Effective BIM Curriculum Development for Construction Management Program Transformation Through a Change Management Lens

Abstract

Integrating BIM curriculum into traditional construction management (CM) programs is essential to meet the increasing industry demand for BIM-ready graduates. However, academia struggles with BIM curriculum integration due to unfamiliar emerging BIM technologies, and the increased workload associated with curriculum transformation. Disciplines including nursing, health science, and medical overcame the same challenges using the ability-desire-knowledge-ability-reinforcement (ADKAR) change management model, while CM programs have not explored this model for BIM curriculum development. Thus, this research introduces the ADKAR change management lens to BIM curriculum development by proposing a practically modified and replicable ADKAR model for CM programs. Focus group interviews with 14 academics from the UK, USA, Korea, and Australia, revealed establishing a sense of urgency by appointing a BIM champion is the most critical step before the BIM curriculum development. Instant advice demystifying uncertain BIM concepts is recognised the most effective motivation among academia. Well-balanced BIM concept integrations is ‘sine qua non’ since excessively saturating BIM aspects across the program can dilute students’ essential domain knowledge. Students’ evaluation over the BIM curriculum were collected through a six-year longitudinal focus group interviews, revealing that progressive BIM learnings scaffolded from foundational concepts to advanced applications throughout their coursework is the most valuable.

1. Introduction

The benefits of digitalisation across various industries have urged the construction industry to adopt digital transformation to tackle the current endemic construction issues such as delays, cost overruns, and defects. Particularly, the construction industry has been struggling to cope with the ever-increasing project complexity due to growing demand for bespoke designs, and to tackle the current skill shortage problems. As one of the most essential digital technologies for digitalisation, building information modelling (BIM) has been introduced to the construction industry to tackle the current issues since BIM is recognised as a digital enabler that can facilitate effective design coordination and collaboration among stakeholders [1]. BIM is defined as a construction project information management system to facilitate effective communication and collaboration among project stakeholders throughout a construction project life cycle based on a 3D digital parametric design [2]. Currently, various countries such as the USA, UK, and Singapore have mandated BIM use for public construction projects, and the construction industry has increasingly adopted BIM to improve the quality and productivity of projects [3]. The expectations of the construction industry for graduates equipped with fundamental BIM skills make the undergraduate construction management (CM) program embed BIM courses into the existing curriculum [4]. Furthermore, universities have strived to transform the current CM program to create more digitally enabled programs and curriculums to maximise students’ learning experiences and job readiness as well as enhance their potential to engage various digital technologies including BIM and AI [5]. Consequently, BIM education produce a BIM-ready graduate with proper BIM competencies has become an essential part of universities’ curriculums [3].

Academics are aware of the importance of embedding BIM aspects into the existing curriculum, but it is challenging for them to endure a temporarily increased workload and embrace unfamiliar BIM content into their existing courses. Researchers have emphasised that managing people-side changes to minimise resistance toward unfamiliarity and extra workloads is key to successful BIM curriculum development [4,6]. The implementation of organised change management plans created upon synchronised communication between management and academics is vital for undergoing a collaborative curriculum change process [7,8]. However, CM programs suffer from a turbulent change process in developing a BIM curriculum due to ineffective and asynchronous change efforts between academics and management [9,10]. For effective curriculum changes, diverse programs in nursing, medical, and health science schools in the UK, USA, and Canada have utilised the ADKAR change management model as it facilitates bi-directional synchronized change efforts between the management and academics [11,12]. Despite the wide adoption of the model and its effectiveness in rendering desirable curriculum development and improvement, CM programs still remained nonprogressive in transforming CM programs and developing a BIM curriculum by utilising the ADKAR model.

Thus, the research introduces the change management lens through the ADKAR model to BIM curriculum development, and ultimately propose a practically modified and replicable ADKAR model to manage people-side changes among academia for BIM curriculum development and CM program transformation by answering the following research questions.

Q1 

How should the change management model lens be applied to lead academia throughout the BIM curriculum development process?

Q2 

What are the lessons learnt to practically tailor the ADKAR model to the BIM curriculum development?

The research findings contribute to managing a CM program transforming in a structured way, and developing a BIM curriculum via a reciprocal collaboration between academics and management by managing concerns and motivating academia based on the ADKAR model. More importantly, the lessons learnt from BIM curriculum developments will enable academics and management to understand stakeholders’ dynamics and manage them effectively throughout the transformation process.

1.1. Challenges in BIM Curriculum Development

To uplift managerial knowledge and technical skills for BIM, various governments around the world such as the UK, USA, and Singapore released national BIM education strategies [13,14]. The Australian Construction Industry Forum released the BIM Knowledge and Skills Framework in 2017 providing a guideline for higher education institutes to provide appropriate BIM education content based on the Australian Qualifications Framework level [15]. In alignment with the government-led BIM education strategies, researchers explored strategies for BIM curriculum development by emphasising practical BIM education that can enable students to cope with a new BIM-enabled construction project environment and become a job-ready graduate with technical BIM competencies [9,16,17]. Researchers initially focused on the maximum use of academics’ theoretical knowledge to develop a BIM curriculum. However, researchers pointed out the importance of practical BIM education enhancing students’ technical and managerial BIM skills, which are expected from the construction industry since BIM is not a purely theoretical subject [18,19,20]. Consequently, to consolidate theoretical and practical education, researchers proposed a collaborative learning with industry partners to solve a real-life construction project together such as ‘BIM-based interdisciplinary pedagogy’ and ‘industry connected project-based learning’ [4,21]. Researchers further emphasised the importance of a multi-disciplinary BIM curriculum spanning technical skills and managerial knowledge for students to learn the BIM-enabled project workflows and collaboration among diverse disciplines [16]. Indeed, integrated BIM courses in collaboration with architectural, engineering and IT schools have been provided in Taiwan [6].

Despite various research providing BIM curriculum development strategies, there are still barriers to practically executing the BIM curriculum development plans as there is no ‘one-fits-all’ solution. Three major challenges: (a) existing curriculum structure; (b) resistance to changes; (c) lack of support from management, are currently hampering the BIM curriculum development as shown in

Table 1. Challenges in BIM Curriculum Development.

Researchers	Existing Curriculum Structure	Resistance to Changes	Lack of Support from Management
	Fitting BIM Content into the Existing Curriculum Unclear Roles and Responsibilities for BIM Course(s) Development	Resistance to Unfamiliar Content Reluctance to Develop Interdisciplinary Courses	Insufficient Workloads and Administrative Support
Meterelliyöz and Özener [9]		√	√
Suwal & Singh [17]		√
Abdirad and Dossick [18]		√
Ghosh et al. [19]	√
Posillico and Edwards [20]	√
Wang and Wantanabe [21]	√
Lee et al. [22]			√
Yalcinkaya and Singh [23]		√
Abbas et al. [24]	√	√
Puolitaival & Forsythe [25]		√
Shelbourn et al. [26]	√	√	√
Zhang et al. [27]	√
Zou et al. [28]			√
Casasayas et al. [29]		√
Chen et al. [30]	√	√
Jiang et al. [31]	√
Meana et al. [32]		√	√
Posillico et al. [33]	√
Wang et al. [34]	√	√
Laovisutthichai et al. [35]	√	√

.

Researchers recognised that the existing curriculum structure restricts flexibility in rearranging and redeveloping the entire course structure and contents. As the BIM curriculum requires interdisciplinary collaboration, it is challenging to identify the proper space to fit the new BIM content and courses into the already saturated program structure [20,31]. Researchers recognised that a lack of qualified person in BIM creates more confusion in terms of who and how to develop BIM content and topics as well as who decide where new courses fit into existing structure [9,32]. Indeed, a vicious cycle is presented as the unfamiliarity of BIM adds more unclarity to the roles and responsibilities among academics, and creates more confusions and concerns. The unfamiliarity with BIM creates overwhelming feelings and negative perceptions, and eventually leads academics to reluctance and resistance toward the changes [26]. Additionally, researchers asserted that the BIM curriculum should be built based on interdisciplinary collaboration to deliver a theory-practice integrated education to students. Embracing BIM is already an overwhelming and uncertain task, and collaboration with other disciplines even makes academics more hesitant. Another practical barrier to BIM curriculum development is a lack of internal support for academics’ workloads during the change [9,32]. Before the recent consensus among researchers about the importance of interdisciplinary BIM curriculum was established, BIM curriculum development used to be considered a straightforward task by the management since it was primarily adding stand-alone technical skill-oriented BIM content and courses [3].

Unfortunately, researchers recognised that the perceptions of the management toward the BIM curriculum development remain unchanged [17], and the lack of support from the management is primarily caused by limited knowledge of the complex BIM curriculum development processes and unawareness of the ‘people side of change’ [36,37]. Thus, the change will be unsuccessful unless the key participants’ internal buy-ins are established, and bi-directional efforts between the management and academics are synchronized and synergised. Consequently, various programs in nursing, medical, and health science schools successfully achieved curriculum changes by utilising the ADKAR change management model, which is specifically designed for a bi-directional coordinated effort between the management and academics, and people-side change management [11,12].

1.2. Change Management for BIM Curriculum Development

In response to the issues, the ADKAR change management model has been widely adopted and used to accomplish changes including curriculum changes since it is specifically designed to facilitate common goal-oriented collaboration between the management and practitioners based on bi-directional communication [38,39]. As shown in

Table 2. Five Stages of ADKAR Model.

Stage	Task	Responsible Stakeholder
Awareness	Increase awareness of the need for change	Management
Desire	Create a shared desire for change	Employee
Knowledge	Gain knowledge on how to implement the change	Management
Ability	Apply abilities (gained skills and knowledge) to execute the change plan	Employee
Reinforcement	Reinforcement efforts to sustain the change	Management

, the ADKAR model is comprised of five specific stages: awareness-desire-knowledge-ability-reinforcement stages that progressively elaborate the change effort for both parties based on a synchronous reciprocal approach between the management and practitioners [40].

The change model emphasised the importance of people-side change management by establishing mutual trust and synchronous communication channels between the two parties to completing the essential tasks for each stage. Meana et al. [32] identified that the ADKAR model can create a cohesive team and collaborative teamwork. Cerimagic [41] applied the ADKAR model to clarify roles and responsibilities among academics prior to implementing a curriculum change plan in UK medical education, resulting in a smooth transition with minimal resistance to the new curriculum. Wong et al. [39] validated the efficacy of the ADKAR model in resolving the issues in the curriculum change by applying the model before and during change processes in a Bachelor of Nursing program in the USA. Furthermore, researchers validated that the ADKAR model is more applicable to curriculum change compared to other change management frameworks such as Kotter’s 8-Step model, the Duration, Integrity, Commitment, and Effort (DICE) framework, and Lewin’s 3-stage model [42,43]. The first two frameworks adopt a top-down approach driven by strong leadership which can create resistance toward change since they often overlook people-side changes. The Lewin’s 3-stage model primarily focuses on behavioural changes making it less suitable for continuous and iterative change processes like curriculum development [44].

The current initiatives of BIM curriculum development are mainly driven by the management based on a top-down approach through unilateral communication [39]. When academics first encounter the unilateral demand for changes, their interpretations regarding the changes are not always positive and people often indicate uncomfortable reactions since they have a lack of awareness about the necessity of the changes [12]. Researchers urge to establish a sense of ownership first for the curriculum changes among academics to minimise unnecessary debating and resistance toward the changes [18,28]. Without establishing synchronised change effort between the management and academics based on mutual trust and consideration of the barriers to a successful BIM curriculum development (see Table 1), a change plan will lead people to resistance and frustration [3]. The ADKAR model was used to identify potential resistance before proceeding the next stage as a risk management tool, and sort out the identified barriers in a collaborative manner in nursing school in Iran [38] as well as a medical school in the UK [12]. The researcher found out that appointing an academic team with change-passionate attitudes as a change champion was a critical success factor as they led other people to an understanding of the needs and importance of the change. Indeed, researchers advocate that there is no ‘one-fits-all’ solution for any curriculum changes since every school and organization has unique cultures and dynamics among academics that affect individual attitudes toward the changes [12,42]. Thus, it is evident that the awareness stage of the ADKAR model can facilitate a smooth start of the journey of change, as known as ‘starting off on the right foot’ in a colloquial term, and a successful change in the end [7]. Pawl and Anderson [45] applied the ADKAR model to establish an open and transparent communication between management and academics during a curriculum change in an undergraduate nursing program. The research findings confirmed the efficacy of the ADKAR model as an effective bi-directional communication framework enabling both parties to increase awareness and desire for the changes. Furthermore, researchers validated that the ADKAR model is more applicable to a curriculum change compared since the other frameworks’ main focus is the leadership whereas the ADKAR model put an equal emphasis on both parties’ collaboration [42,44,46]. Thus, this research will investigate the challenges in applying the ADKAR model for BIM curriculum development, and share lessons learnt to tailor the ADKAR model to a BIM curriculum change.

2. Research Method

The research implemented two-stage qualitative research methods combining focus group discussions and a longitudinal case study.

Stage 1. The first stage adopted semi-structured focus group discussion with a global academic panel from Australia, Korea, USA, and the UK to collect and analyse academics’ lessons learnt from the ADKAR model implementation for the BIM curriculum development. The panel comprised internationally recognised academics with expertise in pedagogical aspect of BIM and change management, who are currently actively engaged in both teaching and research. They critically reflect and share their experiences and lessons learnt in each stage of the ADKAR model application in the BIM curriculum development for the Bachelor of CM program through roundtable discussions facilitated by a BIM champion. Facilitated roundtable discussions were structured with the following questions:

a. 

How did the ADKAR model guide academics throughout the BIM curriculum development process?

b. 

What important lessons and insights have you gained from applying the ADKAR model?

c. 

What modifications are necessary to utilise the ADKAR model for BIM curriculum development?

The thematic analysis of focus group discussion data adopted a deductive approach grounded in the ADKAR model for theme identification. The five distinct stages of the ADKAR model—awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement—served as predefined thematic categories offering a structured framework for designing and guiding the focus group discussions. Data were collected and examined within the clearly defined five thematic categories, which enables researchers to achieve the extension of existing knowledge into new practical insights, while ensuring consistency in the coding process including descriptive and interpretive analysis.

Stage 2. The second stage of the research, which is a longitudinal case study were followed from 2017 to 2024. Insights from the focus group discussions refined the ADKAR framework, and the modified framework was implemented iteratively from 2017 to 2021 for the BIM curriculum development and program transformation of the CM program at the University of South Australia as a case study (See Appendix A). The outcomes of the refined ADKAR model implementation were validated through students’ satisfaction levels with the two core BIM courses offered in the first and fourth years of the CM program. The satisfaction levels were measured via structured focus group interviews, and students were asked to share feedback and indicate their experience on a five-point Likert scale by answering the following questions.

Q1. 

Share your overall satisfaction with the quality of the course.

Q2. 

Describe the quality of course materials and resources.

Q3. 

Course content: Do you have a clear idea of what is expected from you?

Q4. 

Assignments: Do you think the assessment items assisted your learning?

Q5. 

Do you believe you have received constructive and helpful feedback?

This phased approach confirms the applicability of the ADKAR model for the BIM curriculum development (research question 1), and validates the lessons learnt to modify the ADKAR framework more relevant to manage people-side of changes among academics throughout the BIM curriculum development and program transformation (Research Question 2).

3. Findings

3.1. Stage 1. Lessons Learnt in ADKAR Implementation for BIM Curriculum Development

Profiles of Participants

Academics shared their insights and lessons learnt by discussing the identified challenges and enablers for each stage of the ADKAR process to answer the research question 1. 14 academics with an average of 11 years of teaching and research experience in BIM participated in the focus group discussions as shown in

Table 3. Focus Group Profile.

Participant	Year of Experience	Position	Role	Country
A	12	Senior Lecturer	Program Director (Online Program)	Australia
B	12	Senior Lecturer	Program Director	Australia
C	11	Senior Lecturer	BIM Working Group	Australia
D	10	Senior Lecturer	BIM Champion	Australia
E	6	Lecturer	BIM Working Group	Australia
F	18	Professor	BIM Working Group	Korea
G	12	Professor	BIM Champion	Korea
H	10	Associate Professor	Program Director	Korea
I	5	Lecturer	BIM Working Group	Korea
J	15	Reader	Deputy Head	UK
K	9	Senior Lecturer	BIM Working Group	UK
L	8	Lecturer	BIM Working Group	UK
M	16	Professor	Department Chair	USA
N	12	Associate Professor	BIM Working Group	USA

.

(1) Awareness stage: All participants unanimously acknowledged that a BIM expert needs to be appointed as a BIM champion to foster internal buy-in among academics. To initiate curricular change and commence the awareness stage, the BIM champion should be tasked with raising awareness of the importance of BIM education and its capabilities by presenting global trends in BIM education and technological advancements through formal mechanisms such as seminars and workshops. Participants emphasised that appointing a BIM champion or hiring a BIM expert creates a sense of urgency for changes among academics. This approach is instrumental in increasing awareness while confirming the strong will of the management toward the BIM curriculum development. As one participant reflected:

Participant C: “Introducing a BIM expert to the team made me pay attention to the BIM curriculum development initiative.”

Other participants commented about their perception regarding the importance of the change:

Participant E: “I realised how seriously the management considered it, so I didn’t overlook the emails (I often ignored emails sent to everyone from management)”

Participant G: “… hire a lecturer with both technical and managerial BIM skills prior to the BIM curriculum redesign … signalled a strong institutional commitment (for changes)”

Finally, every participant agreed that it could have been hard to actively get involved in the change without a clear reason and rationale for the change supported by a sense of urgency. Furthermore, introducing the BIM expert benefits management since they can encourage academics to embrace the curricular changes with less forceful and top-down manner.

Another essential aspect of the Awareness stage is to increase awareness and understanding of BIM, which is supported by formal presentations and small group seminars with the BIM expert. However, participants commonly commented that they found the events more overwhelming than helpful as a good opportunity to get familiar with BIM.

Participant G: “… I thought I grasped the essence of BIM, but when I started thinking how I can embrace BIM to my course…I found myself lacking understanding of BIM”

Participant C: “It makes me worried that I created something I don’t fully understand”

All academics expressed that it took a while to digest the BIM-enriched information through the events as the BIM topic is very new to them. Additionally, academics also had a preparatory period to be ready for the changes by demystifying misconceptions and fear around unfamiliar BIM concepts and teaching content through informal conversations with the BIM expert. Indeed, academics emphasised that informal meetings and discussions with a BIM champion played pivotal roles since they can freely ask any questions, and get relevant advice and insights instantly from the BIM expert. Several participants commented:

Participant H: “… informal setting relieved stresses as I can get a clear answer immediately (about BIM capabilities) whether I can embed BIM concept to a certain topic or not …”

Participant G: “… no worry wasting others’ (colleagues) time by asking irrelevant questions (during a formal meeting) and get embarrassed”

In summary, the presence of a BIM expert is the most critical step in the Awareness stage since it not only increases essential awareness of BIM, but also creates a sense of urgency and readiness among academics toward the curricular change, as well as clarifies misconceptions of BIM timely which motivates academics.

(2) Desire Stage: The endeavour undertaken in the previous stage resulted in common interests in BIM and a sense of urgency for the curricular change. Participants widely acknowledge that a BIM working group was voluntarily formed around the motivated academics facilitating regular meetings to share up-to-date BIM trends and their concerns. Consequently, participants experienced that BIM training requests were made as the outcome of growing and matured desires to obtain practical BIM knowledge, insights, and know-how regarding BIM education content. More importantly, all participants unanimously agreed that being aware of the need for change does not guarantee successful BIM curriculum development unless proper workload support from the management is provided, which was identified as one of practical challenges in the BIM curriculum development through literature review (see Table 1).

Various participants commented:

Participant A: “… increased desire and willingness for the curriculum change can be easily discouraged when there is no guarantee for proper support (from the management)”

Participant D: “… doubled workload for teaching (delivering lectures and tutorials) on top of developing BIM courses”

Participant K: “… temporary teaching relief is a huge motivation for academics”

In response to these comments, two participants emphasised the need for relevant and realistic requests:

Participant M: “… (desired support) requests should be reasonable and acceptable (to management)”

Participant F: “… better use written documents clearly indicating what you need, and not expect they will understand your needs”

Based on these responses, as academics became more aware of BIM skills and knowledge, they were better able to realistically assess and articulate their needs for workload support. Thus, it is important to reconcile the reality and ideals of BIM curriculum development based on knowledge acquired through the awareness and desire stages. In summary, although the ADKAR model guides the awareness and desire stages in a linear and sequential order, this research revealed a reciprocal relationship between the two stages as shown in Figure 1. Awareness and desire stages amplify each other simultaneously, and the boundaries between the two stages are more dynamic in the curricular change context compared to the traditional ADKAR framework.

(3) Knowledge stage: All participants emphasised the importance of an academic-led approach to the workload issues once again, since it will significantly abate unnecessary debates and emotional tensions between management and academics. Sacks et al. [47] supported this finding as there is a stiff learning curve in comprehending BIM skills and knowledge. Indeed, participant G, J, and M, who are discipline leaders serving a managerial role commonly commented:

Participant G, J, and M: “It could have been difficult for management to support academics effectively (without the consolidation of requests) as they were also unclear what and how they could support”

Furthermore, a consensus among participants was made that the knowledge stage is the most critical stage requiring collective effort to create a curriculum development roadmap based on a holistic approach to a CM program. A holistic BIM curriculum development roadmap is a vital outcome prior to the ability stage to minimise duplicating effort and overlapping course contents, as well as achieve the effective and efficient coordination among academics and professional staffs.

During the roundtable discussion, three critical success factors were identified:

1. Holistic BIM curriculum development roadmap: Participants all agree that academics should develop a holistic BIM curriculum development roadmap guiding BIM learnings scaffolded from foundational BIM courses in the earlier year to advanced BIM applications in the later year, as well as to minimise BIM content overlaps across CM program.

Participant C: “As (someone) new to the team, it is challenging to fully comprehend how my course fits into the BIM curriculum (without the BIM curriculum development roadmap)”

Participant N: “a balanced roadmap toward (integrating) CM and BIM (concepts) is enhancing students’ learning, since too early (for the first-year student) to fully understand BIM, while they still need to learn what plans and sections are”

Furthermore, participants widely acknowledged that the involvement of a subject matter expert (BIM champion) should precede an education expert (e.g., learning enhancement or innovation team) involvement in the early stages of the change.

Participant G: “it should be disastrous (to decide a proper teaching method) without obtaining BIM knowledge (in the previous stages) since both of us (an academic and an education expert) could have had no clue what BIM really is and what needs to be taught”

Participant A: “BIM fundamentals need to be settled among students first before discussions about what type of innovative teaching techniques should be adopted”

Participant I: “fitting course content to a certain teaching method won’t work. Essential BIM contents (skills and knowledge) should be considered first (to select a relevant teaching method)”

Participant E: “Flipped learning is good (for a deeper understanding), but it is very hard to bring all students up the same level of understanding (of BIM) before the tutorial”

Participant B: “Not all assignments are eligible for adopting a team-based assignment task. Especially, when individual learning and its assessment take a priority”

Participants addressed concerns about misalignment between BIM contents and teaching method when an education expert has limited knowledge and experience in BIM concepts and capabilities.

2. Administrative support for curriculum update: All participants commonly mentioned administrative support can be easily underestimated and not considered during the curricular changes. Participant B serving a program director role enlightened an important point:

Participant B: “Reflecting the changes to the University system is important as the updated information will be also used for marketing purpose (promoting new program) and useful for retaining and recruiting existing and new students”

Participant J and M serving as managerial roles (Deputy Head and Department Chair) also added their comments regarding the professional staffs’ workload. Reflecting changes in terms of updating course learning objectives, outcomes, assessments in the University system, as well as processing all relevant academic information for the updated curriculum and CM program take a while. Thus, professional staffs’ workloads should be considered and planned ahead since their daily workloads are occupied with ongoing administrative works.

3. IT support for BIM education preparation: In relation to the administrative support, all participants strongly emphasised the importance of IT support in terms of BIM software installation and availability of computer labs or pools.

Participant D: “BIM software subscription costs need to be pre-approved, and it takes time (about a month) to process a purchase order, then installations depend on IT technicians’ workloads”

Participant E: “The school is responsible for the (subscription) payment, so additional coordination effort between a professional staff and IT specialist required”

Participant I: “Computer lab is always in high demand. So important to coordinate with IT team to know when a computer lab is available, and inform them what software we need (for teaching)”

Thus, pedagogical effort must be supported by administrative and IT units to accomplish planned outcomes such as timely software purchase and installation for BIM education. These findings highlight the essential interdependencies between pedagogical goals and institutional IT infrastructure.

In summary, without a holistic BIM curriculum development roadmap and coordinated support from administrative and IT professional staffs, planned curricular changes, and BIM course delivery could be delayed or compromised. Based on the findings, the knowledge stage is modified as shown in Figure 2.

(4) Ability stage: Participants highlighted the value of guided flexibility in developing BIM content and assessment tasks for individual courses. All participants experienced that most academics had become capable of developing and updating course content, materials, and assessments independently at this point. They emphasised that quality assurance and quality checks, both before and after the changes made independently, must be systematically ensured to avoid unnecessary rework and achieve a cohesive BIM curriculum development roadmap. Although participants indicated different names of the quality benchmark, all agreed that there must be an educational quality benchmark such as the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) or the UK BIM Framework.

Participant A (Australia): “…not necessarily establish a universal format of course content since we meet the quality and levels recommended by the AQF”

Participant B (Australia): “AQF made me confident when I update my assessments because I know that I am doing the right thing (not deviating from the qualification criteria)”

Participant J (UK): “(UK) BIM Framework is useful to update my course materials and assessment since it kindly explains learning outcomes from BIM education”

In contrast, Korea and the USA do not have distinct BIM education frameworks, and two participants commented on:

Participant H (Korea): “We don’t have a nationwide BIM education framework, but ISO 19650 or other educational framework such as the buildingSMART International is used for benchmark”

Participant N (USA): “Regardless of the availability of benchmark (educational BIM framework), setting up a quality standard equivalent to a certain BIM competency level like national BIM Standard capability model matters”

These findings confirms that all participants express the importance of a universal quality guideline for BIM education, and the OECD report [48] recommending the use of a national education framework for standardised quality curriculum development supports this.

Furthermore, all participants experienced trial and error challenges in actual BIM course developments since they plan to change all relevant courses simultaneously in the first attempt. This approach caused unexpected coordination errors and confusions caused by different interpretations regarding the required quality. Participants unanimously recommended an iterative implementation approach since developing a few core BIM courses first as pilot BIM course development before program-level full changes can set up a benchmark quality for succeeding courses, and modify the BIM curriculum development plans based on trial errors and lessons learnt from the first-round development in an agile fashion.

In summary, the knowledge and ability stages indicate a strong predecessor-successor dependency as shown in Figure 3. The knowledge stage serves as a planning stage, while the ability stage follows as an execution stage. The administrative and IT support from professional staffs is recognised as instrumental pillar for the ability stage to develop and deliver BIM courses and as planned. Additionally, an iterative implementation approach is recommended to minimise trial errors and apply lessons learnt iteratively as the BIM course development progresses.

(5) Reinforcement stage: All participants recognised that confirmation of continuous workload support from management is the most critical form of reinforcement since the course content and assessments cannot be entirely perfect during the initial phase of the BIM curriculum development. With continued support, academics were able to regularly update and improve courses each year, which will enhance students’ satisfaction. Participants pointed out that recognition such as commendation at the end-of-year program meeting or through teaching awards serves to reinforce the efforts of academics who have contributed to the changes or are about to commence developing BIM courses as shown in Figure 3. Furthermore, lessons-learnt meetings were acknowledged as instrumental in enhancing he effectiveness of the previous change processes and refining the ADKAR model through the sharing of insights with academics who will continue BIM curriculum development in the following years.

3.2. Stage 2. Case Study—Application of the Modified ADKAR Model to BIM Curriculum Development of CM Program at University of South Australia

To examine the efficacy of the refined ADKAR model from Stage 1, as well as validate the outcome of the implementation, this research applied the modified ADKAR model to the BIM Curriculum Development of the CM Program at the University of South Australia, where the authors were actively engaged in teaching and BIM curriculum development. Subsequently, students’ learning experience of the BIM curriculum was assessed.

As the recommended first step, in 2016, management hired a BIM expert as a lecturer before the BIM curriculum development commenced in 2017. After hiring a BIM expert, while the awareness and desire stages progressed, the authors realised that the desire for the changes was enhanced more effectively when an initiation stage (i.e., warm-up period) was provided to academics to process the upcoming changes and envisage how they could adapt their courses. This short period stimulated academics’ autonomy since they fully realised that the change was inevitable and essential that they were ultimately responsible for the BIM curriculum and course development. Consequently, academics actively formed a BIM working group to facilitate regular meetings, and requested BIM training support to obtain practical knowledge relevant to BIM course development. As BIM maturity among academics increased, they naturally began to consider the amount of effort and time needed to develop BIM content since it was directly connected with individual workload.

During the knowledge stage, the authors discovered that the purchase order for the BIM software subscription typically takes a month. Although this specific duration is only limited to this case, the importance of coordinated effort among the BIM expert, IT, and administrative professionals was again confirmed for successful pedagogical delivery of the BIM course. At the ability stage, the BIM expert developed core BIM courses by revamping two existing BIM-related courses first to establish a quality benchmark before other academics began developing their responsible BIM courses. The authors recognised that this initial development effectively minimised trial-and-error processes, enabling the progressive renewal of existing CM courses as well as the creation of new BIM courses. As a result of applying the refined ADKAR model, incremental and cohesive transformation from fundamental BIM concepts to advanced BIM topics were achieved, and eventually a well-balanced ratio between basic BIM introduction courses (5 out of 11 courses) and fully BIM-embedded courses (6 out of 11 courses) are achieved as shown in Figure 4.

The findings from this case study indicate that reiterating the full ADKAR process may be redundant when both awareness and desire are clearly established among academics. Especially, when academics have sufficient knowledge and have learned from the initial first-round BIM course development, subsequent interactive BIM curricular changes can be initiated from either the knowledge or ability stage depending on the specific need to modify or revise the holistic BIM curriculum development roadmap.

3.2.1. Student Learning Experience on Core BIM Courses

An average of 20 students per year participated in structured focus group interviews as shown in

Table 4. Number of interviewees for two core BIM courses.

Course Level	2016	2017	2018	2019	2021	2022	2023	2024
1st-year Course	28	26	29	19	19	18	13	11
4th-year Course	24	N/A	11	5	14	11	4	5

. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, interview was not conducted in 2020. Each student responded to the five structured questions (see Research Method).

Student satisfaction levels were calculated using a weighted mean formula:

{(#of Strongly Agree × 100) + (#of Agree × 50) + (#of Neutral × 0) + (#of Disagree × −50)
+ (#of Strongly Disagree × −100)} ÷ Total #of Responses

The 2016 evaluations served as a baseline prior to the BIM curriculum development, and the evaluations from 2017 onward were used to assess the outcome of the BIM curriculum by comparing satisfaction levels against the 2016 control group.

3.2.2. First-Year Core BIM Course—Student Evaluation Result

The student satisfaction levels were gradually improved presenting the upward trend as shown in Figure 5. There were three major declines in satisfaction level in 2018, 2021, and 2024. The research identified a positive correlation between instructors’ BIM competency, particularly in technical communication regarding students’ questions during BIM tutorials, and in-classroom instant troubleshooting expectation. All first-year students indicated that technical competency of instructors highly influenced their learning experience. Indeed, in those three years, new tutors, who were PhD students and first-time educators, delivered the courses.

Student A: “a lack of clarity and guidance on how to handle technical issues, and the time it consumed to provide feedback on our enquiries made (us) more frustrated”

Student B: “many of us using MAC instead of normal laptop (Windows laptop), and due to interoperability between Revit and MAC, students are really struggling and even get Revit up a running. But, the tutor could not provide any alternative or solution putting us off”

Despite the continuous effort to retain an instructor long-time, they often leave upon completion of their PhD studies or finding better opportunities. More importantly, the lessons and experience they gained were not properly captured and shared with their successors for teaching purpose. Although the IT issue is not entirely instructor’s fault, this finding confirms that the gained experience should be leveraged to prevent the same issues from occurring again. Furthermore, as identified in the refined ADKAR model, support from the IT unit could be helpful in this case as long as the IT staff’s workload is discussed and planned in advance the BIM course delivery.

Apart from the staffing problems, as evidenced by the first-year students’ comments below, the BIM curriculum is well integrated among individual courses and scaffolded toward later year courses where students can integrate their learnings by learning how to apply their knowledge and skills to real-life situations.

Student C: “The introduction of BIM helps visualise residential buildings and it ties in well with the Construction 1 (Subject B in Appendix).”

Student D (mid-year entry): “BIM assignment (was helpful) as we got to learn the (BIM) tools used for other subjects like structure and commercial building (second-year subject—Subject E in Appendix)”

Student E: “Industry relevance. Good introduction into BIM. BIM assignment was practical and more involving.”

Student F: “BIM in Construction Management (guest lecture) Hanson Yuncken (Australian Tier 1 Construction Company) delivered was extremely relevant.”

Student G: “My knowledge of BIM has grown. I can teach someone how to use Revit.”

Student H: “The BIM studies were very helpful as they provided me with a higher knowledge of skills regarding how projects are managed and designed.”

3.2.3. Fourth-Year Core BIM Course—Student Evaluation Result

Fourth-year students’ comments also confirmed that the intended BIM curriculum development was successful with the following comments. Students appreciated a real-life BIM construction project for a capstone project since they could see how their skills and knowledge have been improved.

Student I: “This course helps us review the knowledge and content we have learned over the past four years, integrate it together and apply it to real-world projects ...”

Student J: “Great understanding of BIM practice and industry application.”

Student K: “As someone who is already working in industry, this course is incredibly real-world ready. This course is the most applicable to the real workplace”

Student L: “It replicated what to expect in the industry … I also liked the format of assessment tasks that replicates an industry job like scenario ...”

Student M: “I learnt some knowledge regarding the integration of a real-life project. It’s always been a hard thing to combine what you’ve learnt in school with the real-life issue.”

Student N: “Guest lectures are also interesting. The whole course allows to use our own work experience and previous study knowledge to apply to the assignment.”

Interestingly, the student satisfaction level dropped in 2019 due to Assignment 1, which was reflective writing of work experience, as shown in Figure 6.

Student O: “… as an international student, hard to get work experience… not good assignment.”

Student P: “Assignment 1 is time-consuming. No need to practice a writing skill.”

Student Q: “Drop the work experience assignment … Don’t waste our time.”

Student R: “I didn’t like the work experience report as it was lengthy. Not supporting my learning.”

Consequently, the reflective writing assignment was replaced by a real-life BIM project case study assignment by instantly undergoing the ability stage as recommended by the refined process (See Figure 4), and the satisfaction level was significantly improved in 2021.

The research found that the satisfaction level continued to decline after 2021, mainly due to external influences associated with BIM policy shifts. The Queensland government began to mandate BIM use in 2019 for public infrastructure projects aiming for mandatory BIM adoption for all public infrastructure projects by 2023. Additionally, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released an international BIM standard, ISO 19650 [2] in 2018. These BIM policy shifts and the emergence of ISO 19650 significantly amplified the need for updating BIM courses, especially the fourth-year core BIM course since most of the fourth-year cohort were already working in construction companies and highly affected by these changes. Subsequently, the expansion of the international BIM standard coverage in the BIM content and assessment were thoroughly planned and embraced in 2021. However, the trend in satisfaction levels confirmed that the update failed to establish a balance between the depth of knowledge and the relevance of teaching content and assessment.

Student S: “hoping for not too much, but just the right amount of content related to the standard could have been better, although I appreciate the fact that the standard is important”

Student T: “good to have background knowledge in regard to the international standard, but I don’t think I will manage BIM projects after graduation. Some of assessment asking too much details in BIM (execution) plan development”

This finding supports a structured pedagogical approach, where foundational BIM competencies should be universally established among students in the earlier year, while advanced BIM standard and policy-related BIM knowledge should be delivered at an appropriate level of detail in the later year.

4. Discussion

4.1. Progressive Development of BIM Courses

The CM courses have progressively embraced BIM concepts in both course content and assessment tasks over the last five years. It should be noted that individual courses are designed to be scaffolded toward the fourth-year core BIM course, which serves as a capstone project where students can integrate and apply their previous BIM and CM learnings. Since students begin specialising in construction management, quantity surveying, and building surveying from the third year, there is a greater priority placed on educating students in in-depth knowledge in the three domains over teaching additional BIM aspects. Consequently, the most important and essential capabilities of BIM—3D, 4D (time), and 5D (cost)—are taught during the first and second years to develop students’ technical BIM skills and managerial BIM knowledge, as well as enhance students’ BIM maturity.

Then, other BIM concepts including 6D (facility management) and 7D (sustainability) are introduced in the third year to broaden students’ perspectives on BIM. Finally, all previously acquired BIM skills and knowledge are integrated and applied to a real-life construction project case study using 3D, 4D, and 5D BIM capabilities in the fourth-year core BIM course as a capstone project. As a result, the fourth-year core BIM course was selected as one of the most innovative BIM courses taught in Australian Universities at the nationwide BIM education report as it fully embraces BIM capabilities through a capstone project built upon a real-life construction project [3].

Through this research, it was clearly recognised that teaching BIM concepts and knowledge cannot be the primary learning objectives for specific domains such as Contract Administration and Building Surveying courses, where understanding and applying construction laws and building regulations take priority. Thus, BIM should neither be considered as a panacea for all CM courses nor overly saturated across the program by embedding BIM aspects into every course, since diminishing returns may occur when extensive BIM-related information is taught before students fully digest the essential concepts and content of each course. Additionally, the current level of BIM maturity in the construction industry remains limited and poses a constraint to embracing more advanced BIM content since not all construction professionals are using BIM across the supply chain. Thus, it is vital to find an optimal level of BIM adoption within the curriculum, and the findings of this research can provide practical insights and serve as a benchmark.

4.2. Failure Rates and Attendance

A positive correlation was identified between low attendance in BIM tutorials and high failure rates in the associated BIM assignment in the first-year students. This correlation is reflected in the decline of students’ satisfaction levels, specifically in ‘Q4 Assignments: Do you think the assessment items assisted your learning?’ and ‘Q5: Do you believe you have received constructive and helpful feedback?’, as shown in Figure 5 between 2021 to 2023. This trend coincided with students’ increasing choice of remote and asynchronous learning modalities, which is aligned with flexible learning settings during pandemic-era. Although lecture and tutorial materials are available online, the reduced frequency of face-to-face interactions with teachers and tutors significantly diminished students’ opportunity to acquire practical hands-on BIM technical competencies, which is instrumental to create self-confidence in engaging with BIM technology and BIM assignment eventually [49]. Subsequently, approximately 10 to 15% of total students disengaged from the BIM assignment since they underestimated the depth of hands-on skills and conceptual understanding of BIM required for the assignment. Particularly, most of the disengaged students encountered common challenges to find out the foundational entry points for BIM assignment in the first place, and finally abandoned the assignment due to a lack of self-confidence to independently complete the assignment. It will be almost impossible to force students to attend tutorials and lectures in person since a virtual meeting and presence has become norm these days, and there is no actual justification for the mandatory attendance. However, the value and relevance of in-person interactions with teachers and tutors to grasp BIM skills and knowledge must be noted, and the current issues with the disengagements should be addressed by the adoption of innovative engagement strategies such as gamification and work-integrated learning.

Furthermore, while the importance of BIM in the current construction industry is undeniable, its academic application does not always resonate with students’ real-world roles, as evidenced by interview responses from several fourth-year students, particularly those employed at small- and medium-sized companies. They commented that limited engagement with BIM-related tasks such as cost estimation and contract administration for payment in their daily roles. Consequently, the BIM assignment in the capstone project course were perceived as misaligned with workplace realities, although they acknowledged that the lessons and practical knowledge from the assignment would be valuable for their future roles. This misalignment emphasises the importance of tailoring advanced BIM applications to students’ diverse career paths, as well as suggests that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ pedagogical approach may alienate students from meaningful engagement with BIM curriculum.

4.3. Strategies for Practical BIM Curriculum Transformation

Aligning curriculum change with educational policy reform is essential to improving student learning achievement and enhancing teacher quality. Given the fact that BIM curriculum development requires a coordinated effort to transform the existing curriculum, it is vital to increase faculty abilities and motivate desire for the change first. Since academics are not a single homogeneous entity, but rather composed of various levels of career including early-career, mid-career, and senior faculty, each group has unique needs. Thus, conducting an initial survey among faculty to assess their needs and identify knowledge gaps in pedagogy and technology proficiency related to BIM course development should precede offering a universal BIM training at the desire stage. Additionally, when resources are available in terms of the workload of BIM experts and relevant BIM working group, tailored faculty development programs using different delivery methods such as workshops, mentoring, or peer learning will further enhance teacher quality and abilities to update educational systems. Furthermore, utilising framework such as School Excellence Plan (UK and Australia) and School Improvement Plans (USA) can offer more practical guidance for integrating BIM courses into the existing curricula. Ultimately, these practical measures will enable academics to align BIM curriculum change with educational policy reform.

To enhance student learning outcomes, the current assessment systems need to adopt diverse assessment types and provide adaptive learning support to students. Although BIM is originated from digital technologies in general, familiar to younger generations, students still require fundamental knowledge and skills of interpreting construction drawings and technical specifications to effectively learn BIM topics. For this, continuous assessment (i.e., formative assessment) should be utilised to monitor students’ learning progress from fundamental to advanced BIM topics, and provide timely feedback on their performance. Particularly, peer-assisted learning programs can render a better learning experience since students may feel more comfortable studying and learning with their peers.

5. Conclusions

The research validated the refined ADKAR model as a strategic framework and a structured guidance for the BIM curriculum development underpinned by reciprocal collaboration between academics and management. The research recommends initiating the curricular changes with joint effort between management and academics from the outset of the change process to maximise the effectiveness of the BIM curriculum development and program transformation. Research findings indicate that the awareness and desire stages increase awareness of BIM and desire for changes based on a bilateral relationship, while the knowledge stage should create a holistic BIM curriculum development roadmap. The role of professional staffs for administrative and IT support is recognised as essential to both implementing the BIM curriculum development plans and ensuring high-quality BIM education delivery. Ongoing workload support is identified the most critical enabler for academics, which motivates and reinforces academics to carry out continuous improvements in BIM content and assignments. Thus, the insights from research findings should be interpreted and adopted within the broader context of higher education environments and BIM-focused pedagogical strategies. Given the limitations of research case’s institutional and geographic location, future research should explore multi-institutional case studies across diverse regions. Multi-institutional comparative studies involving universities from different regions will uncover commonalities or divergences in utilising the refined ADKAR model in CM education globally. It will also contribute to the broader generalisation and the identification of best practices of BIM curriculum development. Furthermore, while this research offers rich qualitative insights through extensive student feedback, there is a limitation in quantitative validation of student satisfaction trends and levels of comprehension over time. Future research should adopt rigorous quantitative methods such as significance testing and comparative analysis across cohorts for clearer interpretations of evolving educational outcomes.