Barriers and enablers of BIM adoption :|perspective and experiences of Turkish construction public clients

Abstract

The construction sector is one of the sectors in which technological developments show the least impact. Thanks to Building Information Modeling (BIM), a new era has begun in the construction industry. After BIM usage, it is observed that pro ductivity has increased, the stakeholders have minimized their total efforts and they aimed to maximize their cooperation. This article describes the barriers and enablers of BIM adoption in construction projects in Turkey from the perspective of public clients. According to the literature review, barriers and enablers are listed. These items are divided into three: market, company and project levels. 31 participants from 18 projects which belong to 10 public clients in the Turkish Construction industry were interviewed. According to the results, significant barriers and enablers were determined and the participants were also expected to explain the different barriers that they ex perienced. After data collection, projects included in this research were divided into two such as: BIM-implemented and non-BIM implemented projects. These two groups are compared by using comparative analysis. It was observed that the unfavorable economic conditions, high costs, and unclear project benefits are significant barriers. Clear advantages of BIM, ease of use, high analysis ability and positive attitude of the company and demand/satisfaction of the clients were considered as the most sig nificant enablers by professionals. The importance of barriers and enablers according to project types were also evaluated. While market level barriers are seen to affect refinery projects at most, company level barriers affect hospital constructions at most negatively. It has been discussed that the barriers at the project level are the most effective in the building projects.