Competence-Targeted Education for BIM Professionals: A Case Example of the Vietnamese Construction Industry

The adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the construction industry has grown substantially worldwide, and in Vietnam, there was no exception. This creates an increasing need for new BIM professionals that requires specific competencies. Vietnamese educational institutes have made efforts to develop a strategic education plan of incorporating BIM components into their programs in Construction Engineering and Management (CEM). It is crucial to figure out the highly demanded competencies from both the job market and academic requirements. This paper conducts a survey on targeted competencies from current BIM job ads in the Vietnamese construction industry and worldwide systematic literature review. Competency criteria from the two distinct sources were evaluated and compared. The results show that the Vietnamese job ads competencies were reasonably consistent with those of surveyed literature where BIM software skill is must-have competence. The required competencies also include knowledge of BIM concepts and standards, regulations, soft skills, and work behaviours. From these BIM demanded competencies, this paper suggests a system thinking approach to organise, in principle, BIM competence-targeted program, integrating BIM components into the existing/new curricula, taking case example of Vietnam education institutes. The paper may be of interest to anyone who is involved in BIM education