Benefits of Implementing Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Infrastructure Projects

Abstract

The construction industry is changing constantly and becoming more complex. It requires new strategies for compliance with national and international scenarios. Developing each project is associated with many limitations, including time, cost, changes, wastes, and errors, which are often not avoidable. Due to numerous project stages and complexities in the construction industry, usually, different mistakes and duplications occur. Meanwhile, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has created one of the most important and essential changes in this industry and results in more in-depth cooperation among project stakeholders. BIM is one of the most recent innovations in the construction industry, which resolves the problems of projects faster. BIM can be applied by architects, engineers, contractors, project managers, etc. to achieve objectives such as reducing design errors, reducing time and cost, improving design and construction integration, and increasing coordination and cooperation among different sections. Given the significance of project success in every country and several problems in each project, using BIM is an appropriate solution, which its proper implementation requires understanding its benefits that is the main aim of this study. This research identifies and classifies these benefits through the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method, describing the significance of using BIM in infrastructure projects.

Potential Benefits of Implementing Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the Nigerian Construction Industry

“…BIM benefits in construction are very high and these innovative tools are shown to be adopted in the delivery of every construction project if resource permits. The result in this study supports what has been documented extant literature such as (Chen and Baddeley, 2015;Li et al, 2014;Farnsworth et al, 2014;Ibrahim et al,2019;Latiffi et al, 2016;Ullah et al, 2019;Eastman et al, 2011;Fitriani et al, 2019;Al-Ashmori et al, 2020;Matarneh and Hamed, 2017;Samimpay and Saghatforoush, 2020). One of the greatest problems confronting the construction industry is 'rework'.…”

“…According to Samimpay & Saghatforoush (2020), BIM is among the latest innovations in construction that has improved the speed of problem resolution. It was further stated that when applied by construction professionals, it has the capability to minimise design errors and mistakes, improve cost and time performance of projects, design improvement, increase project coordination and stakeholders cooperation, and improve construction integration.…”

“…It was further stated that when applied by construction professionals, it has the capability to minimise design errors and mistakes, improve cost and time performance of projects, design improvement, increase project coordination and stakeholders cooperation, and improve construction integration. All these determine and influence the constructability of a project (Samimpay & Saghatforoush, 2020). BIM has the potential to save cost, minimise design clash, enable quality and informed decision making, improve the performance of projects, and better collaborate (Farnsworth et al, 2014).…”

“…The situation is blamed on the complexity of the construction project, operational inefficiency, level of uncertainty, poor productivity, absence of information reuse and management, poor collaborative working (Samimpay& Saghatforoush, 2020;Saka et al, 2020). In addition, the working practices of the construction sector are largely dependent on the traditional manual method of delivering projects.…”

BIM Visual Programming Tools Applications in Infrastructure Projects: A State-of-the-Art Review

“…This difference is particularly 2 of 24 highlighted in works that have studied these benefits for the digitalization of infrastructure projects [40,41]. This gap is explained by infrastructure projects' characteristics, such as their unique geometry and high design requirements [42]. Due to these unique characteristics, the implementation of the BIM methodology is more difficult.…”