Improving Construction Information Flow BIM Versus 2D Drawings

Abstract

In today’s construction industry legal construction documents consist of 2D drawings and specifications. These documents include all the construction information that are presented graphically and in text. Construction documents are delivered in separated pages which are linked to each other through symbols and codes. Large-scale construction projects are presented in large number of 2D drawings and specification documents that make it difficult and time consuming to extract necessary information from them in construction processes. On the other hand, BIM models that are emerged during past decades, are introducing new ways of representation of construction information. 3D nature of BIM models along with information windows and different computational features that they provide, make information take-off and quality control quicker and more efficient. But there are big obstacles in the way of making BIM models the main source of information including lack of experience and education and resistance towards change. In addition, the individual and organizational benefits of implementing BIM in the construction projects are never evaluated or clarified. This lack of evaluation along with mentioned obstacles prevent construction industry to develop further towards becoming a total BIM-based industry. In this research, the benefits of using BIM models in construction projects are investigated in detail through literature review, a survey study and a cognitive test. For this matter, a number of 50 professionals from 6 different construction project within a large-scale construction company are investigated in terms of their cognitive perception in using different construction documents. Furthermore, a proposal of applying 2D drawings inside the environment of BIM models is presented and tested on construction professionals. This proposal introduces 2D drawings as complimentary documents for BIM models and investigates how BIM models complemented by 2D drawings, can compensate each other’s shortcomings, optimize information flow in construction projects, provide better cognitive perception and encourage professionals to use BIM models as the main source of construction information. Through this investigation, it is aimed to facilitate the way of developing towards total BIM-based construction process for the researched company and following that the construction industry.