qatar Economic Zones), Lusail Smart City, etc. This raises a need for new BIM competences, and helps local education institutions such Qatar University to adopt a BIM education strategy in collaboration with these zones and AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry in general. Such effort intends to cover the lack of skills and equips graduates with specific BIM competency. Globally, BIM education in the country remains soft and partial compared to the current evolution of the AEC industry but also to the risks that are inherent to the BIM adoption. This paper deals with the introduction of new information technology patterns such as Cybersecurity and Blockchains in a typical university BIM curricula. Addressing these features during the BIM collaborative processes, such as the sharing information models developed and maintained across the lifecycle of the building/infrastructure, is becoming tremendous. Such curricula are becoming multidisciplinary by nature, and require the collaboration between not only the different education departments (Architecture, Civil Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering...), but also the local concerned industry. An integrated proposal will be made in this paper, focusing on the specific needs of the Qatari context.

Keywords:

University-Industry collaboration, Curricula, BIM (Building Information Modelling), Cybersecurity, Blockchains.