Challenges of Building Information Modelling (BIM) from the Malaysian Architect’s Perspective

Abstract

Malaysia is experiencing high economic growth which requires the construction industry to fulfill development demands. Building Information Modelling (BIM) had been widely publicized by the government in order to increase the industry’s productivity by instigating numerous initiatives aimed to spearhead its progression. In contrast with the aspiration, architects as key players of construction industry are still facing issues in adopting BIM into practice. Previous researches had broadly covered about BIM in construction industry, but few concentrations in specific to the local architect thus imposing gap of knowledge. In addressing the issues, the research aim to probe the current state of BIM implementation, primarily on the challenges that hinders its adoption. The BIM factors which covers people, process, policy and technology were derived and investigated through the use of 322 questionnaires distributed to architects at management and operational level. The study revealed the key barriers that contributes towards the problem is within the people factor, where majority highlighted the lacked of skilled and experienced BIM workforce which contributes towards steep learning environment as well as high cost of applying BIM. Consequently, several key strategic solutions had been indicated through both external and internal factors in addressing the challenge of BIM. Results suggested that there is a need of further support from the industry’s professional bodies, development of legal instruments, BIM enforcement, specific BIM education as well as BIM R&D programs.

What are the Barriers and Drivers Toward BIM Adoption in Nigeria?

“…Return on Investment (ROI) issue [25,31,43] Lack of expertise, training and cost are consistently remaining amongst the major barriers to BIM adoption across some countries. Countries like UK [17,44,45,46,47], Malaysia [22] and Nigeria [6,7,48] are example of such. In the UK lack of expertise is attributed to the underperformance of the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with mostly low levels of engagement with the industry [49].…”

A bibliometric review of advances in building information modeling (BIM) research

“…The adoption of BIM as a standardized platform for improved construction practice is still not receiving the needed attention by governments and some industry policy makers especially in some parts of the developing world. Despite the interests shown in the adoption of BIM by some national governments, there are still a myriad of challenges which have affected the uptake of BIM as an effective tool in the construction industry and, as such, deprived the industry the much needed efficiency (Rahim and Zakaria, 2017; Jamal et al , 2019). The role of the Government as an enabler of BIM is paramount in the adoption and use of the technology and platform BIM offers.…”

“…Despite the significant increased use of the BIM technology, teething challenges such as interoperability of platforms for performing BIM simulations, lack of optimization with regards to adequate training and the lack of robust standards for usage in some AEC firms still exist (Criminale and Langar, 2017). Jamal et al (2019) and Haupt et al (2019) categorized the challenges of BIM usage and implementation into factors such as people-based challenges (resistance to change, lack of adequate training, lack of demand from clients and the difficulty in the learning curve for new entrants in to BIM usage), process-based challenges such as lack of adequate participation from active stakeholders within the industry, lack of unified BIM standards and libraries to influence use and professional practice, policy-based factors such as the lack of participation from the government and professional bodies, lack of synergy and contractual framework for BIM implementation within the industry and, lastly, technology-based factors such as the complexity of usage, high cost of operating software and hardware features of BIM, high cost of licensing, including data exchange and interoperability challenges (Georgiadou, 2019; Al-hammadi and Tian, 2020). These identified issues still limit the optimal realization of BIM deliverables for the construction industry.…”

BIM's Contribution as A Sustainable Construction Accelerator

“…In a case study of a railroad project in South Korea, through Benefit-Cost Analysis the adoption of BIM proved to be more profitable in overcoming errors that occurred in the project (Shin et al, 2018). However, in other studies, BIM also had several financial barriers in its implementation, including the high initial initiation costs (Gerges et al, 2017;Ismail et al, 2017;Telaga, 2018), high cost of training (Sun et al, 2017) (Georgiadou, 2019), as well as the high cost of hardware in operation (Ahmad Jamal et al, 2019).…”