ADOPTION OF BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING IN SINGAPORE'S FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Building Information Modeling in Facilities Management is gaining interest in the area of research. Countries such as the United States and Australia have invested in pilot studies to explore the potentiality of BIM in supporting the functionalities of FM areas such as visualization and analysis. Even though there may be a growing research interest on BIM in FM overseas and a positive outlook of BIM in Singapore, there seem to be no obvious sign of adoption in the local FM industry. This paper primarily focused on assessing the BIM readiness in Singapore’s FM industry. It is found that there is BIM awareness in the local FM industry; yet there is a low awareness and knowledge in BIM applicability in FM. The paper also seeks to identify barriers that could affect the adoption of BIM paradigm in local context. The results obtained were of predicted and unpredicted implications. Key findings have shown that the lack of demand of BIM in the industry plays a big role in hindering the adoption of BIM in FM and people-related factors have to be addressed first in order for BIM to be implemented in FM. This paper thus introduces recommendations to boost the adoption of BIM in local FM industry.