Thomas Froese

Building information modelling demystified: does it make business sense to adopt BIM?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to inform project management practice on the business benefits of building information modelling (BIM) adoption. Design/methodology/approach – BIM needs to compete against well-ingrained methods to deliver projects in a fragmented and rather traditional industry. This paper investigates 47 value propositions for the adoption of BIM under a multiple case study investigation carried out in Australia and Hong Kong. The selected case study projects included a range of public (1) and private (4) sector building developments of small and large-scale. Findings are coded, interpreted and synthesised in order to identify the challenges and business drivers, and the paper focuses mainly on challenges and benefits for architectural and engineering consultants, contractors and steel fabricators. As a condition for the selection criteria all case studies had to be collaborating by sharing BIM data between two or more consultants/stakeholders. As practices cannot afford to ignore BIM, this paper aims to identify those immediate business drivers as to provoke debate amongst the professional and academic community. Findings – Shared understanding on business drivers to adopt BIM for managing the design and construction process of building projects raging from small commercial to high-rise. Originality/value – The originality of the research reported in this paper is that it breaks from a proliferating series of articles on BIM as industry “aspiration” and as a “marketing” statement. The elicited drivers for BIM underwent industry, academic and peer validation.

Strategic roadmaps for construction innovation: assessing the state of research

A strategic planning initiative was undertaken to advance innovation in the Canadian construction industry. A preliminary step in this strategic planning process was to carry out an inventory of the current state of research relating to the construction process that was conducted within Canadian Universities. It was found that this type of current research inventory was not often included in strategic planning initiatives, but has proven to be a valuable contribution to the process.x1cx1cThe paper describes the research inventory initiative and briefly summarizes the resulting picture of the construction research landscape in Canada. This methodology involved collecting summaries of over 100 individual research projects, mainly through direct interviews, and deriving a series of research classifications through a clustering analysis of the results. The projects were classified according to the three dimensions of application area, technology, and innovation lifecycle phase forming a framework for analysis (resulting in three distinct roadmaps of current Canadian construction research). Further dimensions of scale, drivers, and time are then added to further assist the ongoing strategic planning process.x1cx1cTwo examples of opportunities and activities underway to improve the innovation climate are discussed as they relate to the use of the framework. The scope of the strategic planning process is expanding in scope to include other stakeholders in the process (e.g., industrial research, users of technology). The results are expected to provide an underlying planning, coordination, and dissemination foundation to improve the ability for the research community to contribute to innovation in the Canadian construction industry.x1cx1cKey beneficiaries of this paper are individuals involved in creating and using industry-level strategic plans for construction innovation. The timeframe for the discussed roadmap is 0-2 years.

Principles, characteristics, and methodology to develop a project management assessment tool at the construction project level

This paper describes the principles, characteristics, and methodology to develop a conceptual approach and a preliminary project management assessment tool based on an integrated framework of international project management (PM) standards and construction projects success factors. Previous PM assessment tools have been designed to measure organizations’ PM practices, and individuals’ knowledge of PM. After completing these assessment tools, individuals or organizations would identify their strengths, weaknesses and training needs. These tools, though powerful, do not assess what is actually implemented on a specific project. The intention is to develop an assessment tool that diagnoses an organization and an individual project manager by what was actually implemented in a specific project. By assessing what was actually implemented in a project and comparing this with the project results, it could be possible determine the strengths, weaknesses, and value of PM in a construction organization, as well as to benchmark PM best practices. Three types of questions will be used: context questions, PM implementation questions, and project results questions. Each question will have a reference to one or more of the international PM standards. Each question will evaluate the quality or the frequency of the PM implementation, which could be a competence, knowledge, tool, technique, process, or practice. This paper discusses the question design methodology for developing the tool using the resource management knowledge area as an example. Finally, the assessment tool is tested with 18 construction projects executed by different organizations.