Issues and challenges to implement BIM for SMEs in the construction industry

Abstract

In Malaysia, the strategic changes towards the promotion of the concept of Building Information Modeling (BIM) started in 2007 and the idea to implement BIM in Malaysia was introduced by the Director of Public Works Department (PWD). The government of Malaysia has set to implement BIM for their projects by the year 2016. It is foreseen that the industry players are required to understand and able to use BIM and thus to drive the industry towards sustainable construction which underlines long term affordability, quality and efficiency. A literature review was done to explore previous BIM studies on definitions and history of BIM, construction issues, application of BIM and BIM tools in construction projects as well as benefits of BIM. It is envisaged that the benefits of using BIM will have a positive impact and will facilitate many processes in a construction project planning. But there are still many construction companies in Malaysia especially Small Medium Enterprise contractors struggle to execute a project using the BIM concept. The aim of this paper is to identify the readiness of BIM implementation in Malaysian construction industry. Therefore, this study focusses on the identification of the list of constraint factor on BIM by Small Medium Enterprise construction industry. From this study, there are four main factors that impinge on the implementation of BIM. 35 respondents from construction players have participated in this study. 22 completed surveys were returned with a return rate of 62.9%. (adequate for further analysis). Based on the statistical analysis result, distributed survey reliability level is found acceptable. By using descriptive analysis, the analysis was implemented to prioritize the constraints factor based on ranking which gave the result of mean value and standard deviation of information, time, knowledge and cost factor. Correlation analysis results show that there is a significant relationship between the factor constraint in terms of collaboration where the highest result of Pearson correlation based on ranking were factor of time, knowledge, information and cost. The results of the study for second and third objectives were found to have a distinct similarity in priorities as stated above.