Public clients ability to drive industry change: the case of implementing BIM

Abstract

Public clients are proposed as key actors in driving construction industry change towards a more sustainable, efficient and productive industry. Based on how they procure consultants and contractors, it is argued that public clients have the power and are in the position to act as "innovation supporters" and "change agents." However, the client's role as a driver of change and innovation is oversimplified and there is a need for further investigation into the client's ability to drive industry change. This paper presents a case study of a public client's initiative to drive industry change through the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM). We do this by investigating the process of intra-organisational change at the public client by mapping the client's absorptive capacity for change. The case study shows difficulties in turning the external knowledge into actual transformation when implementing a systemic innovation such as BIM. Findings contribute to the literature on public clients as drivers of change and innovation in construction and are relevant to research on public clients as drivers for industry change and innovation and to research on BIM as a game changer.

Implementing circularity in the construction process: a case study examining the reorganization of multi-actor environment and the decision-making process

“…The relevance of the initiating role played by clients is also consistent with prior research on innovation processes in the construction industry (Wamelink andHeintz 2015, Lindblad andGustavsson 2020). Indeed, in these cases, the client provides the "problem as a point of departure" by stating the ambition on circularity.…”

Front-end value co-creation in housing development projects

“…The findings contribute to the on-going discussion of construction clients' ability to drive change and innovation through procurement requirements (e.g. Vennstr€ om and Eriksson 2010;Havenvid et al 2016;Adam and Lindahl 2017;Lindblad and Karrbom Gustavsson 2020). Contributions are also made to the literature on value co-creation processes within the construction management field (e.g.…”

“…Jacobsson and Roth 2014;Liu et al 2014;Eriksson et al 2016), and with end-users (Fuentes 2019) during the design and production phases of construction projects. Much attention is given to construction clients and their ability to drive change and innovation, even though they are typically considered to be risk averse, and have difficulties turning external knowledge into actual transformation, acting as barriers to innovation (Ivory 2005;Davies et al 2014;Lindblad and Karrbom Gustavsson 2020). This is because their role gives them the power to formulate requirements and specifications for the procurement of suppliers (Hartmann et al 2008;Havenvid et al 2016).…”

Digitization of the property development industry: overview of current literature and research gaps

“…x x (Ayinla & Adamu, 2018) x x (Lavikka et al, 2018) x x (Zou et al, 2018) x x (Lazoroska & Palm, 2019) x (Lindblad & Gustavsson, 2020) x (Aleksandrova et al, 2019) x (Lammers et al, 2018) x (Hosseini et al, 2018) x (Chan, 2020) x x *(A=Architecture; C=Construction; P=Property Developer)…”