Moving towards BIM : Managing the gap between design and construction

Abstract: Many literature suggested that BIM (Building Information Modeling) is a promising future for the AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry that offers enormous benefits to its actors, such as improved design quality due to less collision between disciplines and better understanding of building overview for better communication among the project team and decision-making process. However, lack of BIM knowledge and skill, absence of BIM legal acts, huge investment, software limitations, etc, are most of the time becoming barriers for them to reap the full potential of BIM. Especially during the project processes, there is a loss of value in information assets across phases.  In a project setting, CPM (construction project management) organisation is believed to be in a key position between the client and the other project team members to encourage BIM implementation, for instance by the ability to formulate BIM guidelines, influence the organisational and contractual arrangement, and mandating model-based deliverables. Yet, this power comes with a bigger responsibility to manage those challenges aforementioned. The purpose of the study is to investigate the current practise of a chosen CPM organisation, Forsen Projekt AB, and propose a suggestion of improvement to implement BIM during the design and construction phase. This study adopts qualitative method that builds on literature study and semi-structured interview in order to answer the research questions on what are the gaps faced by CPM organisation in implementing BIM and how to align BIM with the CPM practise in order to manage those gaps. The interview with eight different project roles from Forsen and its affiliated organisations in a project setting enables multiple perspectives about the challenges they perceived when working in BIM environment. The findings revealed that the major gaps founded in BIM implementation are related to organisational, legal or contractual, people and process, and IT-capacity. Suggestions on how to bridge those gaps are then formulated accordingly, such as the collaborative organisational structure, BIM general guidelines, and knowledge management strategies.