A STUDY OF USING BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING (BIM) TO ACHIEVE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECT

Abstract

The history of human beings using paper drawings in the construction work has lasted for a few thousand years. The construction industry worldwide has been extremely matured in handling the various paperwork to convey the project information among stakeholders. However, more and more evidence has indicated that 2D paper drawing is not the most suitable communication medium as it causes communication inefficiency and further consequence such as financial loss. In contrast, Building Information Modeling (BIM) is gradually being accepted as a solution. This research aims to find out how BIM can improve communication between design teams and contractors using a communication model.

Interviews with twelve industry practitioners and three campus professors were conducted to identify the existing communication problems with their critical success factor. Furthermore, three experimental studies are carried out with altogether 153 participants to validate whether BIM can improve the communication efficiency and effectiveness between design team and contractor. The experiments indicate that BIM can improve communication efficiency, especially in understanding the geometric information. However, the improvement in the understanding of parametric information is not significant. A BIM-Supported Communication Model is developed and a “Task Improvement Rule” is also outlined.