The University of Minho is leading BIM education in Portugal

BIM started to be taught as an independent course module at the University of Minho back in the schoolyear 2013/2014 within the Master in Sustainable Construction and Rehabilitation. This initiative then also permeated to the integrated Master in Civil Engineering in the school-year 2015/2016. Both these initiatives were pioneering at national level, particularly in the field of Civil Engineering Departments.

The University of Minho also coordinates the Portuguese National Course on Building Information Modelling, managing a team which comprises the Universities of Minho, Porto and Lisbon, and targeting practitioners (Engineers and Architects) in a 90h course, held at the National Engineers Association (www.cursobim.com). More than 350 people have attended such course, which currently is engaging to its 8th Edition (simultaneously in Porto and Lisbon).

The leading role of Miguel Azenha (Director of BIM A+) in the context of BIM at national level, has led him to successfully create a new Conference Series, named PTBIM, which he Chaired as President of the Organising Committee in November 2016 (www.ptbim.org), and for which he had the role of President of the Scientific Committee in the second edition (May 2018). Both editions had more than 220 participants, each, with strong engagement from the Industry.

The University of Minho also plays a key-role in the drafting of the new Portuguese recommendations for BIM application through the CT197 committee (www.ct197.pt), particularly in the national BIM Execution Plan guide (under approval), and the national guidelines for BIM application on Municipalities (currently in development).