Implementation and Adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Remote Construction Projects

Designing Research 1
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Designing Research 2
Remote construction projects and the implementation of Building Information Modeling
(BIM)
Introduction
The construction industry has experienced a major rise in productivity, value of
infrastructure, efficiency, sustainability as well as a decrease in the lead time, lifestyle costs and
duplication through efficient collaboration and communication of the major participants within
the industry. This major rise has become very critical mainly with remote construction projects
and hence outlining complicated, unique and challenging problems with regard to management
and communication as a result of the construction sites being remote. Building Informational
Modeling (BIM), on the other hand, has been presented by many as the solution towards
handling the inefficiencies in in various disciplines in these construction projects (Arayici, Egbu
& Coates, 2012. Besides promising several benefits, the adoption of Building Informational
Modeling equally has several challenges that are related to how it incorporates the business
processes of individual practices.
Several studies have been conducted in order to define how the adoption of BIM within
an architectural company can help to handle the problems that are related to communication and
management in a remote construction project. Most of these studies have adopted a case study
methodology. The adopted methodology is known as the UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership
(KTP) Building Informational Modeling project in which the use of BIM between the major
contactor of the remote construction project and the architectural company has been clearly
justified and is well elaborated. Most of these studies did come up with a major finding that vital
management and communication problems including lack of materials, improper planning as

Designing Research 3
well as ineffective scheduling can greatly derail BIM adoption during the stages of design
(Azhar, Khalfan & Maqsood, 2012).
Building Informational Modeling involves making use of a database infrastructure in
order to capture built amenities that have precise viewpoints of the participants. Building
Informational Modeling has been famously used for building lifecycle management. It is evident
that BIM as a concept of lifecycle evaluation pursues to assimilate several processes all the
whole lifecycle of any given construction project. It mainly puts an emphasis on the development
and reuse of reliable digital information all through the lifecycle (Bryde, Broquetas & Volm,
2013). It has been pointed out that BIM integrates a methodology that is based on the belief that
there is need for collaboration amongst the stakeholders that makes use of ICT in order to
exchange vital information all the lifecycle. Such kind of collaboration can be seen as the
solution towards fragmentation that is present within the construction industry that has resulted
to several inefficiencies.
Several stakeholders may argue or think that the adoption of Building Informational
Modeling may be long awaited salvation in the construction industry, it is apparent that might
not be the case due to the several issues related to its adoption that still exists. A lot of effort
should therefore be put towards addressing these issues in order to fully gain from the
implementation of BMI. For instance, during the process of design in the lifecycle of a
construction process, many systems of construction procurement need to have their design work
being completed within an environment of multidisciplinary teamwork. This is because several
issues that are related to the acquisition of data and management as well as multi and
interdisciplinary collaboration often arise (Crotty, 2013).