Current BIM practices in Malaysian construction organisations: The stakeholders' perspective

Abstract

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is transforming how buildings are designed and constructed. At the same time, it can facilitate multi-disciplinary coordination whilst integrating 3D design, analysis, cost estimating and construction scheduling. Currently, due to poor coordination among its project participants, the construction industry is still unproductive, fragmented and lacking in collaboration. Hence, with the introduction of BIM the performance of the industry, the coordination and collaboration among the construction players and the productivity of the projects could be improved. However, the lack of understanding from the construction players about BIM, which includes the wide spectrum of benefits and barriers that could be encountered, has made industry players reluctant to proceed with its implementation. This research aims to investigate the benefits and barriers that could be encountered in BIM implementation from the construction stakeholders' perspectives. Pilot interviews with 5 participants from different organisations have been carried out followed by multiple embedded case studies to investigate the current BIM practices from the developers' perspective. Accordingly, the qualitative data gathered through the interviews are the main data sources. Content analysis was used to better analyse the data collected. As a result, most of the respondents have agreed that although there are plenty of benefits and advantages of BIM adoption, its use in the Malaysian construction industry is still in its infancy and developmental stage. The main reason is that there are still major barriers to be overcome, especially the construction players' mindset and thinking.