This multiple case study of a contracting firm contributes to understanding the barriers that organizations face during the implementation of building information modeling (BIM) by providing insights into the impact of these barriers across different organizational levels (i.e., from top management to project teams) and by relating these barriers to different degrees of BIM maturity. First, we observe the dominance of barriers related to the motivation, competence, and time capacity of people across all levels of an organization. Second, the cluster of barriers at the middle-management level highlights the important role of this level in reducing these barriers. Third, only those cases with a low level of BIM maturity have struggled with lack of top management support, thereby highlighting the importance of such support in achieving BIM maturity growth. High BIM maturity situations are more prone to externally oriented barriers in attempting to further leverage the benefits of BIM. Our study provides insights on where to focus BIM implementation measures and how to enhance organizational BIM maturity.

As building practices change, procedures that seemed indispensable at one point can be abandoned for others, one example of which is the bill of quantities (B/Q). Research into the extant literature attributes the declining use of B/Qs to a multitude of reasons, such as its complexity, the potentially long time required to produce it, the growth in popularity of non-traditional procurement systems, and the challenge of using the information within the document in a construction schedule. With these issues in mind, building information modeling (BIM) and virtual reality (VR) are combined and proposed as a potential solution that allows inclusion of the client into the design process. Following a literature review and precedent study, an experiment was carried out using this new process to simulate a client’s design decisions on window and interior furnishings. The choices made by the client using VR automatically updated a B/Q schedule built in Revit and allowed them to have a firm understanding of project costs. Besides giving the client more confidence in a pleasing final outcome, the technology also ensured an up-to-date, accurate, and easily understandable B/Q. The proposed method features great potential savings in cost and time and gives the B/Q a newfound importance in future construction processes. The research case presented in this paper is a stepping stone in exploring new opportunities offered by VR and BIM and how they could improve the reliability and accuracy of traditional procurement within construction, specifically within the B/Q document.

The quality of information flow management has a remarkable effect on the entire life cycle of buildings. Manual retrieval of technical specifications and features of building components and their performance assessment leads to increased cost and time and efficiency reduction, especially during the facility management (FM) stage. The introduction of building information modeling (BIM) in the construction industry can provide a valuable means of improving the organization and exchange of information. BIM tools integrate multiple levels of information within a single digital model of a building. Nevertheless, the support given by BIM to FM is far from being fully effective. Technicians can benefit from real-time communication with the data repository whenever the need for gathering contextual information and/or updating any data in the digital model arises. The framework proposed in this study aims to develop a system that supports on-site operations. Information requirements have been determined from the analyses of procedures that are usually implemented in the building life cycle. These studies set the standard for the development of a digital model of a building, which will be shared among various actors in charge of FM and accessed via a cloud platform. Moreover, mixed reality is proposed to support specific information that is relevant to geometric features and procedures to be followed by operators. This article presents three use-cases supported by the proposed framework. In addition, this research article describes the first proof of concept regarding real-time support for FM.

Building information modeling/management (BIM) is an emerging technological and procedural shift in the architecture, engineering, construction and operation industry. In this study, we use an extensive state-of-the-art method to clarify the BIM adoption process and the factors that can influence the success or failure of BIM adoption, particularly during the implementation stage, which are not frequently found in the literature. As an innovation, the lexical field allocated to the spread of innovations is assigned to BIM (diffusion, adoption, and implementation). After recalling the definition of relevant terms and then removing the resulting inconsistencies in vocabularies, we investigate various studies to identify factors that influence BIM adoption and then unify all these studies in one coherent and consistent BIM adoption process model. We focus on factors that play a role in the adoption of BIM in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because SMEs constitute the majority of companies in the construction sector. This research highlights and intends to fill in some gaps found in the current BIM adoption literature.

In the wide context of facility management, several processes, such as operations, maintenance, retrofitting, and renovations, ensure that buildings comply with the principles of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and indoor comfort. Apart from ordinary operation, facility management is responsible for the renovation of and long-term performance improvement of building facilities. In such a scenario, the cyber–physical system (CPS) paradigm with holonic architecture, which is the focus of this study, can successfully guide the operation management and long-term refurbishment processes of buildings. Analogous to the manufacturing field, the developed CPS maximizes holons’ self-configuration and self-organization and overall throughput effectiveness metrics to detect the best corrective actions toward system improvements. Consequently, suggestions and lessons learned from the evaluation of building efficiency are redirected to the building information model. Hence, the digital model acts as a repository of currently available equipment for operations management and the history of diagnoses that support decision-making during the maintenance, retrofitting, and renovation processes. Evidently, the repeated detection of a specific issue, which is unaffected by operations management, should be considered an opportunity to act and enhance the performances of existing building components. Similar to a goods-producing industry, the building management system developed in this study applies the aforementioned methodology to provide services related to indoor comfort and building health. This approach indicates that a method for automatic real-time diagnosis is tested in a case study consisting of a multi-use and large public building. The current paper, which is an extended version of the one presented in the Creative Construction Conference 2018, deepens the decision support tool and the supervision policy. Moreover, the developed system is contextualized by providing an example of use case and highlighting the step forward in the field of smart buildings.

Building information models (BIM) provide a way to represent buildings and communicate about them. In teaching engineering, we also need representations of buildings and are communicating knowledge about them. While teaching engineering we refer to the very same real-world objects that have an explicit conceptualization in BIM. This explicit conceptualization did not exist in the age when design communication relied on drawings and documents. The question that this paper asks is this: due to BIM, communication in the industry has changed. Should communication of engineering knowledge – teaching – change as well and how? While much has been written about teaching BIM and incorporating BIM into the curricula, this paper is exploring the general impact of BIM on engineering education. It grounds earlier work (Turk, 2018) on insights from pedagogy. Five scenarios of the interplay between BIM-influenced engineering communication and teaching are presented. The paper argues that ignoring BIM may create a cognitive dissonance between academic learning and industrial work. We are finding that the impact of BIM is twofold: vertically there is a need to establish a reference between knowledge concepts (in teaching building) and information objects (in building information models). Horizontally BIM is an integration technology that allows for a more holistic design and planning. Both the language of individual courses as well as cross references and synergies among courses should change. A “T” style structure of the courses around BIM is proposed as a basis for integrated curriculum. Pedagogical approaches based on deep learning, model based learning and project based learning are suggested.