Digital BIM overlays and on-site collaboration highlight coordination and planning at a major construction site during India’s infrastructure expansion.
India, August 30, 2025
India’s infrastructure expansion faces a growing risk from a severe shortage of Building Information Modeling (BIM) professionals. Experts warn the country needs roughly ten times the current BIM workforce to avoid project delays, cost overruns and reduced global competitiveness. Major projects across airports, transit, highways, smart cities and green buildings depend on integrated digital workflows that BIM enables. Root causes include outdated curricula, fragmented upskilling and low stakeholder awareness. Leaders recommend modernizing education, scaling industry–academia project-based training, offering incentives for adoption and running sector-wide awareness campaigns to align skills with digital and sustainability goals.
India is building faster than ever, with airports, highways, metros, smart cities, and green buildings changing the skyline across the country. But industry leaders say a growing shortage of BIM specialists risks slowing projects, raising costs, and weakening international competitiveness. The CEO and co‑founder of a construction technology firm has warned that India needs ten times more BIM experts by 2030 to keep pace with planned growth.
As India heads toward becoming the third-largest construction market by 2030, modern projects increasingly depend on integrated digital workflows. BIM — Building Information Modeling — is central to team collaboration, cost control, and managing assets over their life cycle. Low adoption of BIM in India has already been linked to delays, cost overruns, and inefficient planning, which erode productivity and risk wasting resources.
Three main reasons are driving the BIM talent shortfall. First, education systems still focus heavily on theory and offer limited hands-on training with current digital tools. Second, upskilling programs in industry are fragmented and rarely provide structured, project-based learning that prepares professionals for real jobs. Third, many stakeholders have limited awareness of BIM’s full benefits and treat it as optional rather than essential.
Without stronger BIM capacity, projects risk persistent inefficiencies, higher costs, and delays. Lack of digital readiness could also deter global investors who increasingly look for modern standards in infrastructure and real estate. BIM is also vital for sustainability goals: green buildings, efficient resource use, and climate-resilient design rely on detailed digital models and lifecycle data. A shortfall in BIM skills could therefore slow decarbonization and resilience efforts.
Industry leaders urge a multi-pronged approach to close the gap. Key steps include modernizing curricula so BIM and digital workflows become core skills in architecture, engineering, and construction education; creating industry-academia partnerships for hands-on, project-based training accessible nationally; offering government and private incentives to integrate BIM into large public and private projects; and launching awareness campaigns to drive cultural and digital transformation across the sector.
The construction sector showed strong fundamentals in recent years, with rising output and employment. In 2024 the sector posted double-digit increases in nominal value added and gross output and construction spending crossed US$2 trillion in the first half of the year. Employment hit 8.3 million in July 2024, surpassing previous peaks, but the industry still faces pervasive talent shortages and changing skills demand. Around 44% of current infrastructure skill requirements are expected to evolve over five years, with growing need for data, cloud, and analytics skills alongside people and supplier management.
Other countries, including the UK and Singapore, already mandate BIM for public projects, signaling regulatory momentum abroad. Regulators in some markets now require digital building records and worker tracking systems, pushing wider digitization. Meanwhile, the AEC tech market has seen large investment gains, and firms are using technologies such as cloud computing, IoT, AI, drones, and digital twins to boost productivity and offset labor gaps.
The broader sector is seeing corporate shifts and talent moves. A major energy firm has rebranded to signal expansion into defence, energy, and real estate. Several executives have taken new senior roles at project, design, and strategic planning teams in large real estate and logistics firms. Consulting and research groups are publishing analysis and supporting organizations with proprietary research to help turn strategic goals into action.
India’s infrastructure ambitions and sustainability goals make rapid BIM adoption essential. Closing the skills gap will require coordinated action from educators, industry, and government to train and retain professionals who can run digital workflows at scale. Without that, the fast pace of building risks becoming a source of waste rather than national advantage.
BIM stands for Building Information Modeling. It creates shared, digital building models that help teams plan, coordinate, and manage projects more efficiently across design, construction, and operations.
Industry leaders say India will need about ten times more BIM experts by 2030 to meet project demand and prevent delays and cost overruns.
The gap stems from outdated classroom training, fragmented industry upskilling, and low awareness among decision makers who may see BIM as optional rather than essential.
Proposed actions include updating curricula to include practical BIM training, stronger industry‑academia collaboration for project-based learning, incentives to embed BIM in major projects, and broad awareness campaigns.
Yes. BIM supports green building design and lifecycle planning. A lack of BIM capacity could slow progress on low-carbon, resource-efficient, and climate-resilient infrastructure.
| Feature | Why it matters | Implication |
|---|---|---|
| BIM adoption | Enables collaboration, cost control, and asset management | Low adoption causes delays and cost overruns |
| Skills gap | Shortage of trained BIM professionals | Projects risk inefficiency and lost investor confidence |
| Education reform | Hands-on training and updated curricula | Would produce job-ready talent and boost adoption |
| Industry‑academia partnerships | Project-based upskilling opportunities | Faster workforce readiness across regions |
| Policy and incentives | Mandates and project-level requirements | Drives consistent, large-scale BIM use |
| Sustainability | BIM supports green design and lifecycle planning | Critical for meeting climate and resource goals |
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