Difficulties of applying building information modeling (BIM) in pre-construction stage of current building construction practice of Sri Lanka

Abstract

BIM is identified as a recently introduced technology which delivers various advantages to the construction industry. Despite of the available advantages of BIM adoption, many developing countries still find this valuable technology impractical. As a result, this research is primarily focused on identifying the difficulties of adopting Building Information Modelling (BIM) in current building design and construction practice of Sri Lanka. The study was focused on pre-construction stage because it has been highlighted that the introduction of this technology in the early stage of a construction project assists in achieving a successful completion of a project. With the intention of providing a basis for conducting the study, an in-depth literature review was conducted to identify the enabling processes of BIM in preconstruction phase of construction projects in global context. The research aim was approached through a qualitative research strategy conducted in terms of a case study where the data was collected using document review and semi-structured interviews. The collected qualitative data was analysed with content analysis method to identify the construction practice of BIM enabling activities in pre-construction stage of a Sri Lankan construction project. The research findings further exposed the differences in practice of BIM enabling activities between local context and global context in pre-construction stage. Based on the discovery made on differences in construction practices the difficulties of achieving the global best practices in local context were discovered. Accordingly, the difficulties of applying BIM technology in preconstruction stage of a Sri Lankan construction project were identified. The discovery of difficulties provides a basis for identifying the expected challenges from adopting BIM in Sri Lankan context. Moreover, further research directions can be suggested towards the areas such as concerning other developing countries and focusing on difficulties of BIM implementation in construction stage