Barriers, Strategies, and Best Practices for BIM Adoption in Quebec Prefabrication Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

Abstract

Prefabricated construction has long faced problems due to the industry’s fragmentation. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has thus appeared as an efficient solution to provide a favorable environment for efficient completion of projects. Despite its benefits, implementing BIM successfully in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which represent the vast majority of manufacturers in Quebec, requires deep risk analysis and rigorous strategies. Hence, this work aims to study BIM implementation barriers, strategies, and best practices in wood prefabrication for SMEs through a literature review, semi-structured interviews, and an online survey. After qualitative content analysis, 30 critical barriers, 7 strategic milestones, and 31 best practices to maximize BIM benefits were revealed. One of the critical barriers concerns the effort required to develop BIM software libraries and programs to translate information from the BIM model to production equipment. Among the best strategies, it is essential to start by analyzing the current business model of the SMEs and to appoint a small BIM committee whose main responsibilities are management, coordination, and modeling. The prevalent best practices were to support the implementation team and encourage communication and collaboration. Previous studies show that BIM is not fully exploited in prefabrication for various reasons. This study highlights the critical barriers, strategies, and best practices for BIM adoption and proposes a framework for BIM implementation in prefabrication SMEs in Quebec, Canada. It also provides a summary of current knowledge and guidelines to promote BIM adoption in this sector.

Digital transformation of the wood construction supply chain through building information modelling: current state of practice

“…The use of BIM in construction projects is increasing worldwide, and the research attention towards BIM is increasing as well (Liu et al , 2022; Mahmoud et al , 2022). The review of the literature revealed that the BIM research is primarily distributed in two directions, the first is to explore the applications of BIM in various construction activities, which included identifying future potentials for BIM beyond the current known applications.…”

“…Table 2 summarises the BIM benefits as extracted from the literature, the benefits are categorised according to the project lifecycle phases. Although the benefits and applications of BIM as described in the literature appears to be very promising, however, the literature also revealed that these benefits are not fully realised, and the applications are not all being used in the current status of the construction industry (Arrotéia et al , 2022; Deng, 2022; Mahmoud et al , 2022). There is a positive correlation between the BIM level of implementation and the extent of use within a project (Gharaibeh et al , 2022b; Oraee et al , 2022).…”

“…A disparity between the conceptual understanding of BIM technology and its practical application has been acknowledged in the literature (Dowsett and Harty, 2019) (Gharaibeh et al, 2022b;Viliūnas and Migilinskas, 2021). The comprehensive vision of BIM, encompassing its potential, advantages and practical applications, has yet to be fully realized in practice (Bosch-Sijtsema et al, 2017;Mahmoud et al, 2022). Although several scholars have extensively investigated the general drivers and benefits of BIM and Woo, 2021;Georgiadou, 2019;Halmetoja and Lepkova, 2022;Liu et al, 2022;Matarneh et al, 2022;Moreno et al, 2019;Shin et al, 2018) Source: Created by the authors implementation (Abrishami and Martin Duran, 2021;Alashmori et al, 2020;Dao and Nguyen, 2021;Liu et al, 2022;Magill et al, 2022;Murguia et al, 2023;Shin et al, 2018;Viliūnas and Migilinskas, 2021), there remains a dearth of empirical research specifically focused on the perspectives and experiences of construction professionals engaged in BIMenabled projects in Sweden.…”

“…Modular construction requires advanced planning, coordination and optimisation of the SC, to ensure accurately coordinated design, smooth flow of prefabricated products, services, data, information and eventually precise site planning and on-site installation (Li et al , 2022). The complexity and risk of fragmentation of such a SC has attracted much more attention from researchers to explore how BIM can be used to enhance the off-site construction SC (Ji et al , 2019; Mahmoud et al , 2022).…”

Building Information Modelling Strategies in Sustainable Housing Construction Projects in Malaysia

“…In addition, BIM can also help the construction industry players to achieve the sustainability effort, especially the government bodies and authorities, consultants, and contractors, to successfully implement and deliver the construction project within its budgeted time, costs, and quality toward sustainable housing construction projects. BIM is ideally suited to ease project communication, especially between project professionals for carrying out design improvement and building performance analysis, thus making the construction project more efficient [13].…”