Road map to BIM use for infrastructure domains: Identifying and contextualizing variables of infrastructure projects

Abstract

Nowadays, construction activities and projects are becoming much more challenging to manage. Getting involved with different stakeholders is a difficult task to which Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been addressed as a solution. In parallel, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has already taken the first steps towards this big revolution and secured a place in the sector. Upon inspiration from modality of BIM, it has been adopted for use in other sub-branches of construction industry such as infrastructure domain. Since BIM has proven beneficial in the case of buildings, infrastructure projects might gain similar advantages through proper implementation. This study proposes a new description for the purpose of BIM adoption for infrastructure projects, namely Infrastructure Building Information Modeling (I-BIM). The main objective of conducting this research is to identify and prove the lack of using BIM for infrastructure projects. In this context, a questionnaire survey was designed and distributed among 187 participants. These respondents were mostly located in the United States of America and Turkey. Authors point to the preponderance and impediment components that constrain I-BIM utilization and discuss five main categories to cluster the selected 26 variables as either benefit of or barrier to I-BIM.