The European BIM Summit online was a success. The virtual version of the International Congress about BIM attracted more than 400 registrations from 44 countries all over the world, who closely followed the presentations by some 30 speakers and were able to interact thanks to the BIM App.

From 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. on Thursday 19, November, the event organised by the Col·legi d’Aparelladors, Arquitectes Tècnics i Enginyers d’Edificació de Barcelona (CAATEEB), BIM Academy and buildingSMART Spain provided a detailed look at the situation of digital construction technologies all over the world, featuring the inputs of experts in different areas and, as the congress’s most significant novelty, the presentation of three collaborative working documents about core topics for the AECO sector: Common Data Environments for Integrated Project Delivery (CDE for IPD), the ISO 19650 and the IFC in the building process.

In the coming weeks, the Congress attendees will have the chance to submit their own contributions in order to complete these documents, which have been created for the purpose of becoming reference tools in the sector.

Now that a few days have elapsed since the Congress, the impressions gleaned by the organisation and the speakers are very positive, on account of the interest evinced by professionals from all over the world, the amount of information generated, the quality of the presentations and round-tables, the interaction with the attendees and the commitment shown to contribute to generating collaboration-based knowledge, which is the philosophy that underpins BIM methodology.

“The results surpassed our expectations”

Rafael Capdevila, member of the Governing Board of the CAATEEB, director of the BIM Manager Postgraduate and co-facilitator of the Congress, together with the CEO of BIM Academy, Ignasi Pérez Arnal, was extremely satisfied with the results. “The results surpassed my expectations. I am the first person to be “over the moon” at the final result, both in terms of the topics addressed and the organisation”.

He is particularly grateful for the effort made by the entire team that enables the European BIM Summit online to run smoothly, with minimal technical hiccoughs, bearing in mind that each speaker was connecting from different places in the world, from Singapore to the United States, via Chile, several European countries and even the island of Madeira, not to mention the fact that the Congress featured the participation of delegates from highly-diverse geographical spots such as Mongolia, Egypt, Japan, the Philippines, Venezuela, Morocco, Australia, India… and so on up to 44 different countries.

Regarding the programme contents, “I believe that they were all very suitable and constituted the point of departure for a new way of seeing the BIM Summit: knowledge, collaboration, integration, growth”, asserted Capdevila.

One of the Congress’s big success stories was the encouragement of participation. Despite the distances and therefore the impossibility of on-site interaction, the attendees were able to download the drafts of the working documents presented at the three round-tables and will have until the end of the year the opportunity to submit their own inputs. What is more, the Thursday session concluded with a vote to choose the topics to be addressed at the next edition of the European BIM Summit, scheduled for April 2021.

The finishing touch was the BIM Beer, an easy-going online event in which the participants who had attended the talks anonymously were finally able to actually see each other and swap impressions.

The international consolidation of the European BIM Summit

Thanks to the voting, “we have a clear idea of what people and users are interested in so that we, as an organisation, can respond accordingly. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it is the best way to continue to drive ahead and to pick up on people’s concerns and worries, as well as to keep a congress like this one alive”, emphasized Rafael Capdevila.

The Covid-19 pandemic obliged the organisation to rethink the Congress and opt for the online format for the 2020 event. The success in terms of international audience “means that as of now the BIM Summit will have to be a dual event: those who want to attend the Summit in person will be able to do so, health scenario permitting, although it will also have to be streamed live via the Internet. The two forms of participation have been consolidated, meaning that we have to commit to them, because they give us what we want, namely for the European BIM Summit to continue to be a prestigious annual event”.

Capdevila underlined the seamless development of the event on Thursday, which also indicates that “the collaborative world is becoming consolidated”. The take-home message is that this European BIM Summit online was “a well-oriented and well-staged event, open to new ways of doing and understanding things, the internationalisation of the Congress, a change of direction, and that we have a long future ahead of us”.

The next event will be held on April 22 and 23, on-site at the World Trade Centre Barcelona with simultaneous streaming.

The European BIM Summit is possible thanks to the contribution of our sponsors: Roca, as Main sponsor; Finalcad, as Gold sponsor; Agència Catalana de l’Aigua, ATL, Infraestructures.cat, Bentley, CIAT, FGC, MUSAAT, PREMAAT, Graphisoft Archicad, SIMBIM Solutions, Ineco, ASP Corredoria d’Assegurances and Suez as Silver sponsors; Calaf Constructora, Copisa, and Fundación Laboral de la Construcción, as Pro sponsors; and Master Builders Solutions, as Sustainability sponsor. It has also the support and the collaboration of the Departament de Territori i Sostenibilitat of the Generalitat de Catalunya.