BIM Course Information

The Building Information Modeling (BIM) Course will be held August 13-15, 2008 in the Civil & Environmental Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University. The course will include several short classes on building information modeling, data capture technologies, and data management approaches. 

• Background on BIM
  • Dr. Akinci will introduce fundamental concepts in understanding and using building information models.  The students will gain an understanding of object-oriented modeling in general and parametric modeling in specific to CAD. The course will cover types of information currently represented and are specified to be represented in Building Information Models.  The course will show how to create semantically-rich building information models and 4D models of construction.
• BIM in Practice
  • Dr. Reinhardt will bring more than a decade of experience in using Building Information Models for construction management.  He will present practical aspects of using building information models, specifically from a contractor’s perspective.  He will discuss how to evolve a building information model to make it useful during construction.  He will share experiences in making building information models and 4D models as part of common tool sets of contractors
• Data Capture Technologies for Construction
  • Dr. Akinci and Dr. Garrett will introduce a variety of sensing and mobile technologies that can be used to capture and access data at the field during construction.  In particular, basics of 3D imaging systems (laser scanners) will be discussed together with some corresponding data processing and analyses processes.  Registration of point clouds with building information models will be demonstrated.  Participants will get an opportunity to use two different laser scanners and some data processing systems.  Several mobile computing approaches will be introduced to streamline data access and transfer at the field.
• Sensing During Facility Management:
  
  • Dr. Soibelman will introduce the concepts, approaches and implementation issues associated with data acquisition for infrastructure systems.  The course will cover the types of data that are collected about infrastructure systems, excitation mechanisms, sensing technologies, data acquisition and use of sensing in a variety of applications in construction and infrastructure management. Student will be introduced to several sensor and sensor network research projects being developed by CMU faculty and students.
• Data Management and Mining:
  
  • Dr. Soibelman and Dr. Garrett will introduce new techniques and automated tools that can intelligently assist engineers in transforming the vast amounts of data into useful information and knowledge. Students will be introduced to databases and database management systems issues as applied to engineering problems in general and civil engineering problems specifically.  This lecture will also address data mining concepts and techniques, and the principles and framework of knowledge discovery in databases, again applied to general engineering problems/data and specific civil engineering problems/data. Students will see examples of how to extract patterns representing knowledge implicitly stored in large civil engineering databases or other massive information repositories.

BIM Course Instructor Biographies 

• Burcu Akinci
  • Burcu Akinci is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She obtained her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University in 2000. She has been involved in building information modeling and 4D modeling related case studies and research activities since 1997.  Her current research targets modeling an information-rich history of a construction project and a facility to support construction project management and facility management decisions. Her specific research activities focus on evaluation various sensing and tracking technologies for construction and facility management, generation and maintenance of integrated project history models, and utilization of such models to support construction and facility management.  She is a recipient of FIATECH CETI Award in Outstanding Early Career Researcher in 2008, ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 2007. Carnegie Institute of Technology’s George Tallman Ladd Research Award in 2003 and the Best Paper Award, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering in 2002.
• James H. Garrett
  • James H. Garrett is a Professor and Department Head at Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.  He is also the co-director of Center for Sensed Critical Infrastructure Research.  He earned a Bachelor of Science, Masters of Science, and PhD in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1982, 1983 and 1986, respectively.  From 1986-1987, he was a project engineer for Schlumberger's Houston Downhole Sensors (HDS) where he developed AI-based design systems for components of the sondes they send downhole.  From 1987-1990 he was as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He has been on the faculty in the CEE Department at Carnegie Mellon since 1990. Professor Garrett's research and teaching interests are oriented toward applications of sensors and sensor systems to civil infrastructure condition assessment; mobile hardware/software systems for field applications; representations and processing strategies to support the usage of engineering codes, standards, and specifications; knowledge-based decision support systems; neural networks for modeling and interpretation problems in civil and environmental engineering.   Prof. Garrett was awarded the ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering Award in 2006, ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering Best Paper Award in 2001, ASCE Wellington Prize in 1993 and IABSE Prize in 1992.
• Jan Reinhardt
  • Jan Reinhardt is a Program Manager of Virtual Design and Construction at Turner Construction Company. Before serving in this role, he held positions as an Assistant Engineer, Engineer and Consultant at Turner. Prior to joining Tuner, Jan Reinhardt was research assistant at Carnegie Mellon University and consultant and engineer at HOCHTIEF AG, where he was working on BIM and mobile computing related research and implementation projects. Dr. Reinhardt serves as the chairman of the Associated General Contractors of America’s BIM Forum Constructor’s Subcommittee. He holds a Masters Degree from Dresden University of Technology in Civil and Structural  Engineering and a PhD in Computer Aided Engineering and Management from Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University.
• Lucio Soibelman
  • Lucio Soibelman is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.  He obtained his bachelor and masters degrees from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil in 1984 and 1993 respectively. He worked as a construction manager in Brazil for 9 years before moving to the US where he obtained his Civil engineering Systems PhD degree in 1998 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1998 to 2004 he worked as an assistant professor at the Civil and environmental Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since 2004 he has been a faculty at the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interest areas include the use of information technology for economic development, information technology support for construction management, process integration during the development of large-scale engineering systems, information Logistics, artificial Intelligence, data modeling and mining, knowledge discovery, image reasoning, text mining, machine learning, sensors, management of streaming data, and Multi-reasoning Mechanisms.

For more information, please contact the BIM course organizer, Dr. Burcu Akinci at 412-268-2959.