News

CITB NI, along with six other Partners in European Collaboration win European Horizon 2020 Energy pr

Construction Industry Training Board NI (CITB NI) in partnership with Belfast Met and other European project partners from Ireland, Portugal, Croatia and Macedonia have secured a €1.25M (£1.11m) Horizon 2020 grant to develop BIMcert  - a training model and toolkit to help all levels of the industry take their first, or next, step to working with BIM. Building Information Modelling has become a key requirement in the built environment, where all relevant information is created and managed through the lifecycle of a construction project and where digital and virtual reality technology can be used to provide information on every aspect of the project.  It is a significant tool in the development of better energy efficiency in the construction and ongoing management of our built environment.

The partners working on BIMcert will develop a toolkit which will be used to enhance building modelling approaches to sustainable building design. CITB NI will be carrying out a survey of the industry to ascertain the current level of BIM maturity, knowledge and understanding within Built Environment practitioners and academia, to establish current levels of sustainable design and construction practice.
 
Chief Executive, Barry Neilson stated, “This is a once in a generation opportunity for the industry to take ownership of the development of qualifications in terms of both content and method of delivery to ensure the tools developed meet industry needs and encourage a step-change in the industry’s engagement with a technology that could improve the way we create and manage our built environment  and encouraged all sections of the industry to engage with the project by contributing to the survey. BIMcert’s aim will be to build a suite of training tools that help all occupations within the industry across Europe take their first, or next, step in developing more energy efficient buildings through collaboration within BIM.”

BIMcert will use the outcomes to develop a blended, fully supported suite of Building Information Modelling tools, which will allow geographically dispersed construction project teams to use technology to enhance information exchange and collaboration. The project will have a particular focus on testing the BIM approaches to green and passive building design to contribute to the improvement of energy efficiency.
 
BIMcert is a real industry success for CITB NI representing a substantial collaborative European project with partners from Northern Ireland, Ireland, Portugal, Croatia and Macedonia. The development of the proposal was supported by InvestNI.
Leading EU BIM expert Dr James Harty from the Copenhagen School of Design & Technology, stated “Disrupt or die, BIM changes everything.  Increasingly, reputations will be based on performance.  If you cannot measure it, you cannot deal with it.  BIM provides the digital technology tools to calibrate and monitor performance through a building’s life cycle.

Speaking at the launch of the BIMcert project in the Belfast Metropolitan College’s flagship e3 building on the Springfield Road, Amandine De Coster - Lacourt, Project Adviser with the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME) stated 'Europe needs the qualified workforce and building professionals to make Near-Zero Energy Buildings and retrofit opportunities a reality. We continue to actively support these type of activities under Horizon 2020 and it is positive that projects such as BIMcert are now placing Building Information Modelling at the centre of the training agenda'.

At the Launch of the project, Barry Neilson emphasised, the strength of this project will be in the partnership between those who will use the tools, industry, and those who are expert in developing them, academia.  The BIMcert project will develop training tools; devise innovative delivery methods for BIM training across the supply chain of the construction industry.  In collaboration with the partners, BIMcert will deliver applied results which can be readily rolled out across the industry.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant Agreement No 785155