Vincent Olfers, a graduate of HFT Stutttgart, has won 2nd place in the BIM Award 2021 of the Virtual Academy A6, which is endowed with 3,000 euros, with his Bachelor's thesis in the Civil Engineering course. A total of 37 students had submitted 15 competition entries, six of which received a prize. State Transport Minister Winfried Hermann MdL awarded the prizes at an online event on 25 January 2021.
The Virtual Academy A6, of which all construction-related universities in Baden-Württemberg are members, awards annual prizes for outstanding work by students in the field of BIM and digitalisation in order to drive forward development in this area, because: Digitisation makes construction projects in the transport sector more efficient and future-proof. In this context, the topic of "BIM", short for "Building Information Modeling" (translated: building data modeling), is of great importance. This refers to a completely digital working method for the planning, construction and operation of building measures. Olfers received the BIM Award for his work on "Instructions for BIM-compliant modelling based on an HBV bridge", i.e. a timber composite bridge. He modelled this in an object-oriented manner using the BIM method, generated the plan derivation from this, created the link to the scheduling and thus construction process simulation, as well as transferring the model to a VR environment and embedding this in Google Earth for public participation. The work was based on a real construction project together with Harrer Ingenieure GmbH from Karlsruhe.
HOCHTIEF PPP Solutions GmbH as well as JOHANN BUNTE Bauunternehmung GmbH & Co KG and Dutch Infrastructure Fund (DIF) provide annual prize money of EUR 15,000 for this award, which is presented by the Virtual Academy A6. In his speech, Transport Minister Hermann emphasised the importance of this award: "The interest of students in the subject is constantly growing. The results of the BIM Award competition will help us to make further progress in this field with a new generation of professionals". The aim of the state of Baden-Württemberg is to introduce the BIM method in the Baden-Württemberg road sector in the medium term because, Herrmann continued, digitalisation also offers the road sector "... many opportunities to ensure its own future viability". Based on the submitted exposés, the jury of selected representatives from science and industry invited six potential prize winners to a workshop. There, the students had the opportunity to present their work to a selected audience of experts and the jurors. The evaluation of the submitted theses and dissertations was based on the exposés and the presentations. One member of the jury was HFT Professor Dr. Steffen Feirabend from the Civil Engineering department.
