Digitizing buildings via building information modelling (BIM) is increasingly gaining traction in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector. The plethora of BIM-based technologies ...affects both inter- and intra-organizational relations. Structured inter-organizational networks across tiers, such as supply chain (SC) partnerships were used to examine how BIM affects these changing relations across and within firms' boundaries. Empirical explorations around the interplay between BIM and SC partnering - as a proxy for supply chain management (SCM) philosophy - were deployed to assess their contribution to SC integration, and to investigate the functions of key actors in AEC. One young and one long-standing SC partnership were studied, and it was observed that the contractual arrangements had to be complemented by well-defined BIM scope, and communications across multiple tiers to built trust and support collaboration in the network. There were two types of BIM-enabled SC partnering: with emphasis on either transactions or relations, the former being merely operational whereas the latter strategic. These inter-organizational orientations of BIM-enabled SC partnering outlined further intra-organizational conditions for integration regarding functional division, business models and services offered. The study carries implications for BIM and SCM researchers, policy-makers and practitioners, and proposes strategies for SC integration by aligning intra- with inter-organizational relations.
Recent critiques of the BIM literature describe it as largely devoid of critical theoretical perspectives and theorization capable of explaining the nature of change in work practices in a holistic ...manner. In response, the authors argue that, from a theoretical standpoint, implementing BIM within professional work practices (as activity systems) induces their evolution through dysfunctions created within the systems and their resolution. Cases of professional organizations in South Africa that have implemented BIM within their organization and in multi-organizational projects helped to develop new theoretical insights into how professional work practices evolve using activity theory-based re-description of the data. Changes in professional work practices were analyzed sequentially within the framework, confirming theoretical propositions and revealing the dynamics between and within the interconnected system of actors, their object, tools, rules guiding work, roles they assume and the stakeholders. Essentially, the findings imply that the implementation of BIM significantly changes work practices within organizations, but gradually and over time. This supports an evolutionary, rather than a radical or revolutionary, view of BIM-induced change. This theoretical perspective could explain future dimensions of change in professional work practices involving BIM, and indeed similar work mediating tools.
Digital Twin (DT) concept has recently emerged in civil engineering; however, some problems still need to be addressed. First, DT can be easily confused with Building Information Modelling (BIM) and ...Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Second, the constituents of DT applications in this sector are not well-defined. Also, what the DT can bring to the civil engineering industry is still ambiguous. To address these problems, we reviewed 468 articles related to DT, BIM and CPS, proposed a DT definition and its constituents in civil engineering and compared DT with BIM and CPS. Then we reviewed 134 papers related to DT in the civil engineering sector out of 468 papers in detail. We extracted DT research clusters based on the co-occurrence analysis of paper keywords' and the relevant DT constituents. This research helps establish the state-of-the-art of DT in the civil engineering sector and suggests future DT development.
•Proposed a definition of Digital Twin and its constituents in the Civil Engineering sector.•Distinguished between Digital Twin and BIM and Cyber-Physical System.•Identified the research clusters of Digital Twin in the Civil Engineering sector.•Suggested future development in the corresponding research clusters.
•A method that enables the integration of data required for maintenance management in BIM and 3D GIS environment.•Monitoring data and related maintenance information are linked in the maintenance ...management system.•A process to extend visualization functions of current computerized maintenance management system.•A framework of a system to support utility tunnel maintenance management.
Utility tunnel should be well maintained for it services public pipelines and city operation. In the recent time, utility tunnel has been operated via computer maintenance management systems (CMMS) or building automation systems (BAS). However, CMMS or BAS lack of convenient visualization and interoperability. This paper aims to propose an integrated system of building information modelling (BIM) and geographic information system (GIS) to improve the performance of current maintenance management system. A system framework of BIM-3DGIS is proposed and required maintenance management functions are also developed based on practice demands. A real case of utility tunnel is used to demonstrate the system. Two scenarios and a questionnaire survey are conducted to validate the applicability and practicability. Results show that the proposed BIM-3DGIS system can ensure effective maintenance works and have well potential applications.
Purpose
Building information modeling (BIM) is recognized as a major innovation in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Understanding the factors that influence the AEC’s ...adoption of BIM will benefit the research and practice of BIM. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This study provides empirical evidence for the accumulated knowledge of BIM adoption by examining the context of Chinese construction industry. Based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework in the innovation diffusion literature, the authors develop a research model that integrates the critical success factors related to the technology of BIM, the construction company and the environment in Chinese construction industry. The authors collected two different data sets from engineering consulting firms and construction firms in China, and conducted rigorous analyses using a sophisticated statistical approach.
Findings
The authors found that the relative advantage of BIM was a major factor that enabled BIM adoption, while the complexity of BIM was an inhibiter. In addition, management support was also a significant antecedent of BIM adoption. However, organizational readiness was significant for engineering consulting firms but not for construction firms. Surprisingly, the authors did not find consistent significant impacts of any environmental factors. Last, younger firms were more likely to adopt BIM.
Originality/value
One of the first to apply the TOE framework to integrate three groups of factors that may explain BIM adoption in China. Such a comprehensive framework provides a much broader perspective of BIM adoption to evaluate the impacts of different antecedent factors. The authors conducted an empirical study based on survey data collected from two different types of companies, i.e., engineering consulting firms and construction firms, representing the two parties in the principal-agent relationship of a construction project. One of the first to apply a sophisticated statistical approach, i.e., partial least squares, to analyze the data in the BIM literature.
Purpose
Some initiatives have been proposed and implemented to facilitate successful project delivery and improve coordination and collaboration in the design, construction and management phases of ...project development. Building information modeling (BIM) is one of those initiatives that, though recent, however, have made a significant impact on the construction industry in some countries. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper aims to explore the critical success factors for BIM implementation in the architecture, engineering and construction industry of Hong Kong through a mixed research method (structured empirical questionnaire survey and expert interviews).
Findings
The most influential success factor relates to the client’s acceptance with BIM projects, proper organizational structure to support a BIM system within the company and financial aid from the government to set up the BIM system. The expert interviewees also stressed the need for willingness from project staff members to learn and utilize BIM.
Practical implications
This study has contributed to the establishment of more practical and effective strategies for ensuring full adoption of BIM in Hong Kong. Practical recommendations for enhancing BIM adoption in the construction industry were highlighted.
Originality/value
This study has established the key drivers leading to the success of BIM implementation in Hong Kong, as well as in the perspective of construction experts on how to enhance its uptake in construction projects.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the latest research of BIM adoption in construction engineering and management (CEM) and propose research directions for future scholarly work. ...During the recent decade, building information modeling (BIM) has gained increasing applications and research interest in the construction industry. Although there have been review-based studies that summarized BIM-based research in the overall architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) area, there is limited review that evaluates the current stage of BIM-based research specifically in the CEM sub-area.
Design/methodology/approach
CEM falls into the scope of AEC. It involves construction-related tasks, activities and processes (e.g. scheduling and cost estimates), issues (e.g. constructability), as well as human factors (e.g. collaboration). This study adopted a holistic literature review approach that incorporates bibliometric search and scientometric analysis. A total of 276 articles related to BIM applied in CEM were selected from Scopus as the literature sample for the scientometric analysis.
Findings
Some key CEM research areas (e.g. CEM pedagogy, integrated project delivery, lean and off-site construction) were identified and evaluated. Research trends in these areas were identified, and analyses were carried out with regard to how they could be integrated with BIM. For example, BIM, as a data repository for ACE facilities, has substantial potential to be integrated with a variety of other digital technologies, project delivery methods and innovative construction techniques throughout the whole process of CEM.
Practical implications
As BIM is one of the key technologies and digital platforms to improve the construction productivity and collaboration, it is important for industry practitioners to be updated of the latest movement and progress of the academic research. The industry, academics and governmental authorities should work with joint effort to fill the gap by first recognizing the current needs, limitations and trends of applying BIM in the construction industry. For example, it needs more understanding about how to address technical interoperability issues and how to introduce the integrated design and construction delivery approach for BIM implementation under the UK BIM Level 2/3 framework.
Originality/value
This study contributed to the body of knowledge in BIM by proposing a framework leading to research directions including the differences of BIM effects between design-bid-build and other fast-track project delivery methods; the integration of BIM with off-site construction; and BIM pedagogy in CEM. It also addressed the need to investigate the similarities and differences between academia and industry toward perceiving the movement of BIM in construction field work.
•Current manual activities related to contract compliance are inefficient, cause trust issues and incur conflicts.•The acquisition and processing of physical asset data is (semi) automated using a ...mobile QR application.•A semi-automated comparison between the as-planned and as-built state of assets is realized by means of smart contracts.•The execution of tokenized payments on Ethereum between stakeholders is semiautomated and verified in various scenarios.•An immutable distributed record of construction activities and token transactions is embedded on a blockchain network.
Construction supply chains (CSC) are characterized by their converging structure and the hierarchical payment system which is inherently related. Due to the pursuit of diverging goals and mutual interdependencies, risks and trust problems between stakeholders occur. Contracts are used to govern these complex collaborations. To track compliance to contract terms, various activities are executed by involved stakeholders. These activities do not add any value to an end-product, cause intransparency, are costly and cause conflicts. Therefore, a combination of asset tracking and blockchain technology is investigated in this paper to address these problems. A plug-and-play framework of interacting applications and a workflow to operate them are proposed. Proof of this concept is provided by developing prototypical applications and by testing them in various practice-based scenarios. Simplified asset tracking throughout supply chains was realized and linked to smart contracts. This resulted in semi-automated compliance tracking and an immutable record of transactions. Therefore, this work provides more insight into combining asset tracking and blockchain for compliance checking in the construction industry. By doing so, further automation of construction processes, increased transparency between stakeholders and a reduction of conflicts can be enabled. However, it remains clear that many other variables impact on transparency and trust; and while technology can make improvements, considerable procedural security and control measures are needed in addition. Therefore, we focus on semi-automation of workflows using distributed ledger technology.
Yield-to-BIM: impacts of BIM maturity on project performance Smits, Wim; van Buiten, Marc; Hartmann, Timo
Building research and information : the international journal of research, development and demonstration,
04/2017, Letnik:
45, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
How does organizational experience (maturity) with building information modelling (BIM) impact on the broad implementation of BIM and on company performance? A survey of Dutch architectural, ...engineering, construction, and operation (AECO) professionals (n = 890) is used to examine their perceptions of the impact of BIM maturity on firm performance. Survey items included measures of BIM element maturity (i.e., strategy, BIM uses, process, information, infrastructure and personnel), and key performance indicators (time, cost and quality performance). Surprisingly, the maturity of the BIM implementation strategy was the only reliable predictor of time, cost and quality performance. The result suggests that the impact of BIM maturity on project performance may be limited and it cautions against overoptimistic appraisals of BIM. In addition to the contribution to the literature on BIM performance, the paper should be of interest to the practitioner contemplating BIM investments.
Purpose
Effective BIM application hinges on the development of appropriate strategies for its implementation. Though some strategies have been deployed to facilitate BIM implementation in China, ...their outcomes are not clear. The purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations regarding appropriate strategies for promoting the development and implementation of BIM in China based on lessons learned from advanced implementation experiences in other countries.
Design/methodology/approach
First, existing strategies are investigated and barriers to BIM implementation mentioned in previous studies are summarized. Then, the identified barriers are mapped to the strategy contents. Finally, a comparative analysis on different areas is conducted to propose suggestions for identified items of BIM implementation strategies that need to be improved.
Findings
Six unaddressed barriers to BIM implementation strategies in China were identified from the mapping results: insufficient government lead/direction, organizational issues, legal issues, high cost of application, resistance to change of thinking mode and insufficient external motivation.
Originality/value
The findings of this study can be used to facilitate the development of appropriate strategies within the public and private sectors for promoting BIM implementation in China and elsewhere.
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