On 6 February 2026, the DigiArch Nepal project officially launched with a kick-off meeting held at Tribhuvan University's Institute of Engineering in Kathmandu — bringing together the full project team from Edinburgh Napier University and Tribhuvan University for the first time.
The meeting marked the beginning of an 18-month collaboration funded by the British Council's Going Global Partnerships programme under the TNE Exploratory grant scheme (Grant TNE2025-3230, value £24,985.75). The project aims to bridge the digital construction skills gap in Nepal's architectural education sector through co-designed, sustainable resources.
"This project is not about bringing UK practice to Nepal — it is about building something together that genuinely reflects the realities of Nepal's construction sector while connecting to international standards."
— Nirodha Fernando, Principal InvestigatorWhat Was Agreed
The kick-off meeting established the project governance structure, confirmed the workplan and key milestones, and initiated the digital skills audit phase. Representatives from both institutions agreed on the methodological framework for the audit, including a mixed-methods approach combining institutional surveys, faculty interviews, and industry stakeholder engagement across at least four Nepali higher education institutions.
The team also reviewed the audit's gender-disaggregated design, confirming that all data collection will be analysed through an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) lens — a requirement of the British Council's Going Global Partnerships programme and a commitment central to the project's design.
Context: Why This Project, Why Now
Nepal's construction sector is growing rapidly, with significant infrastructure investment driven by post-earthquake reconstruction, urban development, and hydropower projects. Yet the majority of architectural graduates enter practice without exposure to the digital tools and standards now expected across the industry globally.
Building Information Modelling (BIM) coordination, ISO 19650 compliance, 5D cost workflows, and Common Data Environment (CDE) practice are baseline requirements for international projects — but remain largely absent from Nepal's university curricula. The reasons are well-documented: limited software access, insufficient faculty training, and a lack of contextualised teaching materials developed for Nepal's specific building stock, regulatory environment, and professional practice context.
Key barriers identified at launch:
Early conversations with faculty and students at the kick-off event surfaced familiar themes: software licensing costs, the dominance of AutoCAD in practice and teaching, limited internet bandwidth for cloud-based BIM tools, and a perception that digital construction standards are "for international firms, not local practice." Addressing these perceptions — and the structural barriers behind them — is a core aim of the project.
Next Steps
The digital skills audit will be conducted from March to May 2026, with fieldwork across Tribhuvan University and three additional Nepali institutions. The audit team will be led by Co-Investigator Roshan Dhonju, with methodological support from the Edinburgh Napier team. Findings will be published as an open-access report and peer-reviewed journal article.
The project team will reconvene virtually in April 2026 for a mid-audit review, and in person in Edinburgh in June 2026 for the toolkit co-design workshop.
All project resources — including the digital skills toolkit, train-the-trainer materials, and the skills passport framework — will be published on an open repository under Creative Commons licensing at project close in August 2027.
Lecturer in the School of Computing, Engineering & the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University, specialising in BIM, digital construction, and transnational education in the built environment.