Adoption of BIM to reduce claims in Sri Lankan construction industry

Abstract

Disputes and claims are unavoidable in the construction industry due to its inherent characteristics. Construction companies throughout the world are increasingly considering how to embrace new ideas and engage with new techniques in the management of construction claims due to the growing interest in modern building processes and new technologies. The construction sector has been enhanced by Building Information Modeling (BIM), a potent combination of technologies for design, construction, and management. When considering the Sri Lankan construction industry, it requires a faster and effective Claim Management (CM) and claim reduction techniques with the gradual increase of the complexity and number of construction projects. Hence, there is a pressure to accelerate the system digitalisation since the technology can manage more complicated claims in Sri Lankan construction industry. Hence, this research was conducted with the aim of investigating the potential of BIM to reduce and manage construction claims in the Sri Lankan construction industry. Accordingly, a comprehensive literature review was conducted followed by semi-structured interviews with 10 construction industry claims specialists selected through purposive sampling method under the qualitative research approach. The collected data were analysed through thematic analysis. According to the findings, BIM is not broadly used in Sri Lankan construction industry, but initially used for such as quantity measuring, costing, Revit, cost X like software. However, most of the interviewees were not satisfied with the current BIM adaptation level in Sri Lanka. Besides, all the interviewees were aware about claims, causes of claims and CM process. However, the study revealed that interviewees were not satisfied with the current CM process and proposed several suggestions to improve CM process in Sri Lankan construction industry. Interviewees stated that BIM features to control the causes of claims like Clash Detection, Project visualization and etc... BIM features can be effectively used in the CM process in Sri Lanka. The benefits include faster and more effective processes, quick identification and mitigation of claims, accurate design and costing. The findings of this research will assist the Sri Lankan construction industry to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of CM process and Claim Reduction.