I’m Gaia Romeo: architect, BIM Manager, CDE Manager, teacher, consultant, occasionally a bit of a rebel — and, above all, a curious person trying to understand what all this technology is doing to the way we work.
Technology has fascinated me since I was 12, when I discovered CorelDRAW. Yoga came even earlier: I started practising at six, thanks to my dad. Two rather different worlds, perhaps. Somehow, they both ended up here.
I’ve been working in architecture and digital design for over twenty years — long enough to remember when BIM still felt like a new and rather mysterious language, rather than something everyone was simply expected to know.
Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to work on more than 200 projects, in Italy and abroad, across very different worlds: airports, hospitals, railways, offices, residential buildings, infrastructure, pharmaceutical plants, and even aerospace.
I’ve supported companies, designers, contractors and clients through BIM implementation. I’ve written guidelines and workflows, managed CDEs, coordinated multidisciplinary and international teams, reviewed BIM management systems and worked as an auditor for the Italian BIM certification system — which I also had the chance to help shape.
I’ve trained and examined professionals and students in universities, schools and companies, always trying to remember that there is a person sitting in front of me before there is a BIM Specialist, Coordinator or Manager.
Along the way, I also founded Isegno, my architecture practice, which later became an engineering company, and spent part of my career moving between professional practice, teaching, research and experimentation.
So yes: behind all the pink and mint green there are quite a few hours of methods, standards, coordination, deadlines and real-world chaos.
I’m also a bit of a nerd. I love software, technology and video games. I love travelling too — partly because changing places has always been one of my favourite ways of changing perspective. New cities, different cultures, different ways of doing things: they tend to make me question whatever I had previously assumed was “normal”.
And maybe that’s why, after all these years, the part of BIM that fascinates me most has never really been the model itself.
It’s what’s buzzing around the model.
How people think.
How teams communicate.
Why even the best-designed processes sometimes fail.
Why technology can make us faster and, at the same time, leave us exhausted.
What artificial intelligence will change.
And how we can keep curiosity, creativity and a little humanity inside increasingly complex digital workflows.
This is where BIMYOURSELF comes from.
It’s my space to look at BIM from a slightly different angle: a mix of technical experience, observation, experimentation and, occasionally, daydreaming.
I could probably tell you much more here, but then there would be very little left to write about.
So I’ll leave the rest scattered through these pages — in the stories, strange questions, mistakes, ideas and occasional detours that have brought me this far.
Because after twenty years in BIM, I still believe we can make it work better.
And maybe breathe a little while we do it.
Enjoy BIM
