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Building Information Modeling (BIM) is considered as a common language in construction industry projects today. It is rapidly being acknowledged as a driver for change on a global scale. The perceived benefits of BIM by the early adopters and various researches indicate that collaborative BIM approaches help in delivering projects with reduced time, lower cost, higher quality, and greater customer satisfaction. Recent government uptakes and demands for fully collaborative BIM as a requirement in different countries have resulted in a strong interest towards BIM adoption and its uses, creating a huge demand of BIM competent workforce. Thus, there is an accelerated need for upskilling the industry practitioners and educate the future engineers. However, there is a major challenge for academic organizations to embrace BIM in their curricula for educating the future professionals due to lack of skilled BIM educators. Engineering education is still often based on drafting, since most teachers are experts in 2D or 3D modeling, and only few in BIM. The present lack of skilled BIM educators calls for educating the educators and thus becoming acquainted with the BIM processes, concepts and technologies. The present paper presents the current state and strategies of BIM academic integration in the School of Civil Engineering and Building Services (SCEBS) of Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland. It describes both an initiation and the results derived from "OpeBIM" (BIM for teachers) implemented to educate the educators. The paper collects the feedback and recommendations provided by the participating educators.

Background: The causes and pathophysiological mechanisms of building-related symptoms (BRS) remain open. Objective: We aimed to investigate the association between teachers’ individual work-related symptoms and intrinsic in vitro toxicity in classrooms. This is a further analysis of a previously published dataset. Methods: Teachers from 15 Finnish schools in Helsinki responded to the symptom survey. The boar sperm motility inhibition assay, a sensitive indicator of mitochondrial dysfunction, was used to measure the toxicity of wiped dust and cultured microbial fallout samples collected from the teachers’ classrooms. Results: 231 teachers whose classroom toxicity data had been collected responded to the questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis adjusted for age, gender, smoking, and atopy showed that classroom dust intrinsic toxicity was statistically significantly associated with the following 12 symptoms reported by teachers (adjusted ORs in parentheses): nose stuffiness (4.1), runny nose (6.9), hoarseness (6.4), globus sensation (9.0), throat mucus (7.6), throat itching (4.4), shortness of breath (12.2), dry cough (4.7), wet eyes (12.7), hypersensitivity to sound (7.9), difficulty falling asleep (7.6), and increased need for sleep (7.7). Toxicity of cultured microbes was found to be associated with nine symptoms (adjusted ORs in parentheses): headache (2.3), nose stuffiness (2.2), nose dryness (2.2), mouth dryness (2.8), hoarseness (2.2), sore throat (2.8), throat mucus (2.3), eye discharge (10.2), and increased need for sleep (3.5). Conclusions: The toxicity of classroom dust and airborne microbes in boar sperm motility inhibition assay significantly increased teachers’ risk of work-related respiratory and ocular symptoms. Potential pathophysiological mechanisms of BRS are discussed.

A previous study showed that classical building‐related symptoms (BRS) were related to indoor dust and microbial toxicity via boar sperm motility assay, a sensitive method for measuring mitochondrial toxicity. In this cross‐sectional study, we analyzed whether teachers’ most common work‐related non‐literature‐known BRS (nBRS) were also associated with dust or microbial toxicity. Teachers from 15 schools in Finland completed a questionnaire evaluating 20 nBRS including general, eye, respiratory, hearing, sleep, and mental symptoms. Boar sperm motility assay was used to measure the toxicity of extracts from wiped dust and microbial fallout samples collected from teachers’ classrooms. 231 teachers answered a questionnaire and their classroom toxicity data were recorded. A negative binomial mixed model showed that teachers’ work‐related nBRS were 2.9‐fold (95% CI: 1.2‐7.3) higher in classrooms with highly toxic dust samples compared to classrooms with non‐toxic dust samples (p = 0.024). The RR of work‐related nBRS was 1.8 (95% CI: 1.1‐2.9) for toxic microbial samples (p = 0.022). Teachers’ BRS appeared to be broader than reported in the literature, and the work‐related nBRS were associated with toxic dusts and microbes in classrooms.

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