nima vice chair for education Paul Woddy talks about early days at Revit and why owner-operators should lead information management

Following the July 2025 appointments of six new vice chairs, this is the fourth in a series profiling the nima core team of volunteers.

1 – Who is Paul Woddy, nima’s new vice chair for education and upskilling?

PW: In my full-time role, I am co-founder and director of White Frog Publishing Ltd, a leader in BIM/information management education strategy and author of training resources. We provide the classroom materials for others to teach, and our courseware is used in secondary, further and higher education, plus professional training environments around the world. My main role is training trainers on how to teach information management and related topics, and I have been doing so for twenty-five years.

After serving as an apprenticeship draughtsman in a multi-disciplinary engineering firm in the early 1990s, I worked in the Middle East, in the niche field of aluminium smelter design. In 2000, I joined a new start-up software company called Revit, to help with their international launch. I was subsequently carried into Autodesk with the acquisition and continued my role of product evangelist and trainer of trainers. Even though we didn’t call it BIM back then, we knew we had to teach a new methodology alongside the software, and so it began. Because I was teaching the teachers from the early days, I can claim to be ultimately behind a very large proportion of the Revit training for the EMEA region.

2 – How and why did you get involved with nima?

PW: I have been active in many industry working groups over the years and have followed the activity of nima and its previous incarnations since the outset, but despite being on the fringes of discussions around educational initiatives, I had not formally been involved until now.

There is an acknowledged skills gap in the wider sector, and especially around IM, and this need addressing. I have always held a firm belief that if you think something needs doing, get your sleeves rolled up and get it done, so when the vice-chair opportunity was announced, I thought I should throw my hat in the ring and offer my expertise.

3 – What is your brief at nima?

PW: Education and upskilling touches upon many areas of nima operations and is one of
the fundamental reasons that nima exists. My brief will be to bring people together and
provide a framework for training and education that is open and transparent. Among a number of key initiatives, I aim to relaunch what was the BIM Academic Forum, with a remit to include schools, colleges and apprenticeship providers alongside the universities, and to bring out the student voice as well. I will also be taking a new approach to the Learning Outcomes Framework, as a mechanism for tailoring the perspective for training courses, certifications, qualifications, and capability assessment.

While information management is not the sole focus for too many people, it is, or should be an integral responsibility for all, so I will be looking to form alliances with other representative bodies to support the development of their IM curricula and the learning pathways of each niche persona.

4 – What do you aim to achieve in your first six months?

PW: One of my primary aims is to move the IM training and education sector away from
offering a one-size-fits-all approach to courses. I want to see curricula that are custom-made for diverse audiences and acknowledge their different perspectives and knowledge requirements. Why should an architect, a manufacturer, and a lawyer all have to experience BIM training from a standard viewpoint, and how can we assess their knowledge if not by comparing them to their peers?

My first objective will be to create a number of industry working groups in the short-term to compile a detailed list of IM-related tasks and responsibilities. These working groups will comprise of informed experts from a wide range of perspectives and will have a major impact on the delivery of the strategy.

My second, parallel objective will be the reformation of the Education Forum to bring
together those involved in the provision of IM upskilling from all levels and sectors. I hope to get a working group together to make this happen in the coming months.

5 – How might people help you as a nima vice-chair?

PW: I will soon be putting out various calls to assemble representatives from all corners of
our industry and the associated academic and vocational providers, in order to compile and validate material to support our activity. If you want to get involved in the working groups, please get in touch.

In the meantime, we are compiling a list of upskilling and educational providers (schools, colleges, apprenticeship providers, universities, and professional training centres), who offer modules or courses on IM, or want to do so but do not yet have the capability or capacity. If this describes your organisation, then please also get in touch and save us the trouble of coming to look for you.

6 – If you could change one thing about information management in the built and managed environment, whatwould it be?

PW: Once I get the nima education and upskilling strategy up and rolling, I would particularly like to get more owner-operators informed and involved in information management. The standards very clearly state that they should be the ones that lead the way, and I think we will only see the real benefits of IM once a groundswell of owner-operators start telling the industry what they want and how they want it done. Instead of focusing on fancy tech for new buildings, this will involve the development of better systems and standards for applying IM to the 97% of managed assets which already exist and have no compiled BIM data at all.