BIM Africa Summit 2023 Seeks to Boost Moroccan, African Infrastructure

Rabat – BIM (Building Information Modeling) Africa Summit 2023 convened this week Marrakech’s Mohammed VI Conference Center all the actors of the BIM ecosystem, including software developers, architects, engineers, or companies working in the construction field, to dicuss the challenges and opportunities in the sector across the continent.

According to the organizers, the idea of the summit was to develop the ideology of BIM in the entire African continent by inviting all its actors to share more information and chair panel discussions about the BIM sectors.

The summit introduced some construction processes, notably BIM and CIM (City Information Modeling). According to the experts who took part in the annual meeting, BIM is a model of designing, developing, and building infrastructure, while CIM is the rate at which digital technology is deployed to enhance sustainable cities and the environment. In other words, BIM models the specific components of a city, whereas CIM is larger and can model the overall components of a city.

To manage these seemingly complex specifications, a number of developed tools including softwares and platforms intervene in the organization of data. One of these includes usBIM Management, which is a Cloud BIM integrated system. It facilitates real-time collaboration with colleagues, the management of large buildings and infrastructure projects, and working online with the use of any device and from any location.

BIM Africa Summit 2023

Another tool is the usBIM.resolver platform, an online construction management platform that best manages any type of problem that arises at each stage of the construction project. It offers a powerful BIM coordination project tracking system. It is also the “most innovative” solution to control activities, meet deadlines, budgets, and quality norms and standards.

Alfonso Perna, International market manager at ACCA Software, said that Morocco is opening to globalization and making strides in new technologies. “I think Morocco is on the right track and is the flagship for Africa today, although it has a little more responsibility to be a good mentor for the other African countries,” he told Morocco World News (MWN).

Radoine Hassan, an of School of Architecture, Planning and Design at UM6P, spoke of Morocco’s efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Reaching the SDGs, “especially the SDG 11 dealing with resilient and sustainable human settlements, the smartness of the tools, particularly the digital ones will enable us to set objectives and to measure the impact of our strategies, something we did not have before,” he argued.

Participants at BIM Africa Summit 2023

Although Morocco is “mastering” the optimization of the systems of buildings, the North African country will rise to other challenges at a higher stage. “I think it will get more complex when we move to the urban or territorial level,” Hassan added.

In addition, these highly developed tools can easily spot the zones affected by natural disasters thanks to the Geographic Information System (GIS) Morocco possesses for risk management.

According to Hassan, “Morocco is ready for this challenge, and universities like Mohammed VI Polytechnic University are equipped with large data centers in addition to handling digital innovation and creativity to solve a lot of human and environmental issues.”

As the growing generation are developing a keen interest in technology, upskilling them in this field could bear fruits. However, all the experts who attended the summit agreed that this must be integrated in educational curricula.

Moses Itanola, Executive Director at BIM Africa, believes that Africa has a robust and fast young population, and his advice is that “young people need to get involved, keep learning, explore new technologies, adopt new processes, and advance themselves and eventually the continent.”

Among the attendees in the exhibition were students majoring in various fields such as architecture and civil engineering.

“That means that they are interested in the BIM field,” Chief Executive Office of the Moroccan Group Continuum BIM, Ahmed Ayoub Rqaoui, explained to MWN, stating that universities have started to implement BIM in their curriculum. He concluded: “The idea is that BIM should be generalized in education, and in three or four years, it will spread all over the country.”