On November 11, 2020, the AEC Technology industry lost one of its leading figures, Chuck Eastman. In memoriam, AECbytes is reprinting this Viewpoint article from 2008 that was authored by Chuck Eastman and his co-authors of their seminal work, the “BIM Handbook.”
Chuck Eastman was a Professor in the Colleges of Architecture and Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and Director of the College of Architecture PhD Program where he led research in the area of Building Product Models and IT in building construction. His career was spent making building models a practical reality, starting in the 1970s. He held positions at UCLA and Carnegie-Mellon University, and was funded to advise industry associations on their development and deployment of BIM, including AISC, PCSC, NIBS and FIATECH. He authored 5 books and over 70 journal papers.