Benefit sharing for BIM implementation: Tackling the moral hazard dilemma in inter-firm cooperation

Abstract

Building information modelling (BIM) plays an important role in furthering value-creation of construction projects by advocating the inter-firm cooperation. When implementing BIM, however, individual firms inherently safeguard their self-interests regardless of the fact that inter-firm cooperation might reap joint BIM benefits for a project overall, which epitomizes a typical problem of moral hazards in project-based organizations. This paper develops an outcome-linked benefit sharing model that considers sharing joint BIM benefits among stakeholders including designers, contractors, and clients for tracking moral hazards therein. By modeling stakeholders' behaviors as evolutionary games within a principal-agent formalism, it has been deducted that (1) designers/contractors could be incentivized to cooperate had each stakeholder received a share higher than the quotient of BIM costs over value-creation in the design/construction phase; and (2) how joint BIM benefits can be more than noncooperation outcomes is key for clients to support BIM implementation.

Contributing Project Characteristics and Realized Benefits of Successful BIM Implementation: A Comparison of Complex and Simple Buildings

“…Our finding that BIM is causing fewer unplanned changes corresponds to the findings by Barlish and Sullivan [7], McGraw Hill Construction [2], and Ghaffarainhoseini et al [28]. Similar to other studies [2,30,33], our research also indicated that BIM use results in less rework.…”

“…Benefits of using BIM are shared among the project participants; for example, benefits experienced by the design team could include less rework and fewer RFIs which provide benefits for the contractors in the construction phase as well as overall benefits to the client. As BIM benefits can be shared among clients, designers, and contractors, stakeholders are not exposed to loss during this collaboration, and, therefore, they are more motivated to implement BIM on projects [30]. Another example of BIM benefits experienced by multiple stakeholders is a location-based design process that helps design team minimize waste of time spent on building information modeling [31].…”

“…Owners are willing to adopt BIM if they see its effectiveness [7]. Benefits due to use of BIM realized by both contractors and designers increase owner's revenue by saving time and cost [7,30]. The majority of the owners noted that BIM use improved their ability to plan project phasing and logistics and provided better construction documents.…”

“…As-built building information models can be very beneficial to the owner for facility management and building operations [30]. If as-built models are properly created during the construction phase, they can be used by the owner to manage and operate the building more effectively and efficiently [24].…”

Exploring the Moral Hazard Evolutionary Mechanism for BIM Implementation in an Integrated Project Team

“…As a result, participants are very likely not to cooperate sincerely, and only provide conceptual BIM-based product to the owner. This is a severe problem that existed in IPD-based organizations, which is known as a moral hazard dilemma that is adverse to the overall project performance in the AEC industry [21].…”