Core Team at Swietelsky, responsible for Bim2VR
Hanspeter Schachinger & Huang Chen (Me)
Core Team at research group
Christian Jandl, Lucas Schöffer & Stefan Nebel
Bim2VR
Duration: Oct 2018 – Mar 2020 (Part-time job)
Department: Digital Business Development (formerly BIM)
The design and plans of buildings today are increasingly being created digitally. „Building Information Modeling“ (BIM) includes methods for creating and managing digital representations for construction projects. Bim2VR allows the automated import of BIM-based 3D models into a Virtual Reality (VR) environment.
Originally, the project was part of a research project between FH St.Pölten and BIMCOS e.U., which I have then continued to develop during my employment at the constuction enterprise Swietelsky AG.
My responsibilities were:
> Further development of automation features (e.g. extracting more information, export data to other 3D software)
> Usability Improvement
> Communication with research group Digital Technologies
Bmstr. Ing. Hanspeter Schachinger
Bim-Coordinator & Founder of BIMCOS
I got to know Ms. Huang Chen during a research project with the
University of Applied Sciences St.Pölten on the topic of Virtual Reality.
Her interest in innovative developments and her extremely high level of commitment convinced me of her abilities then. In the course of my work as BIM representative at the international construction enterprise Swietelsky, I was able to win Ms. Huang Chen as a member of the digital development team.
Now, as an independent contractor in the field of construction digitalization, I still enjoy working with Ms. Huang Chen. She always convinces with her structured and thoroughly considered approach to tasks and fulfils them with great bravura.
Core Learnings
Although my core responsibility was to further the development of Bim2VR, the employment provided me with valuable insights on the work within an enterprise.
Communication with different stakeholders in an enterprise is vastly different from communication within a start-up or university. It was a great experience to understand how the communication structure differs from my previous experience.
Digital transformation and development is needs time. Since construction mainly works traditionally (at least in Austria), persuasion is needed to show the benefits of digitisation. The understanding of the mindsets and opinions of my co-workers and other people made me realise how important the human-factor is, when implementing digital technologies. Apart from time, it also takes persuasion to bring people to adopt to technology. Therefore, it is necessary to use human-centred aspects during the implementation process, not only for the final digital product. Additionally, especially enterprises have a variety of experienced employees. Interdisciplinary development with all end-users (e.g. construction workers, technicians, HR…) and core-stakeholders (e.g. property developers) is the key to success, for creating products or services, that is accepted by everyone. Therefore, I will use these valuable insights for future projects that I am involved in.