BIM Use Assessment (BUA) Tool for Characterizing the Application Levels of BIM Uses for the Planning and Design of Construction Projects

Abstract

The evaluation of BIM capabilities and repeatability enables a company or project to identify its current status and how to improve continuously; this evaluation can be performed with BIM maturity models. However, these maturity models can measure the BIM state but not specifically the application of BIM uses. Likewise, in interorganizational project teams with a diversity of factors from various companies, it is possible to evaluate the capacity at a specified time with specified factors, but it is not possible to evaluate the repeatability unless the client always works with the same project teams. Therefore, despite the existence of various BIM uses in the literature, there is no instrument to evaluate the level of implementation of them in construction projects. This research proposes a BIM Use Assessment (BUA) tool for characterizing the levels of application of the BIM uses in the planning and design phases of building projects. The research methodology was organized into three stages: (1) identification, selection, and definition of BIM uses; (2) proposal of the BUA tool for characterizing the level of BIM use application; and (3) validation of the BUA tool. The tool was validated using 25 construction projects, where high reliability and concordance were observed; hence, the BUA tool complies with the consistency and concordance analysis for assessing uses in the design and planning phases of construction projects. The assessment will enable self-diagnosis, stakeholder qualification/selection, and industry benchmarking.

Impact of BIM/LEAN on the interaction of construction project design teams

“…(3) data exploration, including reliability analysis, descriptive statistics, association analysis using the Pearson chi-square test, and causal analysis using necessity and sufficiency relationships between both elements through a fuzzy set analysis. identified LDM practices and BIM uses in two previous papers (Herrera et al, 2020a;Rojas et al, 2019). The study by Herrera et al (2020) was selected because it brings together several Lean design management practices applied in real projects in a single document.…”

“…In addition, this study offers a questionnaire that allows the evaluation of the level of application of each practice on a scale of 1 to 5. On the other hand, the study by Rojas et al (2019) was selected, since it allows the evaluation of the gradualness of application of 10 BIM uses proposed by the Penn state guide on a scale of 1 to 5. These two previous contributions aimed to identify the level of application of LDM practices and BIM uses in construction through assessment instruments.…”

“…The proposal of classification by levels allows having a structured and consistent instrument. Table 5-3 presents a general description for each level (Rojas et al, 2019). High use of BIM.…”

“…The assessment of the 64 construction projects was carried out using the LDM practices instrument (Herrera et al, 2020a) and the BUA instrument (Rojas et al, 2019). Data Analysis…”

“…-1: Koskela's Lean Construction Principles (Herrera, Sanz, et al, 2019) (based on (Koskela, 1992) Table 5-1: Lean design management (LDM) practices (Herrera et al, 2020a) ............... Table 5-2: BIM uses for the planning and design of construction projects (Rojas et al, 2019)................................................................................................................................. Table 6-1: Characteristics of projects A and B according to the selection criteria ........... Table 6-2: Metrics for each network (Herrera et al, 2020b)…”