Developing critical success factors for the assessment of BIM technology adoption: part I. Methodology and survey

Abstract

There is no clear holistic approach or methodology to assess the adoption of building information modeling (BIM) technology at corporate level. This paper proposes an approach for developing critical success factors (CSFs) that can be further developed for assessment of BIM adoption at organizational level in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. This first part of the paper presents an overview and literature review of important factors related to decision-making, technology implementation, or both aspects for an organization to adopt BIM technology. Then, discussions are given on the empirical approach proposed for developing CSFs through a questionnaire survey and a sequence of data analysis, a conceptual framework on BIM technology adoption developed to facilitate the questionnaire survey and BIM adoption assessment, and a questionnaire designed with 123 influencing factors (IFs) identified from the literature and domain experts. For the purpose of demonstration and validation of the proposed approach, this study conducted a survey in Taiwan's AEC industry, and the data collected were examined by reliability and ranking analysis, including inferential statistical tests. Ranking analysis was employed to obtain 80 key factors (KFs) out of the 123 IFs. Among these KFs, three factors were found to be the most important: 'support from top management' and the 'functionality' and 'design validation' of BIM tools; two factors were found to be very important: 'the definition of project goals before forming teams' and 'coordination and integration among the professions.' Other findings are that owners perceive the 'initial investment cost' of BIM tools as more expensive than do the owners-cum-managers who manage projects themselves. Architects seem to find 'LOD 300' and 'LOD 400' more important than contractors. Further data analysis on the 80 KFs for developing CSFs for BIM adoption assessment will be presented in the second part of the paper, and finally, 58 CSFs are derived. Based on this study, the proposed approach is not only generally applicable for CSFs development in regions other than Taiwan, but also capable of handling the small number of questionnaire respondents commonly encountered in a society still at an early stage of BIM technology adoption.

A Peer Review System for BIM Learning

“…The demand for education on the use of BIM tools has grown rapidly, making this topic one of the main focuses of research in engineering education. However, while most of the previous studies have focused on the implementation process [6], the benefits of BIM [7], and the challenges involved in solving strategies [8,9], few studies have emphasized the use of BIM tools [10]. BIM tools, such as Autodesk Revit and Tekla Structure, are hard to learn via conventional teaching methods because the BIM model usually contains thousands of components with many different properties.…”

Coping with Challenges of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for Housing Delivery in Nigeria

“…CSFs are those factors whose existence significantly contribute to the success of a project [13] and which, if not taken seriously, might lead to the failure of a project [14]. The CSF approach is, therefore, an attempt to isolate vital areas that are essential for management or projects to achieve success [15]. The identification of critical success factors is crucial to realizing project success [16].…”

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“…He concluded that, among the influence factors, top management support was the most important and that training and technical IT support that fit the types of users such as BIM managers and modelers were necessary. Through a survey of Critical Success Factors (CSF) for adopting BIM with BIM users in Taiwan, Tsai et al (2014) and Mom et al (2014) finally derived 58 CSFs and indicated that support from top management and the functionality of BIM tools were important factors out of them. Both studies indicated that top management support was among the most important factors but they showed differences in the effects of other factors for BIM adoption.…”