Exploring the adoption of BIM amidst the COVID-19 crisis in China

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has introduced critical challenges in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry; to address these challenges, building information modelling (BIM) can be applied as a project management tool to help enhance collaboration among stakeholders and improve business performance. Amidst the COVID-19 crisis, there is a greater need to explore and implement effective strategies to promote a wider adoption of BIM. However, increasing the willingness of project participants to adopt BIM through event management has not received much attention. Therefore, based on event system theory and innovation diffusion theory, we developed a model to explore the influence of the COVID-19 crisis on the willingness of AEC participants to adopt BIM. Structural equation modelling was performed to test the hypotheses. The results demonstrate that the intention of the AEC project participants to adopt BIM is directly driven by the COVID-19 event criticality and perceived usefulness of BIM. Moreover, the event criticality and BIM technical features (relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity) can indirectly affect this intention, through the perceived usefulness. However, the impact of event disruption and novelty on the BIM adoption intention is not significant. Several recommendations are provided to improve the BIM adoption intention of AEC participants during and after the pandemic.

The Need for Smart Architecture Caused by the Impact of COVID-19 upon Architecture and City: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The impact of COVID-19 was prominent during the search. We found studies conducted for the implementation of IoT, with a focus on the attempt to uphold social distancing [27,59,79,111,119,123,129]. Within this, the usage of building information modelling (BIM) for special design of hospitals, nursing homes, and accommodation was explored.…”

Evaluation of Complexity Issues in Building Information Modeling Diffusion Research

“…While the relative advantages of BIM enabled BIM adoption, the complexity of BIM was deemed as a critical inhibitor [54]. The intense manual evaluation suggested that complex BIM adoption circumstances, such as complexities of building characteristics [55] and work processes [56], contractual chal-lenges [57,58], interoperability trends [59], risk factors [55], political and organizational contexts [60,61], dynamics of drivers [62], and emergencies [63], have drawn the interest of many researchers. For instance, Mayouf et al [56] elicited implications of shortfalls impacting 5D BIM adoption as well as complexities facing quantity surveyors within BIM processes in the United Kingdom's construction industry.…”

“…Meanwhile, the manual evaluation also revealed that researchers tended to apply useful tools such as adoption impact maps [49], analytical frameworks [9,54], or conceptual models [64] to integrate groups of complex driving and inhibiting factors and willingness and evaluate their impacts on BIM adoption, especially in complex unexpected events. Specifically, Wang et al [63] developed a model to explore the COVID-19 crisis's influence on practitioners' willingness to adopt BIM, which was directly driven by the COVID-19 event criticality and perceived usefulness of BIM. Gurevich et al [49] proposed a BIM adoption impact map that defined a structured process for analyzing complex relationships between public facility agencies' actions, the actions' intermediate impact on designers, contractors, and project managers, and the eventual value added to the occupants.…”

Institutionalisation of sustainability in Indian megaprojects: an organisational field-based approach

“…Nevertheless, all of these actions may be futile unless the construction workers change their behaviour to a more informed and intrinsic culture regarding the importance of health and safety protocols. Furthermore, building information modeling (BIM) in project management may play a vital role in establishing the online transmission and management of information and calls for attention (Wang et al. , 2021c).…”