The experience of the Second Level Master to be qualified as InfraBIManager

In order to “survive” you must reinvent yourself. Even if you are a professional whose career is successful or a university which offers second level masters for professionals to give them the chance to keep up to date. For this reason, the construction industry and the education sector have a duty to be fully aligned with the objectives of bridging the gap of knowledge. Indeed, thursday, January 24th started the first edition of the InfraBIM Manager Second Level Master of the Politecnico di Torino. The 25 participants were mainly professionals who decided to invest in themselves to play a leading role in the new digital challenges of the AEC sector, showing great interests towards BIM-related topics. For this reason, the paper aims at understanding possible ways of engaging experienced people in new working methodologies, convincing them that something new it is less scary if faced by developing new skills and opening their mind towards new opportunities. They could attend the lessons in person, by videoconference or remotely in on-demand mode; that is fundamental! How can you ask people to be updated by using only old communication strategies? The structure of the Master was thought in order to push students beyond their limits of knowledge, so it was divided into 3 main phases: 350 hours of lectures given by professors from Politecnico di Torino or from other universities and professionals already working with InfraBIM methodology, telling students their own experience and advices; 375 hours of internship either in their company or somewhere else; 250 hours of project work during which they had to put into practice what they had learnt from lectures and exercises on a case study, defining specific objectives. Another reason that inspired the starting of such kind of Master was the chance to present methodology and BIM-related tools in an unbiased way, by presenting several software platforms, trying to define pros and cons, benefits and weaknesses of all products. The aim was to pass the message that no matter the tools used, some procedures and processes can work properly because of the premises and concepts behind. The structure of exercises and project teamwork aimed at encouraging collaboration among students; the experience showed that younger professionals better knew how to handle with BIM platforms and tools, but professionals had the necessary expertise deriving from years of work experience. Furthermore, the importance of openBIM was highlighted by presenting previous experiences of projects developed in such environment. To summarize, the aim was to make students understand the methodology, the processes and the objectives, not merely how to use specific software. Furthermore, by talking about processes, the focus was on the concept of interoperability, in order to communicate that once the methods are clear, software are just tools that enable to achieve the previously defined objectives. Finally, BIM-oriented learning courses presenting cutting edge topics even in second level masters are getting more desirable day by day, because of the market requests and to bridge the gap among universities and the work environment.