A multivariate regression approach toward prioritizing BIM adoption barriers in the Ethiopian construction industry

Abstract

PurposeBuilding information modeling (BIM) is a process of creating an intelligent virtual model integrating project data from design to construction and operation. BIM models enhance the process of communicating the progress of construction to stakeholders and facilitate integrated project delivery, coordination and clash detection. However, barriers within the construction industry in Ethiopia has led to slow BIM adoption in the country. The aim of this paper is to identify perceived BIM barriers, provide a platform to quantify their importance and develop a regression model to link individual's personal/professional attributes to their perception of BIM barrier.Design/methodology/approachTo address the objectives of this research, an online survey was developed to collect feedback from construction professionals in Ethiopia on 20 major adoption barriers extracted from a thorough review of literature. Relative importance index and strength of consensus metric were employed to identify the significance of barriers. This was then succeeded by performing exploratory factor analysis to determine the major constructs of BIM barriers which was then used to develop a multivariate regression model linking respondents' personal attributes to their perception of BIM barrier.FindingsResults revealed the importance of project complexity and BIM maturity level in prioritizing barriers that are more relevant under various contexts. More specifically, results indicated the following study highlights: Project complexity led to higher perceived weights for lack of appropriate physical/cloud infrastructures, and a BIM standard. Higher levels of BIM maturity signified the importance of BIM internal issues such as liability, licensing and maintenance issues among other adoption barriers. Female participants tended not to consider intangibility of BIM benefits as a major barrier towards BIM adoption compared to male participants. Age of the participants turned out to be the least important factor in their prioritization of BIM perceived adoption barriers.Originality/valueWhile many research studies have explored BIM adoption barriers in various countries around the world, none to the best of the authors' knowledge have attempted to develop a model to highlight the impact of individuals' personal/professional attributes on their perception of adoption barriers within their community which can help with prioritizing the barriers that are deemed to be more important given the characteristics of the community under study. Our result indicated the importance of BIM maturity level and project complexity in prioritizing barriers associated with BIM adoption within Ethiopia's construction industry.

Barriers to the Implementation of Building Information Modeling among Jordanian AEC Companies

“…Moreover, all the participating AEC companies listed "the cost of training", "the cost of software", and "huge BIM upfront investment" as among the top five barriers in implementing BIM. This is consistent with other similar studies that have identified these barriers as either significant or normal barriers to BIM implementation [28,32,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. In Jordan, these results are likely because many Jordanian companies work on governmentfunded projects, while others work on private projects funded by the owner, who is also making decisions regarding the project.…”

“…Despite this, in Jordan there is a reported "lack of adequate BIM guidelines". Both participating architecture and structure engineering companies ranked this barrier as the second-and third-highest barriers, while other companies ranked it as the sixth-and seventh-highest; this barrier was also noted in several other studies [37,[39][40][41][42]48]. Another significant barrier impeding BIM implementation in Jordan is "insufficient BIM technical knowledge and awareness", which was ranked first by the architecture companies, fifth by the structure engineering and quantity surveying companies, and tenth by the facility management companies.…”

“…Research on BIM adoption in Ethiopia comparatively identified the lack of professionals, unavailability of proper training, lack of ready stakeholders, lack of guidelines/standards for implementation, and high investment and software cost as top barriers [39]. Furthermore, a study in Malaysia concluded that the lack of a skilled and experienced workforce is a key reason BIM implementation has failed [40].…”

Investigation of the current usage of BIM capabilities by large-sized building contractors in Kenya based on theory of innovation diffusion

“…There is a positive correlation between simplicity and usage. Owing to low availability of BIM tools, a perception of BIM complexity is created thereby hindering usage (Alemayehu et al , 2021). The steep learning curve associated BIM’s perceived complexity creates a high level of resistance to change at management levels thereby hindering BIM from thriving even in situations where lower ranked workers like graduate professionals would be willing to explore them.…”

“…Babatunde et al (2020a) found out that improvement of BIM usage in Nigeria from 2012 to 2015 was minimal while Ikuabe et al (2020) found out that though BIM usage was moderate in South Africa, it performed poorly compared with other technologies like Internet of Things, augmented reality and 3D printing when comparing various digital technologies being used in South Africa. BIM usage in Ethiopia is also low, with Alemayehu et al (2021) highlighting the main barriers being low competency levels, low collaboration levels and no government mandates in BIM.…”